title: Contributions of Indian conservative dentists and endodontists to the Medline database during 1996-2009: A bibliometric analysis.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Analysis of publication trends will guide the policy framers, administrators, and dentists to frame future policies and design programs for the development of scientific and technological policies in the field of dentistry.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  This study was undertaken to assess the trends in Indian Conservative dentists and endodontists' Publication in PubMed-Medline database during 1996-2009.
  
  
  METHODS
  Using the time limitation of publication date limit of 1(st) January 1996 to 31(st) December 2009, all articles where authors' affiliation had the words Dental AND India were selected. From this collection of articles, the following were noted down: year of publication, number of authors, name of the journal, reach of the journal, status of the journal, specialty of the first, state of origin, and type of research. From this database, the performance of department of conservative dentistry and endodontics was analyzed.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The number of articles published by conservative dentists and endodontists was 124. Among them, 63 got published in international journals and 61 in Indian journals. A majority of 33 journals were published in Indian Journal of Dental Research followed by 25 in the Journal of Conservative Dentistry. Out of these articles, 66 were on the basis of original research done by the authors. Nearly 45.2% of the published articles were from the institutes in Tamil Nadu, followed by Karnataka (30.6%), and Maharashtra (8.1%). Although the overall distribution of the publication trends seems to be constant from 1996 to 2006, there seems to be boom in the publication trend since 2007.
authors.affiliation: Department of Conservative Dentistry and Endodontics, Ragas Dental College and Hospital, Uthandi, Chennai 600 119, India.
authors.forename: Saravanan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Poorni
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ramachandran
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Rooban
authors.forename: Pd Madan
authors.initials: PM
authors.lastname: Kumar