Emerging basic, clinical and translational research fronts in dental biomaterials R&D

TL;DR

This study analyzes the evolving landscape of dental biomaterials research, identifying key emerging fronts and their relation to technological complexity and knowledge translation levels.

Contribution

It introduces a novel network and text mining approach to map and characterize emerging research fronts in dental biomaterials.

Findings

Identified eleven emerging research fronts in dental materials.

Linked technological complexity to stages of knowledge translation.

First comprehensive analysis of dental materials research structure.

Abstract

The current (2007-2007) structure and content of dental materials research has been investigated by identifying and describing the emergent research fronts which can be related to basic, translational and clinical observation research. By a combination of network analysis and text mining of the literature on dental materials indexed in the Web of Science, we have identified eleven emerging research fronts. These fronts are related to different dental materials applications which are at different levels in the knowledge translation and biomedical innovation process. We identified fronts related to dominant designs like titanium implants, competing technologies like ceramics and composites applications to prothesis and restauration, and disruptive technologies like nanomaterials and mineral trioxide aggregates. Our results suggest the possible relation between the technological complexity of the dental materials and the level of advance in terms of knowledge translation. This is the first time the structure and content of research on dental materials research is analyzed.