Bibliometric analysis of randomized controlled trials in oral submucous fibrosis

Bibliometric analysis uses citation analysis to assess the impact of the research publications. This analysis investigated the most cited articles that are exclusively on the randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in oral submucous fibrosis (OSF) to help get an overview of the clinical research published to date. Articles were searched on the Scopus database with the terms 'oral submucous fibrosis' and 'randomized controlled trial' till March 2025. The Web of Science was used for citation cross-validation with Scopus. The number of citations, journals, authors, and country of origin were all reviewed. Co-occurrence analysis was carried out with the help of VOSviewer software. The data was collected from 2006 to 2024, with the maximum research papers published in 2015. A highest citation of 129 was recorded with a mean citation of 22 (standard deviation = 30.4627). The 25 articles were published in 16 different journals with the highest impact factor of 3.4, and the majority of which (n = 20) were published by Indian authors. Co-occurrence analysis was carried out for all keywords, and 27 keywords of the total 329 keywords met the threshold. Cooccurrence of author keywords suggested 4 keywords out of a total of 58 keywords that met the need with the minimum number of occurrences of 4. Co-occurrence for index keywords showed 25 keywords meeting the threshold. This analysis shows a paucity of RCTs conducted within the field and will facilitate interpretation of the clinical data and assist researchers in conducting more clinical research in the field.