AAID Priceless Membership Benefit

Abstract

The American Academy of Implant Dentistry (AAID) Board of Trustees, under the direction of President Nicholas Caplanis, DMD, MS, has taken a bold move in providing full clinical and scientific research dental online article access for AAID members. This new benefit will begin shortly after January 1, 2013. The Board of Trustees acquired the services of Dentistry & Oral Sciences Source by EBSCOhost to permit members of the AAID to electronically access complete articles for 267 dental journals. EBSCOhost provides the most-used, premium online information resource for tens of thousands of institutions worldwide, which represent millions of hospital- and university-based end users. Dentistry & Oral Sciences Source provides unparalleled access to world-renowned content in the dental publishing arena.This new membership benefit is truly priceless in that individuals cannot independently acquire this online content in one place. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that a dental association or society has provided such an incredible benefit. Some dental associations/societies have provided similar services on a limited basis to some committee members, but AAID has taken a colossal step forward in providing it for its membership.This new electronic, full-article access to this broad range of dental journals truly makes the AAID an evidence-, literature-, and scientific-based organization. Now our members can read and digest full articles as opposed to just relying on the limited information provided by the abstracts found on PubMed. Dentistry & Oral Sciences Source will allow AAID members to acquire full journal articles from the convenience of their offices or homes and download the articles to their computers 24/7. This service will be of value to the reviewers of Journal of Oral Implantology because they will be able to check the references of submitted manuscripts for accuracy and compare the submitted manuscript with similarly published articles. For the membership, Dentistry & Oral Sciences Source access will allow them to critically evaluate clinical and scientific articles and not just an abstract or accept blindly what an “expert” may proclaim from the podium. This is the start of the “literature-based AAID generation” and should make all members proud.The AAID has added another tool to your learning and research arsenal. Members can perform a dental topic literature search on PubMed, Google, Google Scholar, or directly in Dentistry & Oral Sciences Source. Using your AAID login and password, Dentistry & Oral Sciences Source gives you access to the abstract and often access to the journal and article. Not all journals are listed on EBSCOhost, but the majority of peer-reviewed dental journals listed on the Web-Of-Knowledge (ISI) can be retrieved at this point.Regardless of an individual's involvement in implant dentistry, all dentists will find this a valuable and attractive reason to join or retain their membership in AAID. I encourage all of the membership to use this service to improve their own knowledge base and as a recruitment tool for new members. The AAID is an organization of committed implant dentists who desire to bring state-of-the-art care to each patient. This new service will certainly provide each member with the necessary peer-reviewed literature on which state-of-the-art-treatment decisions can be based.James L. Rutkowski, DMD, PhDEditor-in-ChiefJournal of Oral Implantology