Endodontic therapy in primary teeth: a bibliometric analysis of the 100 most-cited papers

The purpose of this review was to identify and analyze the main characteristics of the 100 most-cited papers in the field of endodontic therapy in primary teeth. A search for the most-cited articles was conducted in the Clarivate Analytics Web of Science 'Core-Collection' (WoS-CC) database up to December 2020. Papers were ranked in descending order, by number of citations, and each paper was matched with the citation count on Scopus and Google Scholar. Two independent reviewers selected the most-cited papers and analyzed it according to the number and density of citations, year and journal of publication, authors, countries and contributing institutions, study design, topic of the paper, and keywords. Spearman's correlation and Poisson regression were used to determine associations between the number of citations and study characteristics. The citation count varied from 15 to 135 (WoS-CC), 8 to 141 (Scopus), and 14 to 317 (Google Scholar). Of the 306 contributing authors, most paper contributions were from Sakai VT, Oliveira TM, and Machado MAAM (5 each). Most of the papers originated from the USA (n=21) and Brazil (n=18). Randomized trials were the most common study design (n=32), and "pulpotomy" was the most frequently used keyword (n=35). Poisson regression showed that the number of citations decreased by 1.5% each year, and increased by 9.7% for each unit of impact factor. This bibliometric analysis highlighted papers, authors, and institutions that have contributed to endodontic therapy in primary teeth. Common terms of interest in this research area was also identified, representing the first bibliometric analysis on this subject.