Do Ideas at ADEA's Annual Meeting Translate to Publications in the Journal of Dental Education?

Abstract

Like us, many of you have recently returned from another American Dental Education Association (ADEA) Annual Session & Exhibition in March 2025. Early in our careers, the ADEA annual meeting was a rich place to learn and grow as an educator and administrator. Later in our careers, education remains a key reason to attend the ADEA conference; however, networking and collaborating become even more important. At this ADEA annual meeting, we sought advice from mentors, got feedback from peers, commiserated with colleagues, and socialized with people from around the globe. For all of these reasons, we want to encourage you to submit your research and session proposals and to attend the 2026 ADEA Annual Session & Exhibition.

As the editorial leadership of the Journal of Dental Education (JDE), we wanted to explore the impact of the ADEA annual meeting on publications in the JDE. One of our goals is to ensure the JDE remains inclusive, removing barriers for national and international scholars, academics at institutions with limited resources, and early career educators. But how could we measure the impact of the ADEA annual meeting in driving collaborations and ideas and eventually leading to publications in the JDE?

We must acknowledge there are several other venues to publish dental education research. However, it is important to recognize that the JDE is the official scientific journal of the ADEA and has become, some may argue, a leading journal for dental education research in the United States. Additionally, the JDE is also becoming more broadly read, submitted to, and reviewed by international scholars.

These factors collectively contribute to the continuous evolution of research themes and topics. In this paper, we were interested in how some of these factors came together at the ADEA annual meeting—research gaps, educational innovations, collaborations, and networking focused on the fourth factor—collaboration and networking—since the ADEA annual meetings are great venues to network and collaborate with our peers. Using a quasi-experimental approach, we aimed to determine whether influential publications in the JDE translated to “hot topics” at the ADEA conference, or vice versa.

With one reviewer, we completed a systematic evaluation of all oral sessions and workshops presented at the ADEA annual meetings between 2011 and 2020—these years where meeting schedules were available to peruse online. Because we were looking for the delayed impact of ADEA annual meeting topics on JDE publications, the same reviewer completed a systematic evaluation of all articles published in the JDE between 2012 and 2023. We then identified instances when the same topics presented at the ADEA annual meetings were also represented in publications in the JDE during the entire period of the study (see Tables 1 and 2). We used a data visualization tool to track when each topic peaked in the JDE and when it peaked at the ADEA sessions. The results of this quasi-experimental evaluation are presented using basic descriptive statistics. According to the University of Michigan human research protection program operating manual part 4.V.A, this study is considered IRB exempt [2].

We found that topics that peaked as presentations/workshops at the ADEA conferences, subsequently peaked as scholarly articles in the JDE ∼2 years later. This pattern suggests a robust pipeline where educational concepts are initially introduced and discussed among peers at the ADEA conferences before undergoing the rigorous process of academic publishing. Following are examples of several topics.

Our quasi-experimental evaluation of trends in ADEA annual meeting topics and JDE publication themes highlights how discussions and developments at the ADEA conference are swiftly transitioned into scholarly articles within ∼2 years. This transition from concept to scientific publication contributes to advancing the academic discourse and evolving educational methodologies. Our study cannot prove a direct relationship between ADEA presentations and scientific publications; however, this may confirm what many dental educators already believe—that the ADEA annual meeting serves as an incubator for innovative ideas, discussions, and scholarly collaborations in dental education. The discussions and presentations at these meetings may provide a fertile ground for generating new research, which, after undergoing rigorous scrutiny and development, contributes to the body of academic knowledge through publication in the JDE. This process not only enhances the quality of dental education but also ensures that new and effective teaching methodologies are shared widely within the academic community, ultimately benefiting dental students and professionals.

Attending association conferences such as the ADEA may be crucial for dental academics as it serves as a nexus for innovation and scholarly exchange. Although this concept has not previously been explored, scholarly musings in engineering concur that conversations between American Society of Engineering Education members lead to advancing the scholarship within the field [3]. Our quasi-experimental study suggests that forums like ADEA annual meeting not only propel professional growth but also facilitate networking and nurture collaborations that may shape future research.