Currently, the open access concepts have been acquiring increased attention in basic science, and dentistry isn't an exception. Open access refers to the principle of providing free online access to scholarly-scientific publications, basically request for scientific articles to be accessible with no cost worldwide. This has been an extended debate among researchers, librarians, scholars, and publishers over the last decade. Recently, the NIH in the United States stated that scientific projects with NIH funded grants for research may have their publication available in NIH's PubMed Central open access database, also United Kingdom goverment required that all UK government-funded research has to be available via open access. This statements among others has expanded this debate.

 

Besides the different positions regarding open access, could be reasonable to understand that the universities and/or research entities' could focus their efforts in order to provide no restrain diffusion of the research developed in their institutions. Moreover the continued evolution, in an exponential rate over the last years, of high quality scientific open access journals contribute to an expanded translational research that reached an educational model in balance with the principles: scientific results available for free to the worldwide community.

The transmission and publication of the results of a project is an essential component of the research process; research can only advance by sharing the results, and the value of an investment in research is only maximized through the wide use of its outcomes. Nowadays, technology gives us the opportunity to share our exponential results worldwide with a minimum cost, promoting an academic pathway for the proper dissemination of ideas, results and outcomes pursuing excellence in the several areas of science.

 

The University of Costa Rica is implementing several policies to sustain, support and develop strategies in order to encourage a spread dissemination of the research performed at our institution in several open access databases, repositories and institutional journals.

 

Odovtos - International Journal of Dental Sciences contributes to the effort to provide a scientific platform for high-quality, peer-review open access publication in the field of dentistry. According to the data of the Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources, ROAD, actually are indexed 14.031 journals worldwide, and just 48 are from Dentistry. Odovtos- Int. J. Dent. Sc. remains an important open access platform in Central and Latin America. Our challenges remain to focus on critical, innovative and high-quality articles, encouraging relevant open access research which could lead to a direct impact to an evidenced-based dentistry. This issue is enriched by high quality international contribution such a special guest review in Color Selection and Reproduction in Dentistry, research regarding sintering types of ceramic blocks in CAD-CAM, fiber posts luting systems, Signs and Symptoms in the Temporomandibular Joint of Geriatric Patients with Arthritis, plus a bond strength assessment between acrylic resin teeth and autopolymerizing acrylic resin repairs, among others valuable articles. Thus, our challenge remains to ensure significant scientific research, enjoy your lecture.