The science of collective health in writing: contribution to studies in collective oral health.

Celebrating the 25 years of existence of the Journal Ciência & Saúde Coletiva (C&SC), this paper analyzed 375 documents published between 2000-2019 as an integral part of the editorial of collective oral health. The production analysis aimed to understand how oral health core appears in publications and how it could have contributed to knowledge on the population's health-disease, specific public policies, education, and management of oral health services in the SUS. The process employed bibliometric and documental analysis. We could show the authors' territorial distribution, their extensive collaboration network, and the dimension of citations in publications, including the international plan. The Brazilian states most present in the publications were São Paulo and Minas Gerais, followed by authors from Pernambuco, Rio Grande do Sul, and Santa Catarina. Citations were more frequent in Brazil (85.14%), followed by the United States (2.31%), Portugal (1.34%), and Australia (1.34%). We concluded that, despite the limitations, the C&SC showed unequivocally a powerful instrument for the dissemination of scientific production from the perspective of collective oral health, enabling the exchange of information and facilitating the integration between researchers and enabling a path to its consolidation.