Inaugural Editorial to Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Anesthesia

We are with excitement to announce the launch of Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Anesthesia (JOMA), an open access, peer-reviewed journal focusing on frontiers of oral and maxillofacial anesthesia.

Oral and maxillofacial surgery has the characteristics of high incidence of difficult airways, high risk of perioperative organ damage, and requires special perioperative management. For oral and maxillofacial anesthetists, the ability to provide high-quality anesthesia management for their patients is one of the most important skills. Poor management can cause severe anesthesia complications or even death. How to improve the anesthesia performance and enhance safety of patients is of great significance and is also one of the world’s medical problems.

The field of research of oral and maxillofacial anesthesia has undergone a remarkable transformation in the last 20 years, attributable to revolutionary technologies like new airway devices emerging, analgesia and sedation techniques, advanced monitoring techniques, and pharmacological advancement. Launching JOMA became possible through a shared long-term vision of our team from Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital and AME Publishing Company. The journal focuses on all aspects of anesthesia in oral and maxillofacial surgery. The cover of the journal highlights the features of oral and maxillofacial anesthesia. The four letters J, O, M, A vividly stand for “endotracheal tube”, “oral cavity”, “glottis image” and “injector” in a graphical way. We have the great honor to be appointed as the founding members of JOMA as Editor-in-Chief and Executive Editor-in-Chief. We are willing to accept the challenges and responsibilities of promoting the journal into a premier professional journal in oral and maxillofacial anesthesia.

JOMA will take advantage of the collaboration between East and West to combine local expertise with international experience, which represents a unique feature of the journal. It will not only allow broad coverage but will also focus on special topics of interest through the publication of themed series. In addition, we will publish the journal to a high standard. Specifically, JOMA will adhere to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journal and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)’s guidelines. Most importantly, JOMA will place great emphasis on publication quality and processing transparency, including but not limited to:

A transparent peer review process

To commit to openness and accountability, and to increase the level of transparency throughout the peer review process, JOMA will implement a transparent peer review process as an option for all submissions. When a manuscript is submitted, authors will be asked (via the submission system) that whether they agree to the publication of the “peer review file” (a record of reviewer reports and author replies) along with the accepted version should their article be accepted after the peer review process. The author’s choice will not affect any subsequent editorial decisions.

The practice will see the inclusion of the peer review file in the footnote of the corresponding article. The reviewer’s identity will still be kept confidential.

Reporting guidelines for articles

Each submission to JOMA will be required to follow the related EQUATOR research reporting guidelines and should include a reporting checklist. If an article is accepted, the corresponding reporting checklist will be published online with the article. For more details, please check the author instruction: https://joma.amegroups.com/pages/view/guidelines-for-authors.

Data sharing

To keep pace with the data demands of the research field, JOMA will be committed to responsible data sharing in the setting of clinical trials and follow the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors published by COPE.

Authors of primary research will be encouraged to state in the published paper whether and where data are available. Whenever applicable (e.g., when an original article includes any data that are not publicly available), authors will be required to fill in a data-sharing statement form, which should be submitted along with their manuscript. For articles that are accepted for publication, the Data Availability Statement (form) will be published online alongside the article.

In conclusion, we hope Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Anesthesia would be a favorable choice for both authors and readers in the field of oral and maxillofacial anesthesia. We are sure that this could be definitely achieved with the support from our top-class anesthetists in our editorial board as well as from our authorship. We look forward to receiving your contributions to our journal and make it a great success.

Acknowledgments

Funding: None.

Footnote

Provenance and Peer Review: This article was commissioned by the editorial office, Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Anesthesia. The article did not undergo external peer review.

Conflicts of Interest: Both authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form (available at https://joma.amegroups.com/article/view/10.21037/joma-21-2/coif). HJ serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Anesthesia from June 2021 to May 2026. MX serves as the unpaid Executive Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Anesthesia from June 2021 to May 2026. The authors have no other conflicts of interest to declare.

Ethical Statement: The authors are accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Open Access Statement: This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which permits the non-commercial replication and distribution of the article with the strict proviso that no changes or edits are made and the original work is properly cited (including links to both the formal publication through the relevant DOI and the license). See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.