Global bibliometric mapping of dental development research for the period 2012-2021

Background: Dental development is a complex long-term biological process, significant attention should be paid to the dental development and health of this critical time window in childhood for the oral health of the whole life cycle. Aim: This study aimed to conduct bibliometric studies on the scientific outputs of global dental development research by the CiteSpace software. Design: The global scientific outputs about dental development between January 1, 2012, and December 31, 2021, retrieved from Web of Science Core Collection, CiteSpace, and Microsoft Excel were applied for this bibliometric study. Results: A total of 3746 reviews and articles were obtained from the Web of Science core database for exploring the basic publication characteristics, hotspots, and frontiers of this research field. The results showed that dental development is gaining more researcher's attention over time. In terms of countries, the USA and China were the major contributors to this research area. At the institutional level, Sichuan University ranked first. Meanwhile, international cooperation across regions was quite active. The Journal of Dental Research has exerted a broad and far-reaching influence on dental development research in both publications and citations. James P Simmer, Jungwook Kim, Charles E Smith, and Jan CC Hu are among the most influential scholars in this field. Finally, the future hotspots were proposed, covering three directions: dental analysis, tooth development, and post-translational phosphorylation of histones. Conclusion: In the past decade, the field of dental development has developed rapidly, and the cooperation between scholars, institutions, and researchers has become increasingly close.