Guide for Authors

Introduction

Before you begin submission to the EJPRD, please read the detailed instructions for authors below. Submitted manuscripts must relate to the Aims and Scope of the journal. Any member of the Editorial Board will be pleased to give advice on the suitability of articles for publication, but all submissions will be subject to an initial Editorial review for impactfulness and quality (including English grammar), followed by a robust and anonymous peer-review process.

Prior to submission

Manuscripts:

Authors are requested to submit their original manuscript via the online submission portal for EJPRD:

www.editorialsystem.com/ejprd

Articles for publication will be considered under the following headings: original research, clinical research and review articles relevant to all aspects of prosthodontics, operative dentistry, implantology, endodontics, periodontics, dental materials, and technology. Articles will only be considered on the understanding that they are original and have not been submitted or accepted for publication elsewhere.

Original research: State the problem and objectives, clearly describe the methods and materials in detail, report the results clearly using the minimum number of figures and tables; and, bearing in mind previous published work, discuss these results, the conclusions, and the clinical implications.

Clinical research: The results of well controlled clinical studies are welcome. However, only the most novel and important clinical case reports will be considered, and these should also include a thorough literature review (below) relevant to the clinical topic. Discuss the clinical challenge; describe the author‘s method for providing treatment; and discuss the results in the light of previously published methods of treatment of individual patients.

Review articles: Systematic reviews and thorough review narratives are welcome. Record the sequence of development of a particular aspect of dentistry in detail. The review should be complete and provide references for all statements made. One of the authors submitting a literature review must have personal experience of relevant research.

Authors‘ responsibilities and ethics in publishing:

Studies in humans and animals:

Authors should adhere to the ethical principles for research involving human subjects and in accordance with the World Medical Association, Declaration of Helsinki. The EJPRD also insists that authors comply to the established best practices in line with the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) and the ‘Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals‘.

All clinical trials must be registered in a public trials registry and in accordance with the recommendations of the ICMJE.

EJPRD insists that all clinical trials follow the ‘Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT)‘ guidelines and authors must include the CONSORT checklist upon submission of their manuscript.

For pre-clinical in vivo animal studies, experiments must comply with the ARRIVE guidelines and authors should complete the ARRIVE checklist upon submission of their manuscript.

All studies that involve human subjects, human specimens, animal subjects and animal specimens must include a description of the formal ethical review and approval of the relevant board or ethics committee. The description should be written anonymously in the Methods section of the manuscript.

For studies that involve human subjects, the authors are required to include evidence that the participants of the study provided their informed consent or assent. This should also be detailed in the Methods section.

Systematic reviews and meta-analyses:

To improve and provide transparent reporting, authors must adhere to the minimum set of requirements, and in accordance with the ‘Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA)‘ checklist.

Submission declaration and verification:

Upon submission, authors must declare that their work is original and has not been published previously elsewhere. Previous publication as a conference abstract (not conference paper), lecture or academic thesis are exempt.

If the manuscript is accepted for publication in EJPRD, the authors will accept that it will not be published elsewhere in the same form, either in English or any other language without contravening the copyright statement or copyright holders.

All authors must identify any financial support that has assisted with the conduct of the study or manuscript preparation. All authors must disclose any conflict or competing interest, whether that be commercial, financial or professional.

Inclusive language:

EJPRD promotes inclusivity and authors must ensure that appropriate language is used throughout the manuscript. There should be no assumption or bias regarding the readers‘ beliefs or commitments or language that may infer the superiority of one individual to another in terms of age, gender, race, ethnicity, culture, sexual orientation or disability. Authors should reflect this in the language they use without causing offence, bias or stereotyping. Some examples include, but are not limited to: gender neutrality, “dentists, patients“ rather than “he/she“; “chairperson“ rather than “chairman“, etc.

Author contributions and changes to authorship:

All authors will have made a significant contribution to the submitted work, i.e. conception and study design, experimentation and data collection, drafting and editing the manuscript, final approval of the version to be submitted. The EJPRD encourages a statement that highlights the contribution of each author.

Authors should finalize the author list and order prior to submission. Any removal, addition or re-ordering of authors names will only be considered under exceptional circumstances, and only if accepted by the journal Editor. The corresponding author must explain reasons for the change and written agreement of the change from all authors, including those that have either been added or removed. Any changes to the author list and order will not be considered after acceptance of the manuscript.

Copyright, licensing and fees:

Following acceptance of a manuscript to be published in the EJPRD, the authors may choose to publish under the terms of the EJPRD‘s copyright agreement, or Open Access following the terms set out by a Creative Commons License (below).

Under the copyright agreement of the EJPRD (no fee), authors will be sent by email a Copyright Transfer Agreement for completion. All authors must complete and submit the form prior to publication.

Permission from the EJPRD is required for any distribution or resale of copyrighted material. If copyrighted material is used in any submission to the EJRPD, the authors must obtain written permission from the copyright holders and fully acknowledge and cite the copyrighted material in the manuscript.

Open Access

If authors choose to publish by Open Access a fee (or ‘Article Publishing Charge‘, APC) will be levied. The fee can be paid by either the author, their funder for the research, or their institution. Subscribers to EJPRD may also claim a discount on the APC.

Upon publication of an Open Access article, the work will be made permanently available for free download.

The EJPRD offers a choice of Open Access articles defined by the Creative Commons User Licences:

Archiving

The EJPRD also operates a “Green Open Access“ policy. Authors may self-archive any submitted work that has not been peer-reviewed, or an accepted version that includes revisions following the peer review process but prior to any formatting or copy editing by EJPRD publishers.

Self-archiving repositories include: authors‘ personal website, company or institutional repositories, (not-for-profit) subject based preprint servers or repositories.

Advertising

The EJPRD considers publication of advertisements. Please contact the publisher for more information. Any advertisement placed in the EJPRD are not related to any editorial decision and will be kept separate from the published scientific content.

Manuscript submission and review

Manuscript preparation

Manuscripts must be submitted electronically to: www.editorialsystem.com/ejprd. The article should not exceed 12 pages (excluding references, legends, figures and tables). Abbreviations should be placed in parenthesis after the first complete use of the term(s) to be abbreviated. Use generic names for drugs and for dental materials give trade names in parenthesis when first mentioned. All submitted manuscripts will be submitted to online plagiarism detection software.

Authorship

Include for each author the full given and family names and title, academic degrees, and institutional affiliations and addresses. If the work was supported by a grant, the name of the supporting organisation and the grant number should appear in the acknowledgments. The author who will receive correspondence and reprint requests should also be specified. If the manuscript is sent for peer-review, the author details will be blinded.

Title

A concise descriptor of the study, which should not exceed 15 words.

Keywords

Up to 7 words that clearly highlight the most salient topics of the article.

Abstract

Abstracts are required for all articles but should be limited to 300 words. The abstract must be divided as follows: Objectives, Methods, Results, Conclusions, Clinical Relevance. The abstract should be understandable to all readers including non-researchers, researchers and clinicians. Include a brief introduction providing the context of the study, why it is required and the aims of the work. Briefly present the methods used and the main findings of the study. The abstract should also include a brief statement of relevance to clinical practice (either currently or how it may affect the future).

Manuscript

The manuscript must be clearly labelled under the following headings: Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusions, References. Where appropriate, the use of sub-section headings should be used, e.g. relevant topic headings for a review article, specific sections within the Methods (materials, experimental procedures, statistical analysis, etc).

Figures and Tables

A total of 8 Figures and Tables may be included. Each figure or table must be numbered consecutively according to their order of mention in the text. A caption should be provided for each figure and table detailing all the content with all abbreviations defined. Where appropriate, highlighting the main statistical differences, or similarities is encouraged. Avoid duplication of data between figures and tables.

All figures should be at least 300 dpi resolution and submitted as a .jpeg or .tiff file.

References:

The EJPRD must have a consistent style for referencing and manuscripts may be returned to the author if the formatting does not adhere to the following criteria.

References should be in the Vancouver style, i.e. a number-author format. They must be numbered in consecutive order as they are mentioned in the text using numerals. The reference list should appear at the end of the article in numeric sequence. All authors should be listed unless there are more than six, when only the first three should be given followed by et al. This should be followed by the title of the article, the journal abbreviated according to the style of Index Medicus and Index to Dental Literature; the year of publication; the volume number; and the first and last page numbers in full. Examples include:

Reference to an article: 1. Ow, R.K.K. and Bearn, E.M. A method of studying the effect of adhesives on denture retention. J Prosthet Dent, 1983; 50:332-336.

Reference to a book: 2. Hickey, J.C., Zarb, G.A., and Bolender, C.L. Boucher‘s Prosthodontic Treatment for Edentulous Patients, 9th edn. St Louis: C.V. Mosby, 1985; 312-323.

Reference to a chapter in a book: 3. Strid, K.-G. Radiographic results. In Branemark P.-I., Zarb, G.A. and Albrektsson, T. (Eds): Tissue Integrated Prostheses: Osseointegration in Clinical Dentistry. Chicago: Quintessence Publ Co, 1985; 187-198.

Reference to a dissertation or thesis: 4. Remes, A. On the Immune Response to Biomaterials. PhD, Liverpool, UK. 1990; 15-25.

Reference to a report: 5. Committee on Mercury Hazards in Dentistry. Code of Practice for Dental Mercury Hygiene. London: Department of Health and Social Security, 1979; Publication No. DHSS 79-F372.

Reference to an abstract: 6. Thompson, V.P., Grolman, K.M., and Liao, R. Bonding of adhesive resin to various non-precious alloys. J Dent Res, 1985; 64 (special issue): 314 (Abst).

Permissions:

Direct quotations, tables, and illustrations that have appeared in copyright material must be accompanied by written permission for their use from the copyright owner and the original author, along with complete information as to the source. Photographs of identifiable persons must be accompanied by signed releases showing informed consent. If an illustration is taken from previously published material, the legend must give full credit to the original source.

Authors‘ summary checklist

Peer review:

The journal aims to provide a fast initial assessment by the Editorial Board to determine whether the work falls within the Journal scope and provides significant impact and scientific rigour to be considered for publication. Those submissions that are not considered suitable will be rejected without further peer review.

For submitted articles deemed appropriate for possible publication, the Editorial Board will assign expert reviewers for independent review. The EJPRD operates a double-blind review process, i.e. both the authors and reviewers of the submitted manuscript are anonymous to one another.

Authors are requested to supply at least 2 reviewers names and contact details that do not present a conflict with the either the authors or submitted work. The Editorial Board may select these recommendations based on their appropriateness for performing the review task or select others.

Following the peer-review process, the Editor will make a decision to either; 1) accept, 2) reconsider following minor corrections, 3) reconsider following major corrections (and further peer-review, if deemed appropriate, or 4) reject.

The submission of revised articles should include a point-by-point response to each reviewer addressing the changes and (where appropriate) the reason for those changes, a version of the amended manuscript that clearly highlights where the changes have been made and a “clean“ final version. All resubmitted documents should remain anonymous.

The EJPRD Editor‘s decision of all submitted manuscripts is final.

Editing:

The EJPRD reserves the right to edit accepted articles to improve clarity and style. Authors will be informed of any changes to their accepted manuscript in the galley proofs they receive.

Copyright statement: A copyright statement, to be signed by at least one of the authors, will be sent with a proof of the paper and should be returned with the corrected proof.

Statements and opinions expressed in the articles and communications herein are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the Editor(s) or publisher, and the Editor(s) and publisher disclaim any responsibility or liability for such material. Authors must disclose to the Editor any financial interest they may have in products mentioned in their article.

Following manuscript acceptance

Proofs

Authors are requested to return their corrections of the publication proofs within 7 days, clearly highlighting any minor amendments using the .pdf annotation tool. Any significant changes from the accepted version will not be permitted unless approved by the Editor. Following acceptance of the corrected proof, the EJPRD will endeavour to publish the article in a timely and accurate manner. The article will appear online, ‘in press‘ until fully published in the next available issue.

Post publication corrections

Authors should report any corrections to the Editor following publication. Any corrections that do not affect the general scientific core or findings of the manuscript will be amended and an Erratum included with the online publication.

If significant amendments are required that may change the main conclusions of the article a further peer review process will be initiated and the explanation of the corrections will be published as an Erratum.

Research misconduct

The EJPRD takes issues and allegations related to research misconduct very seriously. The EJPRD will take reasonable steps to identify and prevent the publication of manuscripts that have involved large-scale errors and misconduct including (but not limited to), plagiarism, manipulation of citations, data falsification and fabrication.

If the EJPRD is made aware of any allegation of misconduct related to any published works in the Journal, the publisher and/or Editor may launch an investigation following the COPE or ICMJE guidelines for dealing with research misconduct.