Citation: Alam, B.F.; Nayab, T.; Ali, S.; AlSheikh, R.; Khan, A.M.; Al Hinai, M.T.; Farooq, I. Current Scientific Research Trends on Salivary Biomarkers: A Bibliometric Analysis. Diagnostics 2022, 12, 1171. https:// doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics12051171 Academic Editor: Timo Sorsa Received: 18 March 2022 Accepted: 2 May 2022 Published: 8 May 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). diagnostics Article Current Scientific Research Trends on Salivary Biomarkers: A Bibliometric Analysis Beenish Fatima Alam 1 , Talha Nayab 2 , Saqib Ali 3 , Rasha AlSheikh 4 , Asim Mustafa Khan 3 , Muntasar T. Al Hinai 5 and Imran Farooq 6, * 1 Department of Oral Biology, Bahria University Dental College, Bahria University of Health Sciences, Karachi 75070, Pakistan; nish_alam@yahoo.com 2 Department of Dental Materials Science, Sindh Institute of Oral Health Sciences, Jinnah Sindh Medical University, Karachi 75070, Pakistan; talha.nayab@jsmu.edu.pk 3 Department of Biomedical Dental Sciences, College of Dentistry, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Dammam 31441, Saudi Arabia; drsaqiibali@gmail.com (S.A.); amkhan@iau.edu.sa (A.M.K.) 4 Department of Restorative Dental Sciences, College of Dentistry, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, Dammam 31441, Saudi Arabia; ralsheikh@iau.edu.sa 5 Dental and Maxillofacial Surgery Department, Sultan Qaboos University Hospital, P.O. Box 35 Muscat, Oman; malhin7@gmail.com 6 Faculty of Dentistry, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5G 1G6, Canada * Correspondence: imran.farooq@mail.utoronto.ca Abstract: Salivary biomarkers are indicators of many biological and pathological conditions and provide further information regarding the early detection of diseases. This bibliometric analysis aims to identify and evaluate the scientific literature addressing salivary biomarkers from a dental perspective, to identify the most prolific organizations, authors, journals, countries, and keywords used within this research domain. An electronic search was performed using Elsevier’s Scopus database. From a total of 587 retrieved papers (published between 1997 and 2021), 399 were selected. For the data analysis and its visualization, the title of the articles, year of publication, countries, authors, journals, articles, and keywords were analyzed using Microsoft Excel and VOSviewer (a bibliometric software program). An increase in the number of publications was identified from 1997 to 2021. The United States (U.S.) published the most papers (84) and received the highest citations (3778), followed by India and Brazil. The Journal of Periodontology published the highest number of articles (39) that received the highest citations. The University of Kentucky from the U.S. published most of the papers related to salivary biomarkers that received the highest citations. Timo Sorsa published the most papers (14 papers), while Craig Miller was the highest cited author (754 citations). Concerning the highly cited papers, a paper by Micheal et al., published in 2010, received the highest citations (487 citations). “Saliva”, followed by “human”, were the most common keywords used by the authors in the papers related to salivary biomarkers. The findings of this analysis revealed an increase in salivary biomarker-related publications that positively influenced the number of citations each paper received. The U.S. produced the most publications that received the highest citations, and the University of Kentucky, U.S., was the most prominent. The articles were mostly published in the Journal of Periodontology and received the highest number of citations. Keywords: saliva; VOSviewer; scientiometrics; biomarkers 1. Introduction Human saliva is a compound of various fluids and performs several functions, such as acting as a buffer to protect the teeth from acids, facilitating taste recognition, and containing various antimicrobial agents that modulate oral microbial flora [1]. Saliva entails huge diagnostic value, as it contains important inflammatory cytokines that are upregulated or downregulated in various diseases, and, thus, their levels can be checked to aid the Diagnostics 2022, 12, 1171. https://doi.org/10.3390/diagnostics12051171 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/diagnostics