Igor Blum FCGDent, Clinical Professor of Primary Care Dentistry and Advanced General Dental Practice at King’s College London and Editor of the Primary Dental Journal, and Sir Nairn Wilson CBE FCGDent, President Emeritus of the College and the journal’s first Editor, celebrate the publication of its fiftieth issue
Prof Igor Blum FCGDent (left) and Sir Nairn Wilson CBE FCGDent (right)
The latest issue of the Primary Dental Journal (PDJ) – the 50th to date – is a truly special ‘general dentistry’ edition marking this significant milestone.
Not only does the PDJ have a rich history of serving general dental practice, but it is also one of the premier journals for intellectual discourse on all aspects of primary dental care pertinent to members of the whole dental team.
First published in 2012, shepherded under the tenure as Editor-in-Chief of the then Professor (now Sir) Nairn Wilson, it brought together three publications of the former Faculty of General Dental Practice (FGDP[UK]): Primary Dental Care (a research journal for dentists), Team in Practice (a journal for Dental Care Professionals) and the newsletter First Hand.
The fourth volume of the journal, published in 2015, was produced with the assistance of a new Clinical Editor – Dr (now Professor) Igor Blum. In addition to themed issues on Consent (curated by Guest Editor, Andy Toy), Special Care Dentistry (Guest Editors, Debbie Chandler and Richard Valle-Jones) and Paediatric Dentistry (Guest Editor, Richard Welbury), the volume included the journal’s first ‘general issue’ with papers on a range of topics, including temporomandibular dysfunction, contemporary laboratory work, tooth surface loss, the effects of bisphosphonates in implant dentistry, reducing harm (iatrogenic damage) in the provision of care, risk assessment and the prevention and management of dry sockets.
Volume 6, issue 1 was a special, one-off, commemorative issue of PDJ to help mark and celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the formation of the FGDP(UK). In addition to a ‘conversation’ between Professor Nairn Wilson and the then Dean of the Faculty, Mick Horton, and a photo montage of the history of the faculty, the issue included commissioned papers by leading dental experts in the UK. This commemorative issue and the subsequent two themed issues – Dental Emergencies (Guest Editor, Russ Ladwa) and Extended Integrated Care (Guest Editor, Kathy Fan) were Professor Wilson’s last contributions to PDJ before passing on the baton to Dr Blum in 2017.
Professor Blum’s first issue as Editor-in-Chief was the December 2017 (Volume 6, issue 4) themed issue on Removable Prosthodontics (Guest Editor, Graham Stokes). Professor Blum’s vision for the journal was to evolve, grow and, in the process, continue to go from strength to strength. A further vision was to make the journal accessible on an international level, rather than limiting it to the readership in the UK, for the benefit of primary dental care teams and their patients around the world.
Within each annual volume, two or three issues are themed on specific and relevant fields of interest, and one or two ‘general dentistry’ issues cover a wide range of topics. Each issue offers a combination of research, clinical best practice papers and scenario articles which allow the whole dental team to work together to improve standards of patient care. In Spring 2021 the PDJ published its 10th Volume Anniversary special issue celebrating this remarkable milestone.
After nine years’ publication by the FGDP(UK), the College took over in 2021, and this 2025 Spring issue marks fifty issues of the journal as a source for dissemination of contemporary research, clinical and non-clinical articles relevant to general dental practice.
Since its inception, the PDJ has evolved substantially and earned an established place as an authoritative source in today’s dental literature. As such, it provides CGDent with one of its most valued membership benefits. While its purpose has been constant – to be a professional development journal for the whole dental team, and a record and source of news about the College – its editorial and production processes and standards have evolved over the years.
Most significantly, in 2019 the FGDP entered into a contract with Sage Publishing and the PDJ has progressed from an in-house ‘cottage industry’ publication to an internationally accessible publication with an electronic editorial management platform, ScholarOne. As such the journal benefits from the resources available through our publisher, which has facilitated its continued growth.
Over the years, we have watched with great pleasure how the PDJ has grown and gained ever-increasing standing and status in becoming an internationally recognised and esteemed journal, aimed at the whole primary care team. The journal is now indexed in PubMed/MEDLINE and Scopus, and 1,500 papers – past and present – are available online to CGDent members through the PDJ Library and in over 10,000 academic institutions worldwide.
With the current international exposure of articles published in the PDJ, there have been many thousands of downloads and citations of articles. This confirms that the PDJ has an international reach and impact on the dental team and clinical practice, both nationally and internationally, improving standards of patient care.
As a result, the PDJ has started to attract international dental experts as guest editors. In the context of a new membership organisation borne out of a more established one, the journal has also played a central role in providing reassurance and continuity of service to members over the last four years and has developed an important role in supporting the College’s membership retention and growth.
Looking back, we would like to express our sincere gratitude to the very many authors, guest editors, peer reviewers, staff and others who have contributed to each of the 50 issues to date and enabled us to reach this important milestone.
Special thanks must be extended to the former and current managing editors of the journal – Amy Brewerton, Hillevi Sellén, and Lily Atkins; to a member of the founding Editorial Board, Ario Santini FCGDent, who continues to provide highly rated abstracts of relevance to the contents of each issue of the journal; and to Darren Westlake, who has designed the covers and laid out the figures in each and every issue.
We are confident that we have created an attractive, distinctive, reader-friendly journal and it is our hope that you will enjoy the 50th issue and join the previous and current editorial team in celebrating all it stands for.
A list of the themed editions within the first 50 issues of the PDJ is available here
The titles and abstracts of PDJ papers are available to all dental professionals via the searchable PDJ homepage, with full paper access available to College members through the PDJ Library