Primary Dental Journal

Manuscript Submission Guidelines: Primary Dental Journal

Please contact the Primary Dental Journal editorial team with any queries at:

Hillevi Sellén, Managing Editor
hsellen@fgdp.org.uk

Primary Dental Journal (PDJ) is the quarterly peer-reviewed journal of the Faculty of General Dental Practice (UK). Three issues of PDJ in each volume are themed on a topic of interest and relevance to the primary care dental team, led by an invited Guest Editor who is a renowned expert in the field, with one 'general issue' per volume covering a wide range of topics.

Upcoming issues:

• March 2020: The General Issue
  Submission deadline: November 2019
• June 2020: Special Care Dentistry
  Submission deadline: December 2019
• September 2020: Oral health and the ageing population
  Submission deadline: 10^th February 2020
• December 2020: Endodontics - an update for General Dental Practice
  Submission deadline 15^th May 2020
• March 2021: The General Issue
  Submission deadline: 1^st August 2020

This Journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics.

This Journal recommends that authors follow the Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals formulated by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE).

Please read the guidelines below then visit the Journal’s submission site https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/prd to upload your manuscript. Please note that manuscripts not conforming to these guidelines may be returned. Remember you can log in to the submission site at any time to check on the progress of your paper through the peer review process.

Only manuscripts of sufficient quality that meet the aims and scope of Primary Dental Journal will be reviewed.

There are no fees payable to submit or publish in this journal.

As part of the submission process, you will be required to warrant that you are submitting your original work, that you have the rights in the work, and that you have obtained and can supply all necessary permissions for the reproduction of any copyright works not owned by you, that you are submitting the work for first publication in the journal and that it is not being considered for publication elsewhere and has not already been published elsewhere.

Please note that Primary Dental Journal does not accept submissions of papers that have been posted on pre-print servers.

Table of Contents:

1. What Do We Publish
   1.1 Aims and Scope
   1.2 Article Types
   1.3 Writing Your Paper
2. Editorial Policies
   2.1 Peer Review Policy
   2.2 Authorship
   2.3 Acknowledgements
   2.4 Funding
   2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests
   2.6 Research ethics and patient consent
   2.7 Clinical Trials
   2.8 Reporting Guidelines
   2.9 Research Data
3. Publishing Policies
   3.1 Publication Ethics
   3.2 Contributor’s Publishing Agreement
   3.3 Open access and author archiving
4. Preparing Your Manuscript
   4.1 Formatting
   4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics
   4.3 Supplemental material
   4.4 Reference style
   4.5 English language editing services
5. Submitting Your Manuscript
   5.1 ORCID
   5.2 Information required for completing your submission
   5.3 Permissions
6. On acceptance and publication
   6.1 SAGE Production
   6.2 Online First Publication
   6.3 Access to your published article
   6.4 Promoting your article
7. Further Information

1. What Do We Publish

1.1 Aims and Scope

Before submitting your manuscript to Primary Dental Journal, please ensure you have read the Aims & Scope.

1.2 Article Types

We publish clinical papers, non-clinical papers, opinion pieces, book reviews, editorials, and research.

We consider speculative submissions for publication. These would usually need to align with our upcoming themes (see below). For a complete and up-to-date list of deadlines, or to express an interest in submitting a paper, please email the editorial team. Early submissions are encouraged.

• March 2020: The General Issue
  Submission deadline: November 2019
• June 2020: Special Care Dentistry
  Submission deadline: December 2019
• September 2020: Oral health and the ageing population
  Submission deadline: 10^th February 2020
• December 2020: Endodontics - an update for General Dental Practice
  Submission deadline 15^th May 2020
• March 2021: The General Issue
  Submission deadline: 1^st August 2020

Please note that these schedules and themes are subject to alteration at the discretion of the editorial team.

Abstract

Papers should include a structured abstract of no more than 250 words. The abstract should briefly state the aims, methods, main findings and principle conclusions of the study, emphasising new and important aspects that have been uncovered.

Keywords

Beneath the abstract, please provide 3-10 keywords or short phrases that will assist indexers in cross-indexing the article, and may be published with the abstract. Use terms from the medical subject headings (MeSH) list of Index Medicus where possible.

Learning objectives

Papers should include 2-3 short learning objectives in bullet points that summarise what the reader will learn from the paper.

Word count
Unless otherwise agreed with the editorial team, papers should be 1,500-3,500 words in length, and should include subheadings to create logical sections the text. Scientific research papers should include the headings ‘Introduction’, ‘Methods’, ‘Results’, ‘Discussion’, ‘References’ and ‘Acknowledgements’.

Statistics

If statistical analysis is required, describe statistical methods with enough detail to enable a knowledgeable reader with access to the original data to verify the results. All data should be carefully checked before submission.

1.3 Writing Your Paper

The SAGE Author Gateway has some general advice and on how to get published, plus links to further resources.

1.3.1 Making your article discoverable

For information and guidance on how to make your article more discoverable, visit our Gateway page on How to Help Readers Find Your Article Online

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2. Editorial Policies

2.1 Peer Review Policy

Primary Dental Journal operates a conventional single-blind reviewing policy in which the reviewer’s name is always concealed from the submitting author.

Primary Dental Journal is committed to delivering high quality, fast peer-review for your paper, and as such has partnered with Publons. Publons is a third party service that seeks to track, verify and give credit for peer review. Reviewers for Primary Dental Journal can opt in to Publons in order to claim their reviews or have them automatically verified and added to their reviewer profile. Reviewers claiming credit for their review will be associated with the relevant journal, but the article name, reviewer’s decision and the content of their review is not published on the site. For more information, please visit the Publons website.

The Editor-in-Chief or members of the Editorial Board may occasionally submit their own manuscripts for possible publication in the journal. In these cases, the peer review process will be managed by alternative members of the Board and the submitting Editor/Board member will have no involvement in the decision-making process.

2.2 Authorship

Papers should only be submitted for consideration once consent is given by all contributing authors. Those submitting papers should carefully check that all those whose work contributed to the paper are acknowledged as contributing authors.

The list of authors should include all those who can legitimately claim authorship. This is all those who:

1. Made a substantial contribution to the concept or design of the work; or acquisition, analysis or interpretation of data,
2. Drafted the article or revised it critically for important intellectual content,
3. Approved the version to be published,
4. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.

Authors should meet the conditions of all of the points above. When a large, multicentre group has conducted the work, the group should identify the individuals who accept direct responsibility for the manuscript. These individuals should fully meet the criteria for authorship.

Acquisition of funding, collection of data, or general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship, although all contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in the Acknowledgments section. Please refer to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship guidelines for more information on authorship.

2.3 Acknowledgements

All contributors who do not meet the criteria for authorship should be listed in an Acknowledgements section. Examples of those who might be acknowledged include a person who provided purely technical help, or a department chair who provided only general support.

2.3.1 Third party submissions

Where an individual who is not listed as an author submits a manuscript on behalf of the author(s), a statement must be included in the Acknowledgements section of the manuscript and in the accompanying cover letter. The statements must:

• Disclose this type of editorial assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input
• Identify any entities that paid for this assistance
• Confirm that the listed authors have authorized the submission of their manuscript via third party and approved any statements or declarations, e.g. conflicting interests, funding, etc.

Where appropriate, SAGE reserves the right to deny consideration to manuscripts submitted by a third party rather than by the authors themselves.

2.3.2 Writing assistance

Individuals who provided writing assistance, e.g. from a specialist communications company, do not qualify as authors and so should be included in the Acknowledgements section. Authors must disclose any writing assistance – including the individual’s name, company and level of input – and identify the entity that paid for this assistance. It is not necessary to disclose use of language polishing services. 

2.4 Funding

Primary Dental Journal requires all authors to acknowledge their funding in a consistent fashion under a separate heading. Please visit the Funding Acknowledgements page on the SAGE Journal Author Gateway to confirm the format of the acknowledgment text in the event of funding, or state that: This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

2.5 Declaration of conflicting interests

It is the policy of Primary Dental Journal to require a declaration of conflicting interests from all authors enabling a statement to be carried within the paginated pages of all published articles.

Please ensure that a ‘Declaration of Conflicting Interests’ statement is included at the end of your manuscript, after any acknowledgements and prior to the references. If no conflict exists, please state that ‘The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest’. For guidance on conflict of interest statements, please see the ICMJE recommendations here

2.6 Research ethics and patient consent

Medical research involving human subjects must be conducted according to the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki

Submitted manuscripts should conform to the ICMJE Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals, and all papers reporting animal and/or human studies must state in the methods section that the relevant Ethics Committee or Institutional Review Board provided (or waived) approval. Please ensure that you have provided the full name and institution of the review committee, in addition to the approval number.

For research articles, authors are also required to state in the methods section whether participants provided informed consent and whether the consent was written or verbal.

Information on informed consent to report individual cases or case series should be included in the manuscript text. A statement is required regarding whether written informed consent for patient information and images to be published was provided by the patient(s) or a legally authorised representative. Please do not submit the patient’s actual written informed consent with your article, as this in itself breaches the patient’s confidentiality. The Journal requests that you confirm to us, in writing, that you have obtained written informed consent but the written consent itself should be held by the authors/investigators themselves, for example in a patient’s hospital record. The confirmatory letter may be uploaded with your submission as a separate file.

Please also refer to the ICMJE Recommendations for the Protection of Research Participants

2.7 Clinical trials

Primary Dental Journal conforms to the ICMJE requirement that clinical trials are registered in a WHO-approved public trials registry at or before the time of first patient enrolment as a condition of consideration for publication. The trial registry name and URL, and registration number must be included at the end of the abstract.

2.8 Reporting guidelines

The relevant EQUATOR Network reporting guidelines should be followed depending on the type of study. For example, all randomized controlled trials submitted for publication should include a completed CONSORT flow chart as a cited figure and the completed CONSORT checklist should be uploaded with your submission as a supplementary file. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses should include the completed PRISMA flow chart as a cited figure and the completed PRISMA checklist should be uploaded with your submission as a supplementary file. The EQUATOR wizard can help you identify the appropriate guideline.

Other resources can be found at NLM’s Research Reporting Guidelines and Initiatives

2.9 Research Data

The journal is committed to facilitating openness, transparency and reproducibility of research, and has the following research data sharing policy. For more information, including FAQs please visit the SAGE Research Data policy pages.

Subject to appropriate ethical and legal considerations, authors are encouraged to:

• share your research data in a relevant public data repository
• include a data availability statement linking to your data. If it is not possible to share your data, we encourage you to consider using the statement to explain why it cannot be shared.
• cite this data in your research

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3. Publishing Policies

3.1 Publication Ethics

SAGE is committed to upholding the integrity of the academic record. We encourage authors to refer to the Committee on Publication Ethics’ International Standards for Authors and view the Publication Ethics page on the SAGE Author Gateway

3.1.1 Plagiarism

Primary Dental Journal and SAGE take issues of copyright infringement, plagiarism or other breaches of best practice in publication very seriously. We seek to protect the rights of our authors and we always investigate claims of plagiarism or misuse of published articles. Equally, we seek to protect the reputation of the journal against malpractice. Submitted articles may be checked with duplication-checking software. Where an article, for example, is found to have plagiarized other work or included third-party copyright material without permission or with insufficient acknowledgement, or where the authorship of the article is contested, we reserve the right to take action including, but not limited to: publishing an erratum or corrigendum (correction); retracting the article; taking up the matter with the head of department or dean of the author's institution and/or relevant academic bodies or societies; or taking appropriate legal action.

3.1.2 Prior publication

If material has been previously published it is not generally acceptable for publication in a SAGE journal. However, there are certain circumstances where previously published material can be considered for publication. Please refer to the guidance on the SAGE Author Gateway or if in doubt, contact the Managing Editor at the address given above.

3.2 Contributor’s Publishing Agreement

Before publication, SAGE requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement. SAGE’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement is an exclusive licence agreement which means that the author retains copyright in the work but grants SAGE the sole and exclusive right and licence to publish for the full legal term of copyright. Exceptions may exist where an assignment of copyright is required or preferred by a proprietor other than SAGE. In this case copyright in the work will be assigned from the author to the society. For more information please visit the SAGE Author Gateway

3.3 Open access and author archiving

Primary Dental Journal offers optional open access publishing via the SAGE Choice programme. For more information please visit the SAGE Choice website. For information on funding body compliance, and depositing your article in repositories, please visit SAGE Publishing Policies on our Journal Author Gateway.

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4. Preparing your manuscript

4.1 Formatting

The preferred format for your manuscript is Word. Word templates are available on the Manuscript Submission Guidelines page of our Author Gateway.

4.2 Artwork, figures and other graphics

The term ‘figure’ applies to all photographs, graphs, figures, diagrams or illustrations accompanying your manuscript. Please ensure that any graphs or tables are also accompanied by the raw data. The use of figures is encouraged, particularly when these are clinically relevant photographs or illustrations, but as a general rule please limit inclusion to one figure per 500 words of text.

• All images should be available as separate files (not embedded in the manuscript, or supplied as a ppt presentation, separate word document or within any other file)
• Images must have a minimum resolution of 300dpi
• Images should be saved as JPEG, TIF, or PDF files
• If images are taken with a digital camera, or hard copies are scanned in, please ensure that you supply the highest quality possible as low resolution images may be unusable
• Tables and graphs should not duplicate the text and should be given after the reference list.
• Please cite each figure/table/box in the text, e.g. (See Table 1)

For guidance on the preparation of illustrations, pictures and graphs in electronic format, please visit SAGE’s Manuscript Submission Guidelines  

Figures supplied in colour will appear in colour online and in the print issue. There is no charge for reproducing figures in colour in the printed version.

4.3 Supplemental Material

This journal is able to host additional materials online (e.g. datasets, podcasts, videos, images etc) alongside the full-text of the article. For more, information please refer to our guidelines on submitting supplemental files

4.4 Reference Style

Primary Dental Journal adheres to the SAGE Vancouver reference style. View the SAGE Vancouver guidelines to ensure your manuscript conforms to this reference style.

If you use EndNote to manage references, you can download the SAGE Vancouver EndNote output file

4.5 English language editing services

Authors seeking assistance with English language editing, translation, or figure and manuscript formatting to fit the journal’s specifications should consider using SAGE Language Services. Visit SAGE Language Services on our Journal Author Gateway for further information.

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5. Submitting Your Manuscript

Primary Dental Journal is hosted on SAGE Track, a web based online submission and peer review system powered by ScholarOne™ Manuscripts. Visit https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/prd to login and submit your article online.

IMPORTANT: Please check whether you already have an account in the system before trying to create a new one. If you have reviewed or authored for the journal in the past year it is likely that you will have had an account created.  For further guidance on submitting your manuscript online please visit ScholarOne Online Help.

5.1 ORCID

As part of our commitment to ensuring an ethical, transparent and fair peer review process SAGE is a supporting member of ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID. ORCID provides a unique and persistent digital identifier that distinguishes researchers from every other researcher, even those who share the same name, and, through integration in key research workflows such as manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between researchers and their professional activities, ensuring that their work is recognized.

We encourage all authors and co-authors to link their ORCIDs to their accounts in our online peer review platforms. It takes seconds to do: click the link when prompted, sign into your ORCID account and our systems are automatically updated. We collect ORCID IDs during the manuscript submission process and your ORCID ID then becomes part of your accepted publication’s metadata, making your work attributable to you and only you. Your ORCID ID is published with your article so that fellow researchers reading your work can link to your ORCID profile and from there link to your other publications.

If you do not already have an ORCID ID please follow this link to create one or visit our ORCID homepage to learn more.

5.2 Information required for completing your submission

You will be asked to provide contact details and academic affiliations for all co-authors via the submission system and identify who is to be the corresponding author. These details must match what appears on your manuscript. The affiliation listed in the manuscript should be the institution where the research was conducted. If an author has moved to a new institution since completing the research, the new affiliation can be included in a manuscript note at the end of the paper. At this stage please ensure you have included all the required statements and declarations and uploaded any additional supplementary files (including reporting guidelines where relevant).

5.3 Permissions

Please also ensure that you have obtained any necessary permission from copyright holders for reproducing any illustrations, tables, figures or lengthy quotations previously published elsewhere. For further information including guidance on fair dealing for criticism and review, please see the Copyright and Permissions page on the SAGE Author Gateway

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6. On acceptance and publication

6.1 SAGE Production

Your SAGE Production Editor will keep you informed as to your article’s progress throughout the production process. Proofs will be made available to the corresponding author via our editing portal SAGE Edit or by email, and corrections should be made directly or notified to us promptly. Authors are reminded to check their proofs carefully to confirm that all author information, including names, affiliations, sequence and contact details are correct, and that Funding and Conflict of Interest statements, if any, are accurate. Please note that if there are any changes to the author list at this stage all authors will be required to complete and sign a form authorising the change.

6.2 Online First Publication

Online First allows final articles (completed and approved articles awaiting assignment to a future issue) to be published online prior to their inclusion in a journal issue, which significantly reduces the lead time between submission and publication. Visit the SAGE Journals help page for more details, including how to cite Online First articles.

6.3 Access to your published article

SAGE provides authors with online access to their final article.

6.4 Promoting your article

Publication is not the end of the process! You can help disseminate your paper and ensure it is as widely read and cited as possible. The SAGE Author Gateway has numerous resources to help you promote your work. Visit the Promote Your Article page on the Gateway for tips and advice.

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7. Further Information

Any correspondence, queries or additional requests for information on the manuscript submission process should be sent to the Primary Dental Journal editorial office as follows:

Hillevi Sellén, Managing Editor
hsellen@fgdp.org.uk

7.1 Appealing the publication decision

Editors have very broad discretion in determining whether an article is an appropriate fit for their journal. Many manuscripts are declined with a very general statement of the rejection decision. These decisions are not eligible for formal appeal unless the author believes the decision to reject the manuscript was based on an error in the review of the article, in which case the author may appeal the decision by providing the Editor with a detailed written description of the error they believe occurred.

If an author believes the decision regarding their manuscript was affected by a publication ethics breach, the author may contact the publisher with a detailed written description of their concern, and information supporting the concern, at publication_ethics@sagepub.com

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