Scientific Paper Production by Iranian Dental Schools Between 2015 and 2019

Journal articles published by Iranian dental school faculty members have followed an upward trend Since 2000, based on: (1) the global growth rate; (2) the increase in the number of country’s dental schools and their relatively higher number of faculty members; and (3) the health ministry’s emphasis on research and scientific publications. Hence, it is important to keep ourselves up to date about the trend of scientific articles published by Iranian dental schools.

This study aimed to extract the number and quantitative value of articles authored by faculty members of Iranian dental schools that are indexed in three databases of SCOPUS, PubMed, and the Web of Science (WoS/ISI) from 2015 to 2019.

A five-year cross-sectional study was conducted on the above-mentioned databases, using a similar strategy for all databases. Words “Iran” and “dent*” were searched in affiliations. The obtained results were investigated in-depth. The details of search results were checked out one by one. Only those articles with at least one author genuinely affiliated to an Iranian dental school were included for further assessment. The “number of articles” authored by at least one author and those with the “first author” affiliated to an Iranian dental school were counted. Then, the “quantitative value” or share of each author was calculated by dividing one by the number of authors of the article. The three variables were compared among databases, dental schools, and study years.

A total of 3922, 2473, and 2345 articles were retrieved from SCOPUS, PubMed, and WoS, respectively. Concerning SCOPUS and WoS databased, all three study variables had an increasing trend from 2015 to 2018 but decreased in 2019. In PubMed, however, the decline started from the beginning of the study period.

The observed decline in the number of scientific papers produced or published at the end of the study period is worrying. The novel variable of “quantitative value” that was calculated in this study can be regarded as an appropriate and feasible indicator to determine the number of scientific papers published by individuals, dental schools, and the whole country’s dental research society, compared to other variables. Policymakers should rethink facilitating publication in accredited journals, especially those indexed in PubMed.