Peer Review Process
For individual submissions, the Editors make an initial appraisal of each manuscript. If the topic and treatment seem potentially appropriate for the journal, the manuscript is assigned to a managing editor, or to a member of the editorial board, who organizes and oversees the review process. Once the review process has been completed, the managing editor recommends acceptance, revision, or rejection of your manuscript. The final decision is made by the Editor-in-Chief.
Authors are permitted to suggest up to three potential peer reviewers during the submission process. The journal does not guarantee to use these suggestions. All reviewers must be independent from the submission and will be asked to declare all competing interests.
If granted the opportunity to revise a manuscript based on the reviews, authors are requested to resubmit their revisions within five weeks after receiving the notification with the editorial decision. They are asked to then also submit a letter (as attachment to the notify editor e-mail) with a detailed description of how they have responded to the separate issues raised by the reviewers.
We apply a double blind peer review, meaning that the author's name and affiliation are not made public to the referee. The referee's name and affiliation are also not revealed to the author. We always seek to mobilize a minimum of three independent reviews. In case of a significant discrepancy, the managing editor will consult with the Editor-in-Chief, in order to take a final editorial decision.
Review requests are sent to peers that are qualified to issue an assessment in terms of the relevance of their theoretical, methodological, thematic and/or geographic expertise. ADS has an extended reviewer database that is used for the identification of suitable reviewers. In addition, we will approach peers who are not (yet) registered. We aim for the inclusion of minimally one editorial board member in the set of reviewers.
Desk-rejects will be motivated, but can unfortunately not go accompanied by an extended argumentation. A rejection based on the outcome of a review process will be backed up by the actual reviews, and a motivation by the editor.
Members of the editorial team/board are permitted to submit their own papers to the journal. In cases where an author is associated with the journal, they will be removed from all editorial tasks for that paper and another member of the team will be assigned responsibility for overseeing peer review. A competing interest must also be declared within the submission and any resulting publication.
We work hard to make this process as fast and efficient as possible, but depend on the voluntary input delivered by reviewers who are typically dealing with an above-average workload. A decision on the manuscript generally may be expected within 2 months of submission; delays in obtaining reviews may prolong this process. Manuscripts are sent out for review electronically, and all correspondence takes place via editorial panel. Although the peer review process is accelerated by the use of electronic communication, traditional high-quality, peer-review standards are applied to all manuscripts submitted to the Annals of Dental Specialty
Special features will be introduced by an editorial piece by the guest editor(s). These editorials are not subject to review. The Editor-in-Chief is responsible for the decision to publish an editorial.
We will communicate with reviewers via our online journal management platform. Reviewers are expected to use editorial panel also for uploading their reviews, and sharing their decision. They can also contact the editors in case they experience problems in using editorial panel.
Reviewers are asked to submit their assessment within a maximum of four weeks after receiving the invitation to support us in the important task of meeting the quality standards that ADS applies.
Although we do not encourage the use of a strictly applied review form, we ask reviewers to rate the quality of a manuscript according to the following broad-stoke criteria:
General issues
Structure of the manuscript
Problem description and research question/objective
Theory and conceptual framework
Methods
Findings and results
Discussion
Conclusion
ORCID
The journal strongly recommends that all authors submitting a paper register an account with Open Researcher and Contributor Identifier (ORCID). Registration provides a unique and persistent digital identifier for the account that enables accurate attribution and improves the discoverability of published papers, ensuring that the correct author receives the correct credit for their work. As the ORCID remains the same throughout the lifetime of the account, changes of name, affiliation, or research area do not effect the discoverability of an author's past work and aid correspondence with colleagues.
The journal encourages all corresponding authors to include an ORCID within their submitting author data whilst co-authors are recommended to include one. ORCID numbers should be added to the author data upon submission and will be published alongside the submitted paper, should it be accepted.
Reproducibility
Open Data
The journal strongly encourages authors to make all data associated with their submission openly available, according to the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable). This should be linked to from a Data Accessibility Statement within the submitted paper, which will be made public upon publication. If data is not being made available with the journal publication then ideally a statement from the author should be provided within the submission to explain why. Data obtained from other sources must be appropriately credited. All data should be curated in a format that allows easy understanding and analysis (e.g. sensible column headers, descriptions in a readme text file). This help will ensure its reuse potential.
Structured Methods
As the traditional Materials and Methods section often includes insufficient detail for readers to wholly assess the research process, the journal encourages authors to publish detailed descriptions of their structured methods in open, online platforms such as protocols.io. By providing a step-by-step description of the methods used in the study, the chance of reproducibility and usability increases, whilst also allowing authors to build on their own works and gain additional credit and citations.
Open Code
If research includes the use of software code, statistical analysis or algorithms then we also recommend that authors upload the code into Code Ocean, where it will be hosted on an open, cloud-based computational reproducibility platform, providing researchers and developers with an easy way to share, validate and discover code published in academic journals.
For more information on how to incorporate open data, protocols.io or Code Ocean into a submission.
Authorship
All listed authors must qualify as such, as defined in our authorship guidelines, which have been developed from the ICMJE definitions. All authors must have given permission to be listed on the submitted paper.
Funding and Ethics
To ensure transparency, all authors, reviewers and editors are required to declare any interests that could compromise, conflict or influence the validity of the publication.
In addition, authors are required to specify funding sources and detail requirements for ethical research in the submitted manuscript, ensuring that ethical approval and consent statements are detailed within the manuscript (see Author Guidelines).
Competing Interests
We are committed to transparent and bias-free research. To ensure that all publications are as open as possible all authors, reviewers and editors are required to declare any interests that could appear to compromise, conflict or influence the validity of the publication. This process is designed to reinforce the readers' trust in the research data.
Please declare any competing interests that you have. A conflict of interest must be declared if there is any reason why the information or the interpretation of information being produced may be influenced by a personal or financial relationship with other organisations or individuals, or if these relationships could be reasonably perceived from other people as having influencing objective data or decision-making. Everyone involved in the submission, editorial processing, peer review and publication should declare any competing interests that they may have as early as possible.
Competing interests can take the form of both financial and non-financial relationships. The declaration of such relationships helps to ensure that academic rigour is maintained and that publications cannot be accused of undue bias or misinformation.
Examples of competing interests:
Competing interests should generally be declared to cover at least the previous 5 years - e.g., if a reviewer supervised the author's PhD then (and if they feel comfortable reviewing the work) their professional relationship should have ended over 5 years ago. This is a minimum requirement, and individuals must declare if they have had a previous relationship with someone/an organisation relevant to the submission that could be deemed to influence decision making.
Note that a declaration of a competing interest is not implicitly a negative judgement, but a positive effort to increase transparency and reduce bias (positive or negative) within the publication process.
For authors
Please place the competing interests section at the end of the manuscript, immediately before the reference list. The authors’ initials should be used to denote differing competing interests. For example:
“TW completed paid consultancy work from [company name] as part of the data acquisition for this study. BH has minority shares in [company name], which part funded the research grant for this project. SM is a member of the editorial board for [journal name], which is on a voluntary basis. All other authors have no competing interests."
If there are no competing interests, please add the below statement:
"'The author has no competing interests to declare" or “none” for papers with a single author or "The authors have no competing interests to declare” or “none” when multiple authors are contributing.
*Should an author submit a paper to a journal for which they are an editor they must a) remove themselves completely from the editorial process and b) add a competing interest statement to any resulting publication mentioning this link For example:
“TW is an editor for journal X and was removed from all editorial discussions relating to the processing of this paper.”
For reviewers
If you have any competing interests, please list them in the text box available on your reviewer page. For example:
"I was previously employed by the laboratory that collected this data."
If you do not have competing interests, please add the below statement:
"I have no competing interests to declare."
Corrections and Retractions
In accordance with guidelines from the Committee on Publication Ethics (where applicable), the Press handles different kinds of error. All articles have their proofs checked prior to publication by the author/editor, which should ensure that content errors are not present. Please contact your editorial manager if an article needs correcting.
Post-publication changes are not permitted to the publication, unless in exceptional circumstances. If an error is discovered in a published article then the publisher will assess whether a Correction paper or Retraction is required.
Misconduct and Complaints
Allegations of misconduct will be taken with utmost seriousness, regardless of whether those involved are internal or external to the journal, or whether the submission in question is pre- or post-publication. If an allegation of misconduct is made to the journal, it must be immediately passed on to the publisher, who will follow guidelines from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) on how to address the nature of the problem. Should the matter involve allegations against a member of the journal or publishing team, an independent and objective individual(s) may be sought to lead the investigation. Where misconduct is proven or strongly suspected, the journal has an obligation to report the issue to the author's institution, who may conduct their own investigation. This applies to both research misconduct (e.g. completing research without ethical approval and consent, fabricating or falsifying data etc) and publication misconduct (e.g. manipulating the peer review process, plagiarism etc). Should an investigation conclude that misconduct or misinformation has occurred then the author, along with their institution will be notified. Should the publication record need to be corrected, the journal's correction policy will be followed.
Should an author wish to lodge a complaint against an editorial decision or the editorial process in general they should first approach the Editor-in-Chief of the journal, explaining their complaint and ask for a reasoned response. Should this not be forthcoming or adequate, the author should raise the matter with the publisher, who will investigate the nature of the complaint and act as arbiter on whether the complaint should be upheld and investigated further. This will follow guidelines set out by COPE.
