Accessibility to editorial information in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery journals: The authors' point of view.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the accessibility to editorial information in Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery journals.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: A cross-sectional study using the WOS-Web of Science database in three categories: "Surgery," "Otorhinolaryngology," and "Dentistry, Oral Surgery & Medicine" was designed. Journals were filtered by title and classified under three headings: OMFS specialty; OMFS subspecialty and related sciences; and multidisciplinary journals. Specialty scope (OMFS vs. other); impact factor; path for the manuscript; blinding policy; accessibility to reviewers' criteria; and percentage of acceptance.

RESULTS: Only 46 of 330 journals met the inclusion criteria. All OMFS journals provided comprehensive information about the review process, compared to 5 of 27 (18.5%) of Oral Surgery and related sciences periodicals. Most specialty journals do not inform about the blind review mode used (20 of 33; 60.6%). Generally, information about the reviewers' assessment criteria is scarce, but is available from all OMFS journals, which also state the percentage of manuscript acceptance (100% vs. 14.8%).

CONCLUSIONS: OMFS JCR journals provide adequate information about their editorial process in terms of path for the manuscript, accessibility to reviewers' criteria, and percentage of acceptance. Additional efforts are needed to increase accessibility to information about blinding policy and average time from submission to acceptance.