Objectives: To identify the 100 most cited articles published in dental journals.
Materials and methods: A search was performed on the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) Web of Science for the most cited articles in all the journals included in the Journal Citation Report (2010 edition) in the category of "Dentistry, Oral Surgery, and Medicine". Each one of the 77 journals selected was analyzed using the Cited Reference Search tool of the ISI Web of Science database to identify the most cited articles up to June 2012. The following information was gathered from each article: names and number of authors, journal, year of publication, type of study, methodological design, and area of research.
Results: The number of citations of the 100 selected articles varied from 326 to 2050. All articles were published in 21 of the 77 journals in the category. The journals with the largest number of the cited articles were the Journal of Clinical Periodontology (20 articles), the Journal of Periodontology (18 articles), and the Journal of Dental Research (16 articles). There was a predominance of clinical research (66 %) over basic research (34 %). The most frequently named author was Socransky SS, with 9 of the top 100 articles, followed by Lindhe J with 7. The decades with most articles published of the 100 selected were 1980-1989 (26 articles) and 1990-1999 (25 articles). The most common type of article was the case series (22 %), followed by the narrative review/expert opinion (19 %). The most common area of study was periodontology (43 % of articles).
Conclusions: To our knowledge, this is the first report of the top-cited articles in Dentistry. There is a predominance of clinical studies, particularly case series and narrative reviews/expert opinions, despite their low-evidence level. The focus of the articles has mainly been on periodontology and implantology, and the majority has been published in the highest impact factor dental journals.
Clinical significance: The number of citations that an article receives does not necessarily reflect the quality of the research, but the present study gives some clues to the topics and authors contributing to major advances in Dentistry.