A bibliographic search was done through the Dimensions app on April 17, 2021, using the strategy “dentistry” in the "Title and Abstract" option from 1839 until 2021. Articles were ordered in altmetric citations (Altmetric LLP, London, UK), and data were tabled and analyzed through Microsoft Office Excel 2010 (Microsoft, Richmond, USA) using statistical tests and charts. Articles with no relation to dentistry were excluded manually as duplicates (systematic review updates).

Data were analyzed to output the most relevant and up-to-date scientific papers about dentistry according to the Altmetric Attention Score (AAS). AAS extracts data from some web-based sources like Twitter, Facebook, or Mendeley readers. For each different indicator, AAS uses a different weight [Table 1 and Figure 1].

Table 1: Altmetric Attention Score Weight.

Source: https://help.altmetric.com/support/solutions/articles/6000233311-how-is-the-altmetric-attention-score-calculated

Figure 1: Example of Altmetric score in Dimensions.

The top 100 articles are based on the Altmetric score. For each article included, we extracted: Altmetric Attention Scores, number of scientific citations (bibliometrics), journal title, country of origin, institution, subject categories. Country of origin and affiliate institution was linked to the corresponding author. In case of the absence of this information, data were used from the last author. If any data are not available, it was considered as Not Found (NF). Articles with no relation to dentistry and published by any non-health professionals were excluded. Any discordance of data was solved by the authors' consensus. Some tables and graphs were created in order to facilitate data visualization through Microsoft Office Excel and VOS viewer (Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands).

We have found 112,778 articles about dentistry and, depending on the bibliographic platform, and this number can reach more results. A PubMed search, on the same date, has achieved 625,291 articles. The list of the top 100 dentistry articles with the highest AAS is provided in Table 2.

Table 2: List of the 100 articles order through AAS.

Mean AAS was [56,65], ranging from [54]100 to 1250 [1]. A total of 63 different journals are part of this list; Journal of the American Dental Association has the higher number of articles in this list, 14 followed by British Dental Journal and Journal of Dental Research with six. Mean number of citations is 21,50, ranging from 0 [37,41,46,55,87] to 2147 [22] citations.

There are 75 different worldwide institutions from 19 countries and four continents. University College of London leads the list with six published articles, followed by New York University, State University of New York, University of Michigan and University of Sydney with three articles. United States of America leads the list of countries of origin with a much larger quantity of articles than average amount, 40 articles followed by United Kingdom with 17 and Australia with 6 published articles [Figure 2].

Figure 2: Countries of origin of top 100 articles with highest AAS.

Richard Geddie Watt, Head of Department of Epidemiology and Public Health of University College London is the author with the most significant number of articles on this list. Two articles about oral health care [27,48] and one about opportunity for a reform in dentistry in this COVID-19 pandemic [63]. Two of these articles were published in a very high impact factor journal [27,63].

Articles, topics were divided into basic sciences/dental materials, cariology/oral health, endodontics, forensic dentistry, implantology, oral and maxillofacial surgery, pathology, patients with special needs, pediatrics, periodontology, perspectives and new technologies, pharmacology, restorative/prosthetic dentistry, and veterinary dentistry. More common keyword related to “dentistry” are “humans”, “female”, “male”, “adult” and “child”. An interesting fact about keyword on dentistry search is, next more cited keyword, on sixth place, is “covid-19”. A graphical representation of keywords [Figure 3] and authors [Figure 4] was performed through VOS viewer software.