This document provides guidance on writing and publishing scientific papers in dentistry. It discusses the scientific process, communicating results through talks and written documents, and the obligations of research. It defines science and what makes research scientific. Characteristics of good science are outlined, including starting with a question and having a clear goal, specific plan, dividing problems into subproblems, hypotheses testing, and the cyclical nature of science. The document provides advice on literature reviews, impact factors, validity and reliability, statistics, and scientific writing style.

1. How to write and publish
papers in Dentistry –
A personal perspective
Peter Svensson
Professor, DDS, PhD, Dr Odont

2. Essentials in dental research
• Understand the scientific process
– Think
– Plan
– Do
– Report
• Communicate the scientific result
– Talk
– Write

3. Important obligation !
“All research, to be generally useful, must
ultimately be presented as a written
document”

4. What is science ?
• From Latin “Scientia”
– To know, to discern, to distinguish
– Systematised knowledge from observation,
study, and experimentation carried out in order to
determine the nature or principles of what is
being studied (social, natural, biomedical, etc.)

5. What is scientific ?
• Scientific
– Designating the method of research in which a
hypothesis, formulated after systematic, objective
collection of data, is tested empirically

6. What science should be !
• Universal
– Unrelated to individual researcher (personal,
social, ethnical, religious, political factors)
– Same principles within different disciplines
(engineering, medical, social etc. – also dentistry)

7. What science should be !
• Sceptical
– Raises questions to be answered through
stringent research methods (logical, critical,
consistent)

8. What science should not be
• Simple gathering of information
– Distinguish from learning
• Transportation of facts
– Needs interpretation of the facts and data
– “Listing facts, statements and knowledge is not
enough”

9. What science should not be
• Rummaging for information
– More than checking information for self-
enlightenment
– “Finding out prizes on crowns in Aarhus”
• Catchword to get attention
– Often misused in advertisements
– “Years of research have produced a new
dentifrice”

10. Characteristics of good science
1. Starts with a question or problem
2. Requires a clear articulation of a goal
3. Follows a specific plan or procedure
4. Divides the problem into more manageable sub-
problems
5. Guided by specific problems, questions or
hypothesis
6. Accepts critical assumptions
7. Requires collection and interpretation of data
8. Is cyclical or helical

11. 1. Identify the question or problem
• Many unanswered questions and unresolved
problems
– Look around - observe - wonder
– Be curious
– Ask questions
• Why?
• What is the cause of that?
• What does it mean?

12. 1. Identify the question or problem
• Nobel prize winner in medicine - Eric Kandel
– Observed changed function of memory in
psychiatric patients
– Asked why is the brain working differently?
– How is memory stored in the brain cells?
(synaptic transmission - signal transduction)

13. Review the literature
• You need to have background knowledge to
approach your own research problem
• Maybe it is only a problem to you !

14. Review the literature
• Purpose of the review 1
– Reveal investigations similar to your own
– Show how other researchers have handled
methodological and design issues
– Describe methods to deal with problem situations that you
are facing
– Reveal sources of data that you may not have known
existed
– Introduce you to key persons whose work you may not
have known

15. Review the literature
• Purpose of the review 2
– Help to see your own study in historical perspective
– Give you new ideas and approaches
– Help to evaluate your own research efforts by comparison
to similar efforts of others
– Indicate the time and effort previously put into your
research topic

16. Practical advice to search
• Use e.g. Pubmed and search the literature -
haste slowly - and read
• Identify 2-3 central, high-quality review
papers - and read
• Read papers most closely related to your
research topic and then gradually expand
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov./entrez/query.fcgi

17. Practical advice to search
• Pick others brains !
– Friends
– Supervisors
– Experts
– Senior faculty members
• Contact authors to key-papers
• Important verbal information can be obtained
from meetings, conferences and personal
interactions

18. 2. Clear articulation of a goal
• Important to state the problem in a clear,
unambiguous way
• “What do you intend to do?”
• “The aim of this project is to ...”
The mother test !

19. 3. Specific plan or procedure
• Hoping to find something, or that data will be
“popping up” is not a good start
– “let us see what we will find or just go ahead and
do it”
• Planning the research effort is important
– “define the strategy to get data and what to do to
them”

20. 3. Specific plan or procedure
• Choosing the design and method with care
and logic
– “different questions need different methods”
– “engineering questions may not be answered by
sociological research designs”
– “sociological questions may not be answered by
engineering methods”

21. Reminder
“Researchers should remember that the task
before us is to answer the research question,
not to revalidate our methodology.”
Besag 1986

22. Reminder
“The question should determine the
methodology. The methodology should not
determine the question.”
Besag 1986

23. 4. Manageable sub-problems
• The research problem or question may be too big or
complex to solve without breaking down into logical
subproblems - structuralization
• Main problem, e.g.
– “How do I come from Aarhus to Xi’an?”
• Sub-problems
– “Where is Xi’an?”
– “What is the most direct/fast route?”
– “How do I proceed from airport?”
– “What train number?”
– Etc…..

24. 5. Hypothesis
• Greek “Groundwork, foundation”
• An unproved theory, proposition, supposition
tentatively accepted to explain certain facts or
provide a basis for further investigations
• Hypotheses are not new or purely academic
constructs, but reasonable guess - logical
supposition

25. 6. Accepts critical assumptions
• Research has assumptions
• Geometry has axioms
• Self-evident truths - conditions that need to
be taken for granted

26. 6. Accepts critical assumptions
• Define and state the assumptions necessary
for your hypothesis, e.g.
– “Women have lower pain thresholds than men”
• Both groups have same interest / motivation to
faithfully report their experience
• The examiner is capable of performance an accurate
test
• The test method is sensitive enough to discriminate
between the groups

27. 7. Collection and interpretation of data
• Collection of data is the first step
– Data are objective
• Interpretation of the data is the next - and
necessary - step
– Data need to go through the human brain to get a
meaning !
– Interpretation is subjective

28. Two important aspects of data
• Validity
– Soundness, effectiveness of the measuring instrument
– What does the test measure?
– Does it measure what it is supposed to be measured?
– How well, how accurately does it measure?
• Reliability
– Consistency of the measurement
– How well can you measure something again and again?

29. Validity and reliability
Perfect reliability Perfect reliability Bad reliability
+ + +
Perfect validity Bad validity Bad validity

30. Statistics
• Helps to describe and interpret the data set
– Descriptive statistics
• Points of central tendency (mode, mean, median etc)
• Measures of variation (quartile range, SD, SEM,
variance)
• Measures of relationship (Pearson product moment,
Spearman rank-order etc)
– Inferential statistics
• Predictions - estimations
• Hypothesis testing (t-test, Wilcoxon, Mann-Whitney,
Friedman, ANOVA, regression analysis etc)

31. 8. Cyclic or helical nature
6. Interpretation
Rejection or
acceptance
1. Research begins
with a question
5. Collect and
organise data
2. Clear
statement
4. Hypotheses of the goal
to be tested
3. Division
into subproblems

32. Summary
• The science needs to be good in order to
write a good scientific paper

33. Scientific writing
• Writing as thinking
– Writing is a great way to discover what we are
thinking
– Start writing as soon as possible
– The only version that counts is the last one
– Paper is patience, but uncritical !

34. Different means to present science
• Scientific writing
– Original / full research reports
– Short communications
– Case stories
– Topical reviews
– Systematic reviews / meta-analysis
– Books or book chapters
– Academic thesis
– Conference abstracts

35. Different means to present science
• Oral presentations
– Short communication
– Plenary lecture
– Seminars
– Courses

36. Different means to present science
• Public relations
– Media - press release
– Internet

37. Scientific papers
• Consider where to publish
– Impact factors - impact
– Relevance - scope of journal
– Audience - readers
– Time – review - publication

38. Impact factors
• Measure of the frequency of which the
”average article” in a journal has been cited
in a particular year
– Cites to recent articles / number of recent articles
All citations in a journal in a particular year during the last 2 years
IF = All citable articles in the journal during the last 2 years
http://isi3.isiknowledge.com

39. Impact factor
• Suggested as a simple, descriptive
quantitative measure of a journal’s
performance
• Founded by Eugene Garfield – Institute for
Scientific Information (ISI)
• Science Citation Index (SCI) now includes
more than 3700 journals and even more are
tracked (not yet included)

40. Impact factor
• General belief
– ”The higher IF, the better journal”
– Researchers keen to submit to high-impact
journals
– Editors of high-impact journals are ”swamped”
with manuscripts
– Funding agencies expect researchers to publish
in ”the best” journals

41. Problems with impact factor
• Coverage and language preference of the SCI database
• Procedures to collect citations at the ISI
• Algorithm to calculate the IF
• Citation distribution of journals
• Online availability of publications

42. Problems with impact factor
• Citations to invalid articles
• Negative citations
• Preference of journal publishers for articles of
a certain type
• Publication lag
• Citing behavior across subjects
• Influence from journal editors

43. Alternatives to impact factors
• Journal to Field Impact Factor
• Adjusted Impact Factor
• Cited half-life Impact Factor
• Median Impact Factor
• Disciplinary Impact Factor
• Prestige Factor

44. What does the IF measure?
• Measure the average citation rate of all
”citable” articles
• Helps authors to decide which journals to
submit to
• Helps editors and publishers to assess the
journals
• ”Simply reflects the ability of journals and
editors to attract the best papers available”

45. What does IF not measure?
• Does not measure the quality of individual
articles
• Only measures the ”interests” of other
researchers but not the ”importance” and
”usefulness”

46. In addition to IF also consider
• Scope of the journal
• Actual circulation numbers / distribution and
potential readership
• Time from submission to publication

47. Time
• Short communications of most recent research
• Normally immediately prior to publication of data in
full research paper
– Feedback
– Faster distribution of news
• Fast track publications (“hot topics”)
• Online Early – publication ahead of printed version

48. Scientific papers
• Note on style (IMRAD)
– Introduction
– Materials and Methods
– Results
– and
– Discussion

49. Author guidelines
• Check very carefully the instruction to authors
• Print out a recent paper from the journal
• Remember copyright forms etc.
– www.blackwellmunksgaard.com/jor