Institutional Research Stratification in Global Dental Schools: A 10-Year Bibliometric Comparison Across QS Ranking Tiers

OBJECTIVE: To compare the research performance and publishing practices of the Top 50 and Next 50 dental schools ranked by the QS World University Rankings by Subject: Dentistry, and to identify institution‑level bibliometric characteristics associated with higher ranking performance. METHODS: tests for distributional comparisons (collaborative mode; journal quartiles). False discovery rate correction was applied within each analytic family. RESULTS: Across 2016-2025, the Top 50 schools outperformed the Next 50 in 10 indicators, including scholarly output, citation count, citations per publication, policy‑document citations and multiple collaboration‑impact metrics (all FDR‑adjusted P < .05). The Top 50 schools published a significantly higher proportion of their output in Q1 journals (58.0% versus 52.6%) and engaged more frequently in international collaboration (47.0% versus 44.3%). Correlation analysis showed that citations per publication positively correlated with international collaboration, Q1 publishing and top‑percentile citation indicators. Exploratory analyses showed that the ratio of scholarly output in Q1 journals declined stepwise from the Top 10 to ranks 12-20, 21-50 and 51-100. CONCLUSION: Top‑ranked dental schools are distinguished by greater publication volume, higher citation impact, stronger international collaboration and more frequent publishing in Q1 dental journals. These research findings offer directions for dental schools aiming to enhance their research performance and competitiveness within the QS ranking framework.