title: Quantitative and Qualitative Evaluation of Iranian Researchers' Scientific Production in Dentistry Subfields.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  As in other fields of medicine, scientific production in the field of dentistry has significant placement. This study aimed at quantitatively and qualitatively evaluating Iranian researchers' scientific output in the field of dentistry and determining their contribution in each of dentistry subfields and branches.
  
  
  METHODS
  This research was a scientometric study that applied quantitative and qualitative indices of Web of Science (WoS). Research population consisted of927indexed documents published under the name of Iran in the time span of 1993-2012 which were extracted from WoS on 10 March 2013. The Mann-Whitney test and Pearson correlation coefficient were used to data analyses in SPSS 19.
  
  
  RESULTS
  777 (83. 73%) of indexed items of all scientific output in WoS were scientific articles. The highest growth rate of scientific productionwith90% belonged to endodontic sub field. The correlation coefficient test showed that there was a significant positive relationship between the number of documents and their publication age (P < 0. 0001). There was a significant difference between the mean number of published articles in the first ten- year (1993-2003) and that of the second one (2004-2013), in favor of the latter (P = 0. 001).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The distribution frequencies of scientific production in various subfields of dentistry were very different. It needs to reinforce the infrastructure for more balanced scientific production in the field and its related subfields.
authors.affiliation: General Education Department, Faculty of Medicine, Babol University of Medical Sciences, Babol, Iran.
authors.forename: Mousa
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Yaminfirooz
authors.affiliation: School of Dentistry, Babol university of Medical Sciences, Babol, Iran.
authors.forename: Mina
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Motallebnejad
authors.affiliation: Babol University of Medical Sciences, Babol, Iran.
authors.forename: Hemmat
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Gholinia
authors.affiliation: Central Library, Babol University of Medical Sciences, Babol, Iran.
authors.forename: Somayeh
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Esbakian
keywords: Dentistry; Iran; Publication; Research Personnel; Scientific production; Scientometrics