Level of Evidence Analysis in Journal of Maxillofacial Oral Surgery: A Twelve-Year Bibliometric Analysis of 1300 Publications (2009-2020).

ABSTRACT

AIM: Analysing Level of Evidence (LOE) provides an insight to evidence-based medicine (EBM). The aim of our study was to evaluate and analyse trends in Levels of Evidence (LOE) in Journal of Maxillofacial and Oral Surgery (MAOS) since inception, i.e. December 2009 along with categorization into subtopics. METHODOLOGY: LOE for each article was determined according to modified American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) scale and National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Evidence Hierarchy. RESULTS: A total of 1264 articles were included in the final analysis, out of which high-quality evidence (Level A) accounted for 7% of the journal. The percentage of Level I/II (Level A) has increased from 2.09% in 2009/2010 to 12.74% in 2019/2020, representing a promising trend toward higher-quality research in just 10 years. Case reports and narrative reviews with Level of Evidence value "D" account the highest number (36%) of all the published articles. The majority of articles fell under Class 2 (Maxillofacial pathology) classification (35%) highlighting myriad of articles covering pathologies and various reconstruction methods, followed by trauma (16%). CONCLUSION: The status of LOE and categorizing of published articles are the first step to audit and quantify the nature of literature published by JMOS and may further help in refining the quality of research jointly by the researchers and the editorial board.