The analysis of co-citation and word co-occurrence networks of Iranian articles in the field of dentistry

Dentistry is an important profession ensuring the health of body and soul, and has a special place in the scientific productions of medical disciplines. The purpose of this study was to analyze the co-citation and word co-occurrence of Iranian research papers in the field of dentistry based on indexed documents in Web of Science from 2014 to 2018.

The present study follows the procedures related to quantitative research with a descriptive approach and a scientometric technique. Co-citation and co-occurrence analysis techniques were used. In this study, 1079 articles were reviewed from the Web of Science. Data analysis was performed Ucinet Software, and VOS viewer.

Iran has the highest level of international cooperation with the United States. The highest number of published articles in the Web of Science Database belongs to Vahid Derakhshani based on the highest degree of centrality, the Eigen centrality, and the Betweenness centrality. Naser AminAbadi ranked first for the Closeness Centrality metric, and Massoud Peirokh with a citation weight of 20 had the highest citation. The field of surgery has received the most attention among dental and endodontics journal had the highest citation in the Iranian Dental Science Citation Network.

The trend of publishing scientific articles in Iran in the field of dentistry has been increasing during the selected period. The keywords oral, dental, and pediatric surgery have the most effective and decisive role in the scientific network of dentistry. These keywords provided strong scientific communication amongst the dental scholars in Iran.