In 2023, JOMA reviewers continue to make outstanding contributions to the peer review process. They demonstrated professional effort and enthusiasm in their reviews and provided comments that genuinely help the authors to enhance their work.

Hereby, we would like to highlight some of our outstanding reviewers, with a brief interview of their thoughts and insights as a reviewer. Allow us to express our heartfelt gratitude for their tremendous effort and valuable contributions to the scientific process.

November, 2023
Mika Ogawa, University of Turku, Finland

November, 2023

Mika Ogawa

Dr. Mika Ogawa (DDS, Ph D) is a postdoctoral researcher of the community dentistry of University of Turku. She is a specialist of dental anesthesiology from the Japanese Dental Society of Anesthesiology and a certifying dentist of special needs dentistry from the Japan Society for Disability and Oral Health. She graduated from Hiroshima University Institute of Dentistry and received her degree from Kyushu Dental University in research on sensory sensitivity and dental anxiety. She provided general anesthesia and intravenous sedation for dental students and taught dental anesthesiology at Fukuoka Dental College as an assistant professor. Her research interest is etiology dental anxiety and sedation in dental fields. Learn more about her here.

Dr. Ogawa thinks that an academic paper necessarily involves novelty. It is an attempt to reveal something that no one knows yet. Therefore, she highlights that communication between authors, experts in the field, and editors is important to examine its validity. It is important to never look down on authors, but to think constructively with the authors about how to improve the manuscript. She believes that the peer-review process can help reviewers grow.

Data sharing is prevalent in scientific writing in recent years. In Dr. Ogawa’s opinion, data sharing is important for two reasons: it increases the transparency of research, and it can lead to further improvements in evidence, such as meta-analysis.

(By Lareina Lim, Brad Li)