Bibliometric Analysis of Turkey-Affiliated International Publications in Pediatric Dentistry Using RStudio Package: A Cross-Sectional Research

Objectives: This study aims to perform a bibliometric analysis of studies published in international journals affiliated with Turkey in the field of pediatric dentistry and to determine the position of Turkish Pediatric Dentistry at the international level. Materials and Methods: The research was conducted using the 'Web of Science' and 'Scopus' databases. The search was performed by entering the following terms into the databases: 'pediatric dentistry' OR 'paediatric dentistry' OR 'pedodontics' and 'children' AND ('dentistry' OR 'teeth' OR 'tooth' OR 'dental' OR 'caries' OR 'oral health' OR 'oral hygiene'). Subsequently, publications were filtered by selecting 'Turkey' on a country basis. Using the 'bibliometrix' package in RStudio, data obtained from the two databases were merged. The analysis included a total of 1,949 publications. The identified publications were evaluated based on publication years, journals in which they were published, citation counts, authors, affiliated institutions, and preferred keywords. Analyses and visualizations from package in RStudio were utilized. Results: Turkey's international collaboration rate is 5%. The United States emerges as the most frequent collaboration partner, with the journal Dental Traumatology standing out among the sources. Hacettepe University is the most productive institution, with 390 publications. The thematic map reveals that 'pulpotomy,' 'mineral trioxide aggregate,' 'fluoride,' and 'remineralization' are the most actively researched topics. Conclusions: Based on data from the Web of Science and Scopus databases, there has been a significant scientific productivity in the field of Turkish Pediatric Dentistry between 1984 and 2024. In future studies, the comprehensiveness of the results can be expanded by analyzing different databases.