Forensic age estimation of living individuals: a novel bibliometric approach to the literature review

Abstract

This study investigates the trends within the published research up to 2019 in relation to skeletal and dental age estimation in living individuals by using a novel bibliometric analysis which utilizes a specialist, open-source R script. The analysis was performed on a total of 644 papers (627 articles, fifteen conference papers, and two reviews) retrieved using the online database Scopus. The analysis included an investigation of publication trends, authors’ affiliations, citation, Open Access publications, authors’ keywords, and index keywords. An additional investigation was conducted to study the relation between the methodologies developed and the specific populations that have been tested. The relation between imaging techniques and areas of the body used in these studies was also examined.