Sixty years of research in dental age estimation: a bibliometric study

Main text

On September 29, 2023, Merdietio Boedi et al., (2023) published a remarkable article. They performed bibliometric analysis of dental age estimation (DAE). The search string was “Dental Age Estimation” OR “Age Determination through Teeth.” The data was retrieved from Scopus database and covered the publications from 1964 to 2022.

We would like to express our heartfelt gratitude for their valuable work. They also adapted a meticulous approach in gathering, analyzing, and presenting the relevant data. In this communication, we would like to request the esteemed authors for their expert opinion about a few discrepancies. We also tried to contribute new data that may enhance the quality of the published work.

The authors reported and analyzed 1638 articles, however for the same search strings we found 1744 research documents (from 1964 to 2022). The expert opinion of Merdietio Boedi, R., and their colleagues will be highly appreciated to clarify the stated discrepancy.

We also observed significant differences in the productivity of universities. For instance, according to Merdietio Boedi et al. the University of São Paulo (USP) have produced 104 articles, But according to our findings USP published only 35 documents. Similarly, the Universitätsklinikum Münster, which was listed with 83 articles in the article, actually has a total of 29 articles. While the University of Zagreb, to which 71 articles were attributed, actually has 28 research documents.

Regarding countries, there are indeed significant discrepancies in the numbers presented. India, as mentioned, has a total of 667 articles, but the database indicated only 196. In the case of Italy, there are 532 articles, while the database lists 148. Certainly, a more in-depth analysis of these discrepancies is necessary to better understand the origin of these differences. Further investigations and clarifications are essential to reconcile these disparities in the data. Once again thanks to Merdietio Boedi et al. for their interesting work and we believe their expert opinion will truly help the common readership.