Evolving trend of systematic reviews and meta-analyses in endodontics: A bibliometric study

Dear Editor, In their study of bibliometric analysis of systematic reviews and meta-analyses in endodontics, Lin et al.[1] found that the article with the most citations was “Outcomes of nonsurgical retreatment and endodontic surgery: A systematic review,”[2] with 184 citations (Scopus). This is followed by the second most-cited article entitled “Outcome of secondary root canal treatment: A systematic review of the literature”[3] with 182 citations (Scopus). However, the author observes that the most cited article is “Outcome of primary root canal treatment: Systematic review of the literature – Part 2. Influence of clinical factors”[4] with 480 citations (Scopus). This is followed by “Outcome of primary root canal treatment: Systematic review of the literature – Part 1. Effects of study characteristics on probability of success”[5] with 332 citations (Scopus). Since Lin et al.[1] compiled and examined the list of the top 100 most-cited articles, the flawed methodology to carry out article searching has raised serious questions about the credibility of this article’s findings. Missing the two most-cited articles[4,5] from the list of the 100 most-cited articles reflect a fundamental error in the article’s finding. Moreover, apart from the top-two most-cited articles, there are several articles which would be present in the Table 1 if correct methodology was applied. The author note that each bibliometric parameter assessed in the article is based on the top-cited articles; hence, the entire article is flawed and provides inaccurate information related to the topic.Table 1: The most-cited articles based on the citation counts