To celebrate International Open Access Week (21-27 October 2024), Jonathan Lewney (Editor of BDJ Open) has put together a review of publications from our fully Open Access, online-only sister journal.

Last year, BDJ Open received its first ever Journal Impact Factor (JIF) of 3.0,1 which put the journal at the top of all Dentistry, Oral Surgery and Medicine journals within the ‘ESCI' Index (Emerging Sources Citation Index). Today, BDJ Open has a JIF of 2.5 with a ranking of 43/157 (Q2), which remains very competitive alongside our other performance metrics, such as a Normalised Eigenfactor score of 0.10828 and a Journal Citation Indicator (JCI) of 1.2, the latter of which reveals BDJ Open has above average citation impact.

This year, there were many instances of Impact Factors going down but quartile ranking going up - for example, the BDJ's JIF decreased from 2.6 to 2.0, while the ranking improved from 46/91 (Q3) to 61/157 (Q2). This is mostly due to Clarivate's announcement regarding unified rankings,2 which has resulted in the Dentistry, Oral Surgery & Medicine category now including all journals regardless of edition (SCIE, SSCI, ESCI) whereas before these were separated out. This has meant a large increase in the number of journals in this category (up from 91 to 157!).

Previously, we updated on the various themes being published in BDJ Open.3 Since the previous update, we have incorporated some of these themes into collections, which we have then opened to submissions and invited authors to contribute to via the journal website.

Collections

We previously reported a large proportion of publications which focused on the experience of dental professionals across the globe. This was the basis for ‘The Dental Profession Worldwide' collection.4 This included three papers from Scandinavia on the challenges of working as a dentist,5,6,7 two UK papers exploring professionalism in dentistry,8,9 and papers from the UK, Syria and Germany focusing on assessments during training of dentists and dental nurses.10,11,12

We also had a ‘Global Oral Health' collection,13 which largely grew from the epidemiology category of the previous update. This collection showcases research into the oral health of people across the globe, and has included epidemiology papers from Japan,14 Sierra Leone,15 Brunei16 and China.17 In addition, we have continued to publish papers on the oral health experience of patients from India,18 UK19 and Ireland.20 We have also been really pleased to receive submissions investigating oral health knowledge in non-dental healthcare professionals, including paediatric oncology patients in Singapore,21 obstetrics and child healthcare staff in Brunei,22 and a guide for oral health assessment for non-dentists.23

The newest collection we have launched is ‘Advances in Caries Prevention'.24 We are currently seeing a number of advances in the materials used for caries prevention, and this collection draws together pre-clinical advances, from the remineralisation of tooth structures25 to new ways of detecting caries, as well as clinical26 and behavioural27 interventions to prevent caries.

In addition to these topical collections, we have also been collating the articles which have been downloaded and cited the most, which we have started sharing as part of a ‘Big Impact Collection'. The most recent ‘Big Impact Collection'28 highlights the top accessed, top cited and top shared articles published in BDJ Open between 2023-2024.

Looking at articles since our most recent BDJ Open update, the top accessed and top cited papers have both been incredibly diverse. Some of the most downloaded articles have included a comparison of different 3D printers in dentistry,29 an investigation into doses of fluoride toothpaste for children,30 a review of antibiotic use for implants,31 a review of dental manifestations and treatment of hypophosphatemic rickets,32 an in vitro study on the antibacterial properties of eucalyptus oil,33 a study into dentine tubule occlusions by silver diamine fluoride,34 and a study on the delivery of smokeless tobacco cessation delivered by dentists.35 The top accessed paper was also the most cited.29 The other top cited papers differed from the top accessed list, and included lab-based studies36,37 and a systematic review of adhesives.38

Our authorship has also continued to expand internationally. We have continued to see publications from the UK, USA, Germany, Brazil, Egypt, China and India (amongst others), but since our previous update, we have seen publications from certain countries for the first time, including Austria, Brunei, Canada, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Ghana, Hungary, Indonesia, Italy, Kosovo, Latvia, Portugal, Sierra Leone, Slovenia, South Korea, Syria, Taiwan, Thailand and Trinidad and Tobago.

There has also been increased diversity in the topic areas BDJ Open has published, including bibliometric analyses,39 cost-effectiveness studies,40 and an analysis by physicists on air turbine noise.41

Finally, BDJ Open began as a research-only journal and initially only accepted reviews in the form of systematic reviews with meta-analysis. These types of reviews aim to combine the results of previous studies (the ‘meta-analysis') to answer a novel research question. However, as of last year, we have now started to accept more narrative reviews. Narrative reviews may be more appropriate where the body of evidence does not allow for a systematic review or where no specific hypothesis is posed. This could include, for example, a discussion and summary of recent developments in a particular field. For BDJ Open, however, they should still be based on previous research, and should answer broad and descriptive research questions. More details can be found in our author guidelines.42

Examples of narrative reviews published in BDJ Open include a paper on the genetics of hypoplastic-hypomineralised amelogenesis imperfecta and taurodontism,43 a review of the roles of extracellular adenosine triphosphate on the functions of periodontal ligament cells,44 and a review of dental genomics and its relevance to dental practice.45

As always, we are really grateful to all the authors who have chosen to publish in BDJ Open and of course to everyone who has kindly peer reviewed for us to ensure the continued quality of BDJ Open publications - thank you!

‘Advances in Caries Prevention' and ‘The Dental Profession Worldwide' collections remain open to submissions until the end of the year: https://www.nature.com/bdjopen/callforpapers.