September 2013

Peter Robinson is Professor of Dental Public Health at the School of Clinical Dentistry at the University of Sheffield and an Associate Editor of Community Dental Health. He attended this meeting as a Section Editor of BMC Oral Health. Kenneth Eaton is a Visiting Professor at University College London, Eastman and King’s College London Dental Institutes and an Honorary Professor at the University of Kent. He is also the Chair of the British Dental Editors Forum and chaired the meeting reported in this editorial A forum for editors, associate editors, publishers and others interested in publishing scientific literature was held in Seattle on 20 March 2013, just before the opening of the annual meeting of the International Association for Dental Research (IADR). The forum considered the challenges for publishing scientific literature over the next 20 years and the meeting took the form of a panel discussion with questions from the audience. The panellists were editors Professor Will Giannobile (Journal of Dental Research), Professor Rex Holland (Archives of Oral Biology), Dr Stephen Hancocks (British Dental Journal) and Professor Peter Robinson (Oral Health section of Biomedical Central). The forum was chaired by Professor Kenneth Eaton (editor of Oral Health and Dental Management) and over 100 delegates attended. Each panel member had suggested five topics for discussion. Some related to current difficulties whereas others looked to the future. Those topics included: • Open access publishing • Increases in the number of papers • Greater spread in the quality of manuscripts • Ethic concerns including research integrity, plagiarism and falsification • The standardisation of methods and research protocols • Stronger peer review • The adoption of international codes of publishing standards • The challenges of secondary publishing • Electronic discussion of recently published studies. • The use of video in methods sections • Clinical trial registration In a free-ranging discussion the forum focussed on a smaller number of key topics. There was agreement that many more manuscripts, than five years ago, were being submitted to journals, especially those with a Medline listing. In some respects this is a good thing. A growth in scientific publishing and the need to publish for academic advancement is a sign of the growth of science. It represents the growth of a model of human endeavour which readers of this journal should welcome.