International Journal of Implant Dentistry

About International Journal of Implant Dentistry

International Journal of Implant Dentistry: A Complete Profile

The International Journal of Implant Dentistry is a peer-reviewed, fully open access, online-only journal devoted to a single, well-defined clinical discipline: the science and practice of placing, restoring, and maintaining dental implants. Published under the SpringerOpen brand of Springer Nature and identified by the electronic ISSN 2198-4034, it has appeared continuously since 2015, when its first volume was issued. The journal is the official publishing outlet associated with two professional societies — the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Implantologie im Zahn-, Mund- und Kieferbereich e.V. (DGI, the German association for implantology in dentistry, oral and maxillofacial medicine) and the Japanese Society of Oral Implantology (JSOI) — which are named by Springer as the journal's co-publishers and copyright holders. That dual German–Japanese society backing, combined with a commercial open access publisher, gives the title a distinctive structure: it is neither a purely commercial journal nor a small society bulletin, but a society-anchored international journal distributed on a major global platform.

This profile identifies the journal unambiguously by its electronic ISSN 2198-4034 and its DOI stem, in which articles carry the prefix 10.1186 followed by the journal code s40729. Those two identifiers separate it from similarly named titles in the same clinical neighbourhood, such as the subscription-based Implant Dentistry (a different, older American title that ceased under that name), the International Journal of Oral Implantology, and Clinical Oral Implants Research. Authors searching citation databases should always confirm the ISSN or the s40729 article code before attributing a paper, a metric, or an editorial policy to this journal, because implant dentistry has several titles whose names differ by only one or two words.

Quick Facts

Origins and Development

The journal was launched by Springer in 2015 at a point when open access publishing was becoming a practical requirement for many publicly funded researchers in Europe and Japan. The founding arrangement paired a large international publisher with two national implantology societies, one European and one Asian, signalling from the start that the journal was intended to serve an international authorship rather than a single national membership. At launch, the joint editors-in-chief named in Springer's announcement were Yoshinobu Maeda of the Osaka University Graduate School of Dentistry and Hendrik Terheyden of the Red Cross Hospital in Kassel, Germany — a pairing that mirrored the journal's German–Japanese society structure. Editorial leadership evolves over time, so authors should consult the journal's current editorial board page on the Springer site for the present office-holders before addressing correspondence.

Coverage statements on library catalogues record an unbroken run from Volume 1 (2015) to the current volume, and the journal's continuous-publication model means that articles appear individually as soon as they are ready rather than waiting for a completed issue. In practice, each calendar year forms a volume containing a long sequence of individually numbered articles. This model suits a clinical field in which techniques, implant systems, and biomaterials change quickly: a study of a new surface treatment or loading protocol can be citable within weeks of acceptance instead of months later.

Because every article is open access, the journal's development has been closely tied to funder mandates in Europe and elsewhere that require publicly funded dental and medical research to be freely readable. Its presence in PubMed Central is an important part of that story: accepted articles are deposited in a permanent, freely searchable biomedical repository, which makes the journal's clinical content discoverable alongside the wider medical literature rather than only within dentistry-specific databases.

Aims and Scope in Depth

Springer's own description states that the journal exists to promote exchange and discussion across all research areas relevant to implant dentistry. In practice that scope spans the full chain from laboratory bench to long-term clinical follow-up, and the journal explicitly welcomes several distinct article families. Understanding where a manuscript sits within that chain is the first step in judging fit.

Clinical studies

Prospective and retrospective clinical studies form the journal's core. Typical contributions report implant survival and success rates, marginal bone-level changes, prosthetic complications, and patient-reported outcomes for defined implant systems, surgical protocols, or loading strategies. Studies of immediate, early, and conventional loading; of short and narrow-diameter implants in atrophic jaws; and of implants placed in augmented or grafted sites all fall squarely within scope. Because these papers inform treatment decisions, the journal expects clear reporting of inclusion criteria, follow-up duration, and the criteria used to define success.

Systematic and invited reviews

The journal publishes systematic literature reviews and invited reviews that synthesise evidence on contested questions — for example, the comparative performance of grafting materials, the management of peri-implantitis, or the effect of implant surface characteristics on osseointegration. A systematic review submitted here must be genuinely systematic: a defined search strategy, explicit eligibility criteria, and a transparent account of study selection, rather than a narrative summary wearing a systematic label.

Clinical case reports

Case reports are welcomed where they document unusual presentations, novel techniques, or instructive complications and their management. In a surgical discipline, a well-documented case — with imaging, a clear treatment sequence, and adequate follow-up — can change practice even without a control group, and the journal's scope explicitly makes room for this genre.

Basic laboratory and animal research

Preclinical work is in scope where its relevance to implant dentistry is direct: cell and tissue responses to implant surfaces, biomechanical testing, and animal studies of bone regeneration, graft integration, or implant stability. Authors of animal research should expect the usual expectations of ethical approval reporting and humane-treatment statements that apply across Springer's biomedical portfolio.

Materials research and engineering

A distinct strand of the journal covers implant materials and engineering: titanium and zirconia implant systems, surface modifications and coatings, abutment and prosthetic component design, and additively manufactured (3D-printed) devices and surgical guides. Recent content illustrates this strand well, with studies of printed titanium alloy implants engineered for antibacterial surface behaviour sitting alongside conventional clinical outcome studies in the same volume.

Peri-implant health and complications

Work on peri-implant mucositis and peri-implantitis — their microbiology, risk factors such as glycaemic control, diagnosis, and therapy — recurs throughout the journal's volumes and is a natural fit. So are studies of risk assessment before placement, including imaging-based anatomical risk analyses using cone-beam computed tomography.

Ethics and Reporting Expectations

Springer states that manuscripts reporting studies on patients or human participants must comply with the Declaration of Helsinki, in line with the journal's author guidelines for original papers. Authors should therefore be ready to document ethics committee approval and informed consent for human research, institutional approval for animal experiments, and consent for publication where a case report includes identifiable patient material. Clinical trials should be registered and reported according to the reporting guideline appropriate to their design. These requirements are not decorative: incomplete ethics statements are a common and avoidable cause of delay at submission screening across medical open access journals, and implant dentistry papers — which frequently involve identifiable radiographs and clinical photographs — deserve particular care on consent for images.

Peer Review and Editorial Process

The journal operates the standard SpringerOpen editorial workflow. Submissions are screened editorially for scope, completeness, and compliance with the article-type guidelines before being sent for peer review by subject specialists. Reviewers assess methodological soundness, the adequacy of follow-up in clinical work, the appropriateness of statistical treatment, and whether conclusions stay within what the data support. The DOAJ record gives an average of roughly thirteen weeks between submission and publication, which is comparatively brisk for a clinical specialty journal and reflects both the continuous-publication model and the absence of issue-assembly delays. Authors should nonetheless treat that figure as an average across article types: a systematic review requiring additional review rounds will take longer than a straightforward case report, and time spent in author revision sits largely in the authors' own hands. Prompt, complete revision — answering each reviewer point in a structured response letter — is the single most effective way an author can keep a manuscript inside the average rather than beyond it.

Open Access, Licensing, and Charges

Every article in the journal is freely available to read immediately on publication, and authors retain unrestricted copyright and publishing rights according to the DOAJ record, with articles distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence. That combination — author copyright retention plus CC BY — is the most permissive standard arrangement in scholarly publishing: readers may reuse figures and text with attribution, which matters for clinical teachers who want to reuse implant diagrams or outcome images in lectures.

Open access here is funded through an article processing charge (APC) payable on acceptance. The DOAJ listing records charges of up to €2,990 / US$3,490 / £2,590, and records that a waiver policy exists for these charges. APC levels for Springer journals are reviewed periodically and can differ by the author's country and by any institutional open access agreement — many universities hold Springer Nature agreements under which affiliated corresponding authors publish without a direct personal charge. Before submitting, authors should check three things in order: whether their institution has a Springer Nature open access agreement covering this journal; whether their funder provides a dedicated open access budget; and, if neither applies, whether they qualify for a discretionary waiver or discount. Confirm the exact current APC on the journal's Springer page at the moment of submission rather than relying on any secondary listing, including this profile.

Indexing, Metrics, and How to Read Them

Springer lists the journal as abstracted and indexed in, among others, the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), PubMed Central, DOAJ, Current Contents/Clinical Medicine, Dimensions, EBSCO, Gale, ProQuest, CNKI, and Google Scholar, with archiving in CLOCKSS and Portico. SCIE indexing is the most consequential entry on that list: it places the journal inside the Web of Science Core Collection and means it receives a Journal Impact Factor in Clarivate's Journal Citation Reports. A 2025 compilation of dentistry Journal Impact Factors placed this journal at approximately 4.7, in the upper band of dentistry titles — a strong figure for a specialty title founded only in 2015. In SCImago's Scopus-based classification the journal sits in the Oral Surgery category, where it has been placed in the first quartile (Q1). Authors should verify the current-year figures directly in Journal Citation Reports or SCImago before quoting them in a promotion dossier or grant application, because both are revised annually and older snapshots circulate widely on the web.

Two cautions belong with any metrics discussion. First, journal-level metrics describe the average citation behaviour of a journal's recent articles, not the quality of any individual paper; a case report in this journal will typically be cited differently from a systematic review in the same volume. Second, several similarly named implantology titles carry their own metrics, and aggregator websites occasionally cross-wire them. Anchor every metric you cite to ISSN 2198-4034.

Who Should Publish Here — and Who Should Look Elsewhere

The journal is a strong fit for implantologists, oral and maxillofacial surgeons, periodontists, prosthodontists, and dental materials researchers whose work speaks to an international clinical audience and who need — or are required by their funder — to publish open access in a SCIE-indexed venue. It is particularly suitable for work arising from German- and Japanese-linked research networks, though authorship is by no means restricted to those countries, and the published volumes draw contributors from across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and the Americas. It is a weaker fit for general dentistry with no implant component, for purely commercial product promotion, and for studies whose follow-up is too short to support the clinical claims made. Authors without APC funding and without an institutional agreement should resolve the fee question before submission, not after acceptance.

Submission Checklist

• Confirm the manuscript's centre of gravity is implant dentistry, not general dentistry with an implant mentioned in passing.
• Choose the correct article type (clinical study, review, case report, basic research, materials/engineering) and follow that type's Springer guidelines.
• Prepare ethics approval, consent, and trial-registration statements; human studies must comply with the Declaration of Helsinki.
• Check your institution's Springer Nature open access agreement and the current APC before submitting.
• Write a cover letter that states plainly what the paper adds to clinical or laboratory implant practice.
• Ensure every figure and radiograph is covered by the necessary consent and is of publication quality.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the International Journal of Implant Dentistry the same as Implant Dentistry? No. They are different journals from different publishers with different ISSNs. This profile concerns the SpringerOpen title with electronic ISSN 2198-4034, launched in 2015.

Is the journal open access? Yes. All articles are freely readable on publication, authors retain copyright, and articles are licensed CC BY, funded by an article processing charge for which waivers and institutional agreements may apply.

Is it indexed in PubMed and Web of Science? Springer lists it in PubMed Central and in the Science Citation Index Expanded, and it is also listed in DOAJ. That means articles are discoverable in PubMed searches through the PubMed Central deposit.

How long does publication take? The DOAJ record gives an average of about thirteen weeks from submission to publication; individual manuscripts vary with review rounds and revision speed.

Does the journal charge to submit? The charge described in its listings is an article processing charge for accepted papers, not a submission fee. Always confirm the current amount on the journal's own Springer page.

Which societies stand behind the journal? The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Implantologie (DGI) of Germany and the Japanese Society of Oral Implantology, named by Springer as co-publishers.

Reading the Journal as a Clinician

For practising clinicians who read rather than write, the journal repays structured reading. The systematic reviews are the efficient entry point: they compress contested questions — graft material selection, peri-implantitis therapy, surface and connection design — into appraised summaries that can be read in a single sitting and checked against the primary studies through the reference lists. The clinical studies are best read with attention to three details that determine how far their conclusions travel: the length and completeness of follow-up, the definition of implant success used (which varies between papers), and whether the implant system studied matches the systems a reader actually uses. Case reports, finally, are most valuable as technique documents: read them for the sequence of decisions, the imaging that guided those decisions, and the management of the complication or anatomical difficulty at the centre of the case, rather than for any general claim about success rates. Because every article is open access and deposited in PubMed Central, clinicians without institutional subscriptions can follow all three genres in full text, which is still unusual among established specialty titles in dentistry and is one of the journal's practical contributions to everyday practice.

Researchers planning a literature search should note that the journal's articles are indexed with the same controlled vocabulary as the wider biomedical literature in PubMed, so searches combining implant terms with outcomes such as marginal bone loss, survival, or peri-implantitis will retrieve its content alongside subscription titles. Citing authors should give the journal's standard abbreviated title and the article DOI, since volume-and-article numbering under continuous publication can confuse citation styles built around page ranges.

Assessment

A decade after launch, the International Journal of Implant Dentistry occupies a clear niche: a society-backed, fully open access specialty journal on a major platform, indexed in the principal biomedical databases, carrying a Journal Impact Factor in the upper range for dentistry, and publishing the full span of implant research from bench materials science to long-term clinical outcomes. For implant dentistry researchers who need open access without surrendering indexing or peer-review credibility, it is one of the field's default options. Its main practical hurdle is not quality or visibility but cost: authors outside institutional open access agreements should plan for the APC from the outset.