A scientometric update of the evolution of national scientific production in dental educators in Peru according to gender disparity

BACKGROUND: Gender disparity in dental research refers to the differences in the participation and representation of men and women in scientific production in dentistry. Studies have shown that although female participation has increased, inequalities in leadership and recognition persist. The study conducted a bibliometric analysis of trends in Peruvian dental scientific production based on gender disparity. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This descriptive and observational study examines published literature between 2019 and 2024. Studies were included if they were published in the dentistry field while affiliated with Peruvian institutions during the aforementioned period. Studies were excluded if they could not be exported to SciVal. Studies from unlicensed Peruvian universities and their authors were also excluded. The data were exported from the Scopus database to SciVal to analyze four scientometric criteria: number of publications, citations per paper, citation impact, and international collaboration. Then a further bibliometric analysis was conducted using the Bibliometrix package. RESULTS: The findings indicated that scientific production increased by 11.1% each year with noted contributions to the research by male and female authors, although male authors published at a higher frequency than women. The leading institutions were Universidad Científica del Sur and Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. Thematic trends demonstrated that there were emerging topics trending including COVID-19 and oral health. CONCLUSION: These results highlight the need to improve collaboration and international work to have substantial quality and impact in research production in dentistry in Peru. The gender disparity issue must also be communicated so that the network of female researchers feels supported to publish in this area and that the representation in the dental research field becomes more balanced.