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A Note from the Editor

The air in Orlando, Florida, at the historic first joint Annual Session of the American Dental Education Association and the American Association of Dental Research was indeed steeped in magic! The attendees owe a huge debt of gratitude to the meeting planners, who must have worked tirelessly behind the scenes to ensure the success of this event in more ways than one.

For the year that ended with this Annual Session, I’m pleased to present the following brief annual report on the Journal of Dental Education.

	1. Statistics on Journal Operations

Top 1. Statistics on Journal... 2. Annual JDE Awards... 3. A New Section 4. Editorial Review Board 5. Online JDE

 

1. Number of submissions: In 1988, the number of submissions stood at ~200. It gradually dropped to 100 in the year 2000 (the year I became editor). Subsequently, the number of submissions started to climb, and in the year 2005 we had 200 submissions. We are all pleased with this increase.
   
2. Number of articles published: In 2005 we published seventy-seven articles, not including the proceedings of two symposia: the Fifth Washington Dental Service Foundation Distinguished Professor in Dentistry Symposium titled "Clinical Dental Practice: Current and Future Trends," organized by Dr. Paul Robertson and featuring eight articles; and the Elders’ Oral Health Summit organized by Drs. Judith Jones, Linda Niessen, and Ronald Rupp and featuring fifteen articles. Altogether, this was a record number of articles published in any given year in the history of the JDE. Authors came from many regions of the world—United States, Canada, Europe, Middle East, Africa, Latin America, and Australia.
   
3. Acceptance rate: For the year, 47 percent of submissions were accepted for publication; 11 percent were found to be unacceptable for publication in their present form; and 36 percent were rejected. The figures do not add up to 100 percent because some manuscripts were undergoing peer review or revision at the close of the year. The percentages for these three categories have remained fairly steady over the past five years.
   
4. Other submission information: The duration from the date of submission to being accepted for publication has remained steady at three months for the past five years. The peer reviewers continue to give, on average, a "good" rating on a scale of "excellent-good-fair-poor" for every issue.
   
5. Number of peer reviewers: This number has also been gradually increasing, and there was a huge rise in the number of peer reviewers from 149 in 2004 to 276 in 2005. This suggests that an increasing number of individuals are interested in contributing in some fashion to the journal operations. I am indeed truly grateful to each and every one of these individuals for their assistance.
   

	2. Annual JDE Awards for Best Article

Top 1. Statistics on Journal... 2. Annual JDE Awards... 3. A New Section 4. Editorial Review Board 5. Online JDE

 
At the 2006 ADEA Annual Session on Orlando, awards were presented to junior faculty/students for best articles in the past year in three categories:

1. Critical Issues in Dental Education—Prof. Terry Mitchell, "A Survey of Canadian Dental Hygiene Faculty Needs and Credentials";
   
2. From the Students’ Corner—Mr. Ryan Edmunds, Virginia Commonwealth University, "Strategies for Making Research More Accessible to Dental Students"; and
   
3. Educational Methodologies—Dr. Sharon Lanning, "Variation in Periodontal Diagnosis and Treatment Planning Among Clinical Instructors."
   

	3. A New Section

Top 1. Statistics on Journal... 2. Annual JDE Awards... 3. A New Section 4. Editorial Review Board 5. Online JDE

 
A number of important issues and initiatives regarding dental education—including access to care, diversity in dental education, curriculum reform, national licensure examinations, etc.—are on the current discussion and debate agenda at the national level. In an effort to give ADEA members and other JDE readers the benefit of important individual perspectives on matters likely to have a significant impact on dental education and practice, in the past year the JDE launched a new section titled "Perspectives." The essays in this section are meant to be thought-provoking, perhaps even provocative, in an effort to stimulate ongoing debate and sharing of ideas. We eagerly encourage individuals at all levels of dental academia to participate in this forum; doing so has the potential of providing a valuable service to our profession and community.

	4. Editorial Review Board

Top 1. Statistics on Journal... 2. Annual JDE Awards... 3. A New Section 4. Editorial Review Board 5. Online JDE

 
The terms of Drs. Harvey Epleee, Amid Ismail, and Paula O’Neill expired on March 1, 2006. I express my sincerest thanks to these individuals for their generous assistance and support. Their replacements are Dr. Denis Lynch, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, School of Dentistry, Marquette University; Dr. Richard Masella, Associate Dean of Education and Student Affairs, College of Dental Medicine, Nova Southeastern University; and Dr. Lakshman P. Samaranayake, Dean, Dental School, Hong Kong University. They will serve a three-year term beginning March 1, 2006.

	5. Online JDE

Top 1. Statistics on Journal... 2. Annual JDE Awards... 3. A New Section 4. Editorial Review Board 5. Online JDE

 
Now that the JDE has been online for eighteen months, we can report trends, which are quite pleasing:

Successful Requests Per Week

First quarter 2005: 21,149

First quarter 2006: 32,563

This number is a reflection of actual requests for information from the online JDE that were successfully answered—whether they were page views or links that were followed sending the browser away from the site, such as sponsor links.

Average Successful Requests Per Day

First quarter 2005: 3,022

First quarter 2006: 4,651

This number reflects requests for specific pages that were successfully found.

Our online host is HighWire Press at Stanford University. HighWire hosts more than ninety other journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Dental Association (JADA), and the Journal of Dental Research (JDR). A significant bonus to being online with HighWire is what’s known as "Inter-Journal Toll-Free Citation Linking." An ADEA member may find an article in the JDE and want to pursue the references in that article. If the cited articles are hosted on the HighWire platform, a member will be able to read the full text of those cited articles even if they are not subscribers because of inter-journal citation linking. The converse is also true. Other journals in the HighWire platform are interlinked with the JDE, so that someone reading the New England Journal of Medicine or the Journal of the American Dental Association, for example, would have direct access to JDE articles cited in those journals. This linking contributes to what is known as "stickiness" within the site and keeps readers returning to the JDE.

Since ADEA’s open membership initiative commenced on January 1, 2006, we are also pleased to report that ADEA now has an individual membership of 12,000. Plus, through the new ADEA membership database, connecting to the online JDE portal is easier than ever. Members now have direct access to the online JDE through the members-only portal on the ADEA website, www.ADEA.org.

Finally, I am grateful for the tremendous support provided by Associate Editor William Hendricson; the ADEA Board of Directors; ADEA’s Executive Director, Dr. Richard Valachovic; the other members of the editorial team, especially Lynn Page Whittaker, Judy Myers, Stephen Silberman, and Titus Schleyer; and ADEA staff members Jane Hamblin, Sue Sandmeyer, Merideth Menken, Gustavo Mendoza, and Lauren Gaffney.

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