Bibliometric analysis of peer-reviewed literature on friction in orthodontics

Background: Orthodontics is a specialized field of dentistry that focuses on correcting maligned teeth and jaws. Friction in orthodontics occurs at multiple contact points along the archwire. We discuss the factors that affect friction in fixed appliances, including biological considerations, the ligation mechanism, the bracket, and the archwire. This bibliometric study’s objective is to review the literature on the subject of friction in orthodontics. This abstract provides an overview of the key concepts, methods, and applications of friction in orthodontics using bibliometric analysis. Methods: Bibliometrics can reveal significant shifts in research and publication trends. The Bibliometrix package with the VOS viewer program (Centre for Science and Technology Studies, Leiden University, The Netherlands), and RStudio 2021.09.0 + 351 for Windows (RStudio, Boston, Massachusetts) was used in the bibliometric research. The literary data for this study came from Elsevier’s Scopus database (www.scopus.com), and they were exported in BibTex format. The following criteria were used to independently classify the articles: (a) annual scholarly output; (b) top nations or regions; (c) top journals; (d) productive authors; (e) citations; (f) study design; (g) topic distribution; (h) keywords used; and (i) trending topics over time. Results: Brazil and Germany have the most single-country publications, according to a statistical analysis. Conclusions: The research done on the aspect of finding the role of friction in orthodontics provided data and knowledge about using friction as a tool to control tooth movement in fixed appliance therapy. Further studies are necessary to obtain more reliable results.