Award-winning research from home and abroad

Abstract

Earlier this year, I had the pleasure of reviewing all the material we published in 2003 to assist the editorial board in selecting winners of 2 prestigious awards. The first is the new CDABO Case Report of the Year award. Sponsored by the College of Diplomates of the American Board of Orthodontics, it includes a $1500 prize. The CDABO hopes that this award will stimulate more members to submit treated cases for publication. The CDABO already sponsors courses to assist members in becoming board certified and supports a committee that selects student case displays for publication after the AAO annual meeting. The first CDABO Case Report of the Year will be presented during the AAO's Celebration of Smiles in Orlando, Florida. The second award is the B. F. and Helen E. Dewel Award, established to honor the long-time editor of the AJO-DO (1968-1978). As a practitioner for most of his life, Dr Tod Dewel favored research articles that could be directly applied by the orthodontist to improve patient care. Last year, we were fortunate to have many excellent clinical articles from which to choose; 3 were published in 2 parts. This factor alone made it more difficult for the Journal's editorial board to make the final selection. This award will also be presented in Orlando. A noticeable trend in scientific publication is that many authors whose work is published in this Journal live and work in other countries. In fact, 8 of 10 articles considered for the Dewel Award were from universities outside the US, and 82% of the case reports published were written by international contributors of the AAO. This trend is not unique to the AJO-DO. I recently attended the Moyer's Craniofacial Research Symposium at the University of Michigan. The first day's presymposium speakers were from Germany, Finland, Turkey, Canada, Korea, Japan, United States, China, and Italy. I knew most of them, because they are authors and reviewers for the AJO-DO. They are serious about their research activities and will travel far and wide to present their findings. They also work very hard to get the findings published, and they have some great material. Look in some medical journals, and you will see a similar ratio of authorship. One reason for the international scope of scientific literature is the increased availability of PubMed (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed) and improved access to orthodontic journals online. In 2000, AAO members and subscribers could access only 4 years of back issues at no additional cost; today, you can look at articles dating back to 1990. The AAO has budgeted $100,000 over 3 years for placing all articles published in the last 25 years online. Our publisher, Elsevier, has recently pledged to provide similar access to all published articles, back to Volume 1, Issue 1, by 2005. For Elsevier, this huge project includes 1700 journals and involves over 40 million pages of scientific material. Once in electronic format, all articles will be cross-referenced and linked to related articles in journals from over 120 other publishers. As the visibility and usability of the Journal's contents grow, it is only natural to see more international involvement. As well as embracing the global influence of our scientific publications, I see it as a challenge to our own members here at home. When it comes to evaluating levels of patient care, we must encourage all clinicians to take excellent pretreatment and posttreatment records and appropriately manage high-resolution digital images that will allow the treatment results to be published in the best journals. Regarding future research, emphasis should be placed on evidence-based decision-making processes that not only are supported by the best available scientific evidence, but also must include the experience and judgment of the clinician as well as patient preferences and values. Simply stated, the purpose of using an evidence-based approach in clinical care is to close the gap between what is known and what is practiced.