Introducing our Editors-in-Chief:

Dr. Eyal Rosen

I received my DMD degree and completed an advanced specialty graduate program in endodontics, at Tel Aviv University School of Dental Medicine. I’m an Israeli board-certified endodontic specialist and I maintain a private practice limited to endodontics. I’m a faculty member at Tel Aviv university school of dental medicine, and I was a faculty member at Tufts University School of Dental Medicine in Boston, USA. In 2005-07 I completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School and the Orthopedic Biomechanics Laboratory at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, USA. My endodontic research interests focus on evidence-based endodontics, endodontic complications and endodontic surgery. I presented my research findings in peer-reviewed articles, books, book chapters and international scientific congresses.

Dr. Igor Tsesis

I received my DMD degree from Moscow Medical Stomatological Institute, Russia, in 1990 and in 2003 I graduated cum laude from the graduate endodontic program at the dental school of Tel Aviv University, Israel. I currently serve as the director of graduate endodontics in Tel Aviv University. I was the President of the Israeli Endodontic Society and a member of the Scientific Council of the Israeli Dental Association. I’m also a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Journal of Endodontics. My research is in the area of diagnosis and treatment of complications following root canal therapy and endodontic surgery. Most of my research has been published in the leading endodontic journals, books and book chapters. I also routinely present my data at international scientific congresses.

What made you consider taking on the role as EiCs for Evidence-Based Endodontics?

In recent years we observe constant trends of increasing rates of research and ensuing publications in the field of endodontics.

The pros of these trends are the production of new information for the benefit of the medical community and the whole society. However, the cons include the accumulation of uncontained amounts of information, and it becomes more and more difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff. Therefore, it seems that new endodontic journals are needed, in order to enable the containment of the growing flow of new endodontic scientific data, while keeping strict quality standards to the publications.

This is why we considered taking on the role as Editors-in chief for this new Evidence-Based Endodontics journal, that is dedicated to present the latest and best available scientific evidence in Endodontics with a vision to promote evidence-based clinical decision-making, education, and research.

How has the journal’s field advanced in the last few years?

The exact extent of the annually produced manuscripts in endodontics as well as their quality, are unknown. However, in recent years, several attempts have been made to assess the quality of publications in dentistry, as well as specifically in endodontics. It seems that the combined quantity of annual publications in the two most popular endodontic journals (Journal of Endodontics (JOE) and International Endodontic Journal (IEJ) is constantly rising and is currently about five times more compared to 25 years ago. In addition, the fact that in recent years many endodontic-related studies are being published in non-endodontic journals adds more to these numbers and highlights the acceleration in endodontic publications. The positive developments in endodontic publication patterns in the past several decades, as evident by the number and quality of endodontic publications, indicate a constant increase in the scientific interest in endodontic research, even more than in other dental specialties. For more information we encourage our readers to read our latest editorial about the developments in the quantity and quality of endodontic publications.

What do you think will be an important focus of research in the next several years?

The most important focus of research in the next several years is to provide practitioners with valuable and reliable information that they can use in their daily practice. It is important to remember that the goal of decision making in healthcare is to choose the interventions that are most likely to deliver the outcomes that are of most interest to patients, and to prevent possible harmful outcomes.

However, practitioners may tend to institute their clinical decisions on personal experience, which in some cases may lead to making the same mistakes over the years. On the other hand, evidence-based dentistry is an approach to oral healthcare that integrates the best available clinical evidence to support a practitioner’s clinical expertise for each patient’s treatment needs and preferences and should be adopted by practitioners as a routine.

Additional pre-clinical studies (in-vitro and in-vivo studies), and original clinical studies are important in order to produce new updated scientific knowledge. However, one of the most challenging aspects of evidence-based decision making is the appraisal of the huge amounts of this new available evidence in order to isolate the most trustworthy information that should be relied upon to formulate an evidence-based treatment plan. It is based on the process of systematically finding, apprising, and using research findings as the basis for clinical decision making. Systematic reviews constitute the basis for practicing evidence-based dentistry and are aimed to reduce mistakes in the clinical decision-making process. Thus, we believe that in this era systematic reviews should be an important focus of research. For more information we refer our readers to our latest editorial about classifying scientific evidence as the basis for evidence-based decision making.

What challenges do you see ahead for the journal?

The main challenge of the journal is to present the latest and the best available scientific evidence with a view to promoting evidence-based clinical decision-making, education, and research. Our goal is to provide the submitted manuscripts quality peer review on the basis of strict and objective criteria concerning their novelty, methodology, and compatibility with evidence-based principles. We specifically encourage the submissions of original studies such as controlled clinical studies, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses. We also encourage submissions of narrative reviews that discuss historical perspectives or future trends in endodontics and short reports that are accompanied by a systematic review of the literature to identify and discuss other reports on comparable cases.

What advice would you give a researcher before submitting to the journal?

We advise researches to strictly plan their study in advance in order to make sure it is capable to provide the readers with the most accurate and valuable information. In this context it is important to select a well-defined answerable clinical question and remember that different types of study designs may answer different types of questions. As an example, in order to evaluate the efficacy of new therapies specific types of study designs may be used, while to demonstrate the accuracy of a new diagnostic test other types of designs are required. In addition, it is also crucial to consider the clinical significance and the relevance of the evidence to the patients.

As an additional reading, we refer researches to our latest Springer book about evidence-based decision making in dentistry, where they can find valuable information of the principles of evidence-based decision-making that may assist them to develop their research projects.

Access the journal’s homepage on our SpringerOpen portal where you can read published articles and submission guidelines.