About the Journal

Aims, Scope & Mission

The Nigerian Dental Journal (NDJ) (Print ISSN: 0189-1006, Online ISSN: 3043-6613) is the official scholarly scientific journal of the Nigerian Dental Association (NDA). The NDJ is dedicated to promoting the advancement of oral health in Nigeria, the African continent, and globally through the dissemination of peer-reviewed original clinical research, randomized trials, systematic reviews, case reports, dental techniques, and expert perspectives.

The journal operates on a regular triannual publication frequency (three issues per volume each year) with continuous online publishing of accepted manuscripts. All published articles are granted immediate, unrestricted Gold Open Access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).

Vision Statement

“To be the premier dental journal in Africa and a globally recognized authority in oral health research, advancing clinical dental excellence and evidence-based practice.”

Mission Statement

“To publish rigorous, ethical, and high-impact oral health research that informs clinical care, shapes oral health policy, fosters dental education, and promotes collaboration among dental practitioners across Nigeria and the global scientific community.”

Subject Areas Covered

NDJ welcomes high-quality submissions across all disciplines of oral health science:

Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery: Surgical pathology, maxillofacial trauma, reconstructive surgery, cleft care, implant surgery, and TMJ disorders.
Restorative Dentistry & Endodontics: Operative techniques, biomaterials, endodontic therapy, prosthodontics, and aesthetic rehabilitation.
Periodontology & Oral Hygiene: Pathogenesis of periodontitis, periodontal regeneration, peri-implant diseases, and systemic health interactions.
Orthodontics & Paediatric Dentistry: Dentofacial orthopaedics, interceptive orthodontics, developmental dental anomalies, and childhood dental care.
Oral Medicine & Oral Pathology: Diagnostic histopathology, oral mucosal diseases, premalignant lesions, and salivary gland disorders.
Community Dentistry & Dental Public Health: Epidemiology of oral diseases, fluoridation research, oral healthcare delivery systems, and health economics.

Rigorous Double-Blind Peer Review Policy

The Nigerian Dental Journal enforces a strict Double-Blind Peer Review model to uphold the highest standards of scientific impartiality, objectivity, and academic rigor.

Initial Screening (Editorial Triage): Upon submission, every manuscript is examined by the Editor-in-Chief and Associate Editors to verify scope alignment, ethical compliance, Turnitin similarity index (<15-20%), and adherence to Author Guidelines.
Double-Blind Evaluation: Manuscripts passing initial screening are anonymized (all author identities, affiliations, and acknowledgments removed) and assigned to a minimum of two independent expert reviewers in the relevant dental specialty. The identities of authors and reviewers remain strictly concealed from each other throughout the entire evaluation process.
Review Timeline: Initial reviewer comments and editorial decisions are typically communicated to corresponding authors within 4 to 6 weeks of submission.
Editorial Decision Governance: The final decision (Accept, Minor Revisions, Major Revisions, or Reject) is rendered exclusively by the Editor-in-Chief based on reviewer recommendations and scientific merit.

Publication Ethics, Integrity & COPE Compliance

The Nigerian Dental Journal is fully committed to upholding the highest standards of publishing integrity and strictly adheres to the core practices and guidelines established by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), and the World Association of Medical Editors (WAME).

Plagiarism Prevention: All submitted manuscripts are screened using Turnitin plagiarism detection software. Submissions exhibiting significant text recycling (>15-20% overall or >3% from a single source) are rejected immediately.
Ethical Approval & Informed Consent: All research involving human subjects, patient records, or biological tissues must state approval from an accredited Institutional Health Research Ethics Committee (HREC), citing the formal approval protocol number, and confirm informed written consent.
Animal Research Welfare: Studies involving laboratory animals must adhere to the ARRIVE guidelines and demonstrate compliance with national/institutional ethical standards for laboratory animal care.
Corrections, Expressions of Concern & Retractions: In cases of inadvertent scientific error, NDJ promptly issues published Corrections or Corrigenda. In cases of proven scientific misconduct, data falsification, or severe ethical breach, the journal executes formal Retraction notices in strict accordance with COPE Retraction Guidelines.

Conflict of Interest, Financial Transparency & CRediT Authorship

Financial transparency and clear accountability are fundamental prerequisites for all publications in NDJ.

Conflict of Interest (COI) Declaration: All authors must explicitly declare any financial, commercial, institutional, or personal competing interests related to the submitted work. If no conflict exists, the explicit statement “The authors declare that they have no competing interests” must be included.
Funding & Grant Support: Full disclosure of all funding sources, research grants, pharmaceutical/dental corporate sponsorships, or institutional financial support must be provided, including specific grant numbers and funding agency names.
CRediT Contributor Roles Taxonomy: NDJ adopts the CRediT taxonomy. Authors must describe individual contributions across: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation, Formal Analysis, Investigation, Data Curation, Writing – Original Draft, Writing – Review & Editing, Visualization, Supervision, and Project Administration.
Data Availability Statement: All empirical research articles must include an explicit statement describing where the supporting raw data, radiographic datasets, or laboratory protocols can be accessed by the scientific community.

Open Access & CC BY 4.0 Licensing Policy

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

All articles published by the Nigerian Dental Journal are published in immediate Gold Open Access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Author Copyright Retention: Authors retain unrestricted copyright to their scholarly articles without commercial or exclusivity barriers. Authors grant NDJ a non-exclusive license to publish and distribute the work.
Free Public Reuse: Anyone is free to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of all articles for any lawful purpose, provided appropriate credit is given to the original authors and the Nigerian Dental Journal.
Self-Archiving (Green Open Access): Authors are permitted and encouraged to deposit all versions of their article (Preprint, Accepted Manuscript, and Published Version of Record) in institutional repositories, subject repositories, or personal websites immediately upon publication, with no embargo period.

Article Processing Charge (APC) Transparency

₦85,000 NGN (Payable Only Upon Acceptance)

The Nigerian Dental Journal does not charge any submission or review fee. To sustain editorial copyediting, Crossref DOI registration, XML typesetting, and perpetual digital archiving, an Article Processing Charge (APC) is payable exclusively upon formal manuscript acceptance.

Fee Waiver Policy: Full or partial fee waivers are automatically considered for researchers from low-income developing nations or authors without institutional funding upon formal application to the Editor-in-Chief. Ability to pay never influences editorial decisions.

Digital Preservation & Permanent Archiving

To guarantee perpetual access and permanent preservation of all dental research literature, NDJ utilizes distributed international preservation networks:

PKP Preservation Network (PKP PN): Long-term preservation in a decentralized network of academic research libraries worldwide.
LOCKSS Archiving: Permanent, tamper-proof archival storage in international university library archives.
Society Archiving: Dedicated server redundancy and offsite backups maintained by the Nigerian Dental Association.
Persistent Identifiers: Every published article is assigned a persistent Digital Object Identifier (DOI) ensuring permanent discoverability and linking.