Accessibility to the knowledge on anatomical variations from dentomaxillofacial CBCT

Abstract

Objective: to investigate the accessibility of open access article on anatomical variations described on cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) using PubMed database. We wanted to investigate how many journals are sharing articles without pay-wall and how many are sharing articles without author publication charges.
 Material and methods: a search equation was designed with exclusion criteria limiting the search in PubMed to articles published in English and French. The search was performed by one observer. We had found 2228 articles; among them 709 were accessible as ‘full text’. After applying exclusion criteria and after full text reading only 50 articles remained for the review.
 Results: the 50 selected articles shared 306 annotated (visual marking, explanation like arrows) and 432 not annotated figures with the public. The 76% of articles were single studies on one specific topic. The main topic was endodontics with 22 articles. 28 journals from all continents participated in the effort of sharing of figures on anatomical variations from CBCT. However, only 2 journals were completely free of charges for authors and readers.
 Conclusions: we have found only 15 annotated and 3 not annotated figures in 2 articles published in 2 different open access journals (without reader pay-wall and without author publication charges). Sharing the knowledge on anatomical variations from dentomaxillofacial CBCT represents an exception in dental literature.