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On the other hand, the loss of unitariness in dental knowledge, as has happened in other biomedical disciplines [8], could be leading to a potentially irreversible differentiation process, splintering knowledge into numerous isolated subdisciplines and specialties. Thus,attempts at a comprehensive portrayal of ongoing scientific research and innovation in the dental sciences have become enormously complex, thus requiring new methodologies.Our aim was to analyse the scientific activity of dental sciences in the last 30 years. The Thomson Reuter WoS database was used to reach three specific objectives: (a) designa new methodology permitting the retrieval of dental articles published in journals outside the category Dentistry, Oral Surgery,and Medicine(DOSM)of the JCR;(b)characterize the dental research in relation to output, authorship, geographic origin, and impact; and (c) thematically characterize research in dental specialties, evaluating their interactions and analysing their trend over the last three decades. Material and method The database selected to analyse dental-research output was the Thomson Reuters WoS. For three periods, 1986–1988, 1996–1998, and 2006–2008, all citable documents (articles, reviews,letters, and notes) published in any language were considered.The searches spanned October 2009 to March 2010.The documents were retrieved in two stages: first, all documents published in the journals included in DOSM category of the JCR database for the 3-year periods were directly downloaded. Secondly, to retrieve dental documents published in any other journals included in any other categories of the JCR database, hereafter called Non-DOSM, wefirst had to establish a specific methodology. We defined“dental literature”as any scientific document with content related to dental subjects (i.e. “lip”could be a dental subject but also dermatological) and produced by a dental institution, identified through its institutional address. Therefore, mathematically mixed search strategy as well as institutional was designed. The keywords to conduct the thematic search were selected by three of the authors (I.J., R.P., and C.L.) ofthe Stomatology Department of the University of Granada(Spain).