Introduction: Selection of index keywords through MeSH (Medical subject Headings) is one of the requirements set by international standards, in writing articles for medical journals. Therefore, the study has been performed with the aim of specifying and comparing level of compliance through MeSH-2014, between those keywords extracted from the abstracts of those articles published in Iranian and American dental journals, which have been indexed in PubMed.

Material and Methods: The study was an applied-descriptive one. In total, 1191 keywords extracted from 290 articles from amongst four selected Iranian journals, and 1207 keywords extracted from 203 articles from amongst 2 selected American journals have been compared with MeSH, and divided into three “exact match”, “relative match”, and “no match” groups. Data were analyzed, applying descriptive and inferential statistics (frequency percentage, and Chi-square).

Results: There was no significant difference between ratios of the keywords with “exact match”, “relative match”, and “no match”, in selected Iranian and American journals. Most of the keywords in those articles published in Iranian journals were stemmed jointly from the “title and abstract”; however, in American journals, these keywords were mostly stemmed from the “text, references, or authors’ mentalities”. The superior journal from amongst reviewed journals was J Dent (Tehran), in terms of quality of the keywords.

Conclusion: As far as the authors’ knowledge for selection of keywords in both groups, and in terms of recognizing preferred terms existing in MeSH is concerned, both groups are far from desirable level. The issue requires more attention to be paid to the value of index words, indices, and the importance of indexing, by both groups of authors. Moreover, the matter should be considered by editorial boards of journals; so that, through more qualitative valuation of all aspects of the articles especially keywords, increase would be made in level of accessibility to the articles, and also citing them as an evidence.