Student participation in dental scientific journals in Latin America and the Caribbean

The participation of students in scientific articles represents a bibliometric indicator that describes the scientific production of a University. Objective: to describe the scientific production of articles with student presence in dental journals indexed in the SciELO database around Latin America and the Caribbean Region. Method: Bibliometric study that analyzed the scientific articles of 20 dental scientific journals from 2005 to 2017. The articles with student authorship and/or co-authorship were evaluated according to university affiliation, subject of the article, type of article and citation index. Results: Out of a total of 8747 articles, 2.09% (183) presented the participation of dentistry students. About half (50.3%) were from Brazil, and 78.1% corresponded to original articles. The main theme of the studies was related to cariology (12.6%). The journal with the highest student participation was the Journal of Applied Oral Science (32.2%) Conclusions: Student scientific production in dental journals in Latin America and the Caribbean is low, with the countries with the greatest participation being Brazil, Colombia and Chile.