A brief statistical analysis of stomatology papers published in international journals by researchers from the mainland of China--based on Thomson Reuters' journal citation reports for 2009.

This paper has briefly analyzed the publication status of Chinese stomatology papers in 2009 with statistics from Journal Citation Reports provided by Thomson Scientific. Only those papers with the first author coming from the mainland of China were included for calculations. We have found a significant increase in the number of SCIE-indexed papers, most of which were published by six dental institutions in China. Among all Chinese medical institutions, West China School of Stomatology Sichuan University is the first dental institution to enter the top-20 list with the most publications, and it also ranks the 9th in the number of outstanding articles. West China School of Stomatology Sichuan University and the Forth Military Medical University are the only two dental institutions in China which have published SCIE-indexed papers over a hundred. The former has published the most SCIE-indexed stomatology papers, while the latter has the highest average impact factor. As the laboratories and funds in China have close connections with various dental hospitals, the pratice of translational medicine in dentistry is fast and fluent.