Analysis of COVID-19 articles published in dental journals

Introduction: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is an ongoing global health crisis with unmatched outcomes and effects. This pandemic has caused an infodemic of article publication in scientific journal. Dental journals have been active in publication of COVID-19 related articles from the beginning of the pandemic. In this report, we present an analysis of the scientific output of dental journals on COVID-19.Methods: Special COVID-19 database of PubMed was searched on December 3, 2020 with applying Dental Journals filter. Data including article type, journal name, country, and number of PubMed citations were recorded.Results: The search retrieved a total of 658 articles, of which 26 were excluded as a result of duplicate records, the article being in a language other than English, the article being a correction or unrelated or briefing of other articles. 632 articles were included in the analysis. Oral Diseases has published the most COVID-19 articles (13.9%), followed by British Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery (8.1%), Journal of Dental Education (7.6%), British Dental Journal (6.8%) and Journal of Craniofacial Surgery (5.5%). Most of the articles were from researchers from the United States (168), United Kingdom (120), Brazil (83), Italy (64), China (54), and India (35). Most of the published articles were original articles (22.3%), letters (20.7%), reviews (15.3%), commentaries/perspectives/opinions (13.4%) and editorials (8.9%). The number of citations of the published articles ranged from 0 to 406. Most articles (64.2%) did not have any citations and only 5.0% of them had 10 or more citations.Conclusion: The dental community has been active in publication of COVID-19 articles from the beginning of the pandemic. The papers published by dental journals explore issues such as management of clinical practices during the outbreak, infection control in the dental setting, signs and symptoms of COVID-19 affecting the oral cavity, and the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on educational and clinical programs.