Orthodontic Research Output from Iran in International and National Journals

The number of scientific papers is a conventional metric to measure a country’s research performance in a particular area. The aim of this survey was to demonstrate statistical information about orthodontic research published in international and national journals. Pubmed as an international and IranMedex and SID as national databases were searched between1997 and 2012. The keyword searching method was used in English and Persian. Abstracts were reviewed and unrelated articles were omitted. Data were obtained and transferred to Microsoft Excel to survey the scintometric indicators. According to the defined criteria, a total of 733 papers were found showing a considerable increase. Five hundred papers (68.2%) were published in domestic journals, and 233 (31.8%) were published in PubMed indexed journals. Most of the orthodontic articles originated from Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences (22.9%). The Journal of Dental School, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences published most of the national papers (27.8%) and the Australian Orthodontic Journal published the majority of international papers (9.9%) In terms of study design, 52.5% of the articles were observational and 39.4% were interventional. Orthodontic research production in Iran has made significant strides in the recent years and researchers should focus on the quality of the study in this field in order to apply research production in evidence base dentistry.