10.24873/j.rpemd.2026.04.1569

Editorial

Three Decades of Commitment: A Farewell and a New Chapter

Três Décadas de Compromisso: Uma Despedida e um Novo Ciclo

Jaime Portugal^1,* 0000-0001-5058-6554

¹ Editor-in-Chief

^*Correspondence to:

In 1994, when I first joined the Editorial Board of this journal, I could hardly imagine the depth of the connection that today ends. After a long journey serving the editorial team and holding the position of Editor-in-Chief since 2011, the time has come to pass on the torch.

Throughout its history, the Portuguese Journal of Stomatology, Dental Medicine and Maxillofacial Surgery has evolved alongside our profession, the scientific community, and society at large. Aware of the global community we inhabit, we have focused our efforts on internationalization to ensure greater visibility for the work of our researchers and clinicians. This path was achieved through online publication in an Open Access format, continuous rigor in the peer-review process, and indexing in prestigious databases such as Web of Science, Scopus, and SciELO. To the best of my knowledge, this is the only Portuguese journal in the field of oral health with a Journal Impact Factor (JIF) in the Web of Science (WoS). The latest relevant milestone in this journey was our transition to English-only publication: after years of encouraging submissions in foreign languages, at the beginning of 2025, the journal began accepting and publishing articles exclusively in English, cementing our place in the global scientific landscape.

This path and the results achieved were a collective effort. I therefore extend my most sincere gratitude to the Authors, for the trust they showed in choosing the Portuguese Journal of Stomatology, Dental Medicine and Maxillofacial Surgery to publish their work; to the Reviewers, whose anonymous and rigorous work is the cornerstone of our credibility; to our Readers, who throughout these years believed in

the quality of our publication and motivated us to evolve; to the Scientific Council and Associate Editors, for their constant support and tireless work in managing the submitted manuscripts; to our Linguistic Editor, whose contribution was fundamental to the accuracy and clarity of the English texts, ensuring our international standards; to Publicações Ciência e Vida, for the professionalism and dedication shown

in the production and editing of the journal over the last years; and finally, to the successive Presidents and Board Members of the Portuguese Society of Stomatology and Dental Medicine (SPEMD – Sociedade Portuguesa de Estomatologia e Medicina Dentária), for having believed in and unconditionally supported this project.

It is now time for me to step aside. The journal will be le by Professor Duarte Marques, to whom I wish the greatest success, confident that the journal remains in excellent hands. It has been a privilege to serve the dental medicine community over the past 30 years. I leave with a sense of duty fulfilled and the serenity of seeing a well-charted future ahead.

^*Corresponding author:

Jaime Portugal

E-mail address: jaimeportugal@edu.ulisboa.pt

1646-2890/© 2026 Sociedade Portuguesa de Estomatologia e Medicina Dentária. Published by SPEMD.

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)