A bibliometric analysis of the top 50 most cited articles published in the Journal of Conservative Dentistry

Background: Bibliometric analysis is the quantitative analysis of measurable citation information of a journal. It unveils research topics, publishing trends, assess research impact, and productivity.

Aims: The purpose of this study was to conduct a bibliometric analysis to identify and analyze the top 50 most cited articles published in the Journal of Conservative Dentistry (JCD).

Methodology: Clarivate Analytics' Web of Science was used to search and identify the 50 most cited scientific papers of JCD. Each article was then cross-matched with Google Scholar and PubMed databases and the mean citation was derived. In addition, citation density for each article was derived to negate the age of publication factor.

Statistical analysis: Shapiro-Wilk test and Kolmogorov-Smirnov test were done to detect departures from normality. For testing and determining correlations among several variables, the Spearman rank test was performed.

Results: The top 50 most-cited articles received a total of 6263 (Google Scholar), 323 (PubMed), and 2056 (Web of Science) citations. Major topics of interest in the top 50 most-cited articles were dental material science (n = 18) and carious and noncarious lesion management (n = 14). There was no significant association between mean citation count and time since publication (correlation coefficient = 0.273, P = 0.055). However, there was a significant negative association of citation density (correlation coefficient = -0.647, P < 0.01) with time since publication.

Conclusions: Bibliometric analysis of top-cited articles gave valuable insights into journal's research history and progress of the journal concerning dissemination of scholarly work.