Contribution of Indian Pediatric Dentists to Scientific Literature During 2002–2012: a Bibliometric Analysis

INTRODUCTION: Bibliometric analysis of publications is necessary to enable clinicians to make evidence based sound clinical decisions. It will also help policy makers & institutions to frame their decisions and policies so as to improve the quality of dental research in India. AIM: The purpose of this study is to identify publication output as well as descriptively and quantitatively characterize the contribution of Indian pediatric dentists to scientific literature through publication trend analysis from 2002 to 2012. SETTINGS AND DESIGN: Cross sectional analytical study. MATERIAL AND METHOD: A bibliometric analysis of publications by Indian pediatric dentists during 2002 to 2012 was performed on data collected from PubMed – MEDLINE database. Only the first author’s affiliations were considered and the publications were categorized according to the following variables: year of publication, number of authors, state of origin, type of article, reach of journal and country of publication. RESULTS: There were 817 articles by Indian pediatric dentists during the study period. Of all the articles 399 (48.8%) were original research, 377(46.1%) were case reports and 41 (5.0%) were reviews. The inter-annual variation between the reach, country of publication of the journal and type of articles is presented. The growth trend analysis was performed and predictions are presented. CONCLUSION: There has been an increase in the number of publications by Indian pediatric dentists and most of the published work comprises of original research. The potential use of this data is discussed.