« Show me a worker with big dreams and in him you will find a man who can change history. Show me a man with no dreams and you will find a plain worker.» James Cash Penney
The Revista Mexicana de Ortodoncia emerges as a pressing need to spread national and Spanish-speaking countries scientific research. There have been many efforts over the years by associations, academies, colleges and schools to achieve the edition of a scientific journal devoted exclusively to orthodontics. The vast majority of these have resulted in publications of commercial type and in other cases, in magazines that responded more to special interests. All these publications lack of global standards that allow ratification with other orthodontic magazines at international level.
Just the simple effort, the planning, the infrastructure and financial resources necessary to be able to accomplish a project like this have been enough excuse from our country's orthodontic guild to delay what cannot be put off: the creation of a scientific journal in dentistry dedicated exclusively to orthodontics.
«In our country there is not enough research to publish ortohodntic studies only» «No association or university has the sufficient infrastructure to publish it» «In here very poor orthodontic research is conducted, we would be doing a terrible thing if we published it». All these are just some of the expressions and comments that we repeatedly listen, some specialists that continue spreading their fear and pessimism to a new generation of students and orthodontists eager to begin a mindset change in our country.
It really is ironic that the first dental journal devoted exclusively to orthodontics published by Edward Angle in 1907 probably had a similar goal in its foundation: establishing an environment that allowed to publish the knowledge and scientific research in order to amalgamate a specialty that although there was already awareness of it, was not fully established within dentistry.
It is essential to carry out in Mexico and Latin America publications with features that allow us to share the orthodontic knowledge here produced with other parts of the world. The edition of a scientific magazine additionally permits the improvement of the quality of the research that is performed in the various graduate programs in orthodontics; it also increases healthy competitiveness between universities and specialists, encourages research by having an environment where one can expose it and share it, submits to open criticism the results of the study to the guild of our specialty and eventually creates knowledge that makes it easier for the orthodontist to make clinical decisions based on scientific evidence.