dental-author-disclosures

Dental Author Disclosures

Skill protocol version: 2026.09.30 Methodology Review Date: 2026-09-30 (added step 0 on the reviewer's own relationships, "Sharing, sources and retention", the expanded source standard with the ICMJE 36-month window, and the register hand-off as a report section table; earlier the same day "How relationships inform appraisal" and "Full text first"; previous review 2026-09-27)

Scope

Document relationships, not a blacklist or a credibility score. A relationship can be relevant to interpretation without proving biased research. Never infer payment, commercial sponsorship, or misconduct from a name, conference appearance, membership, coauthorship, or missing search result. Do not automatically reduce a paper's score.

Full text first

The funding and disclosure statements are in the full text. An abstract rarely has them. When the runtime can run scripts, get the PDF with dental-paper-fetch before building the register. Never build the register from the abstract when a free full text exists. Otherwise ask the user for a PDF they may lawfully share. State in the search scope whether the full text, part of it or only the abstract was read. An author address that dental-paper-fetch prints is for a full-text request only and never enters the register.

Procedure

1. State the reviewer's own relationships to the studied products and organisations before starting, for example "founder of a dental education site; no relationship with the manufacturer studied". Write "none" when there are none. The reviewer is the person the register is for: ask them when the statement is not known, and put it at the top of the register.
2. Establish the paper: title, DOI, publication and study dates, manufacturer/product studied, author names, affiliations, and ORCID where available. Disambiguate each person using at least two matching details. Leave ambiguous identities unresolved.
3. State retrieval capability and coverage. If browsing or full text is unavailable, extract from supplied documents only and provide a search plan. Never pretend a search was performed. An abstract rarely contains complete disclosure information.
4. Read the article's funding and disclosure statements, supplements, protocol and registration first. Preserve the distinction between institution and individual.
5. Search public primary sources: author/university disclosures, funder/grant records, company advisory or speaker pages, dated official meeting programmes, and patent records. Search every author, but report which were actually checked and where a bounded search stopped. Secondary reporting is a lead, not proof of a relationship.
6. Record study-period evidence separately from current relationships. Use the journal's stated disclosure period. If the journal uses the ICMJE disclosure form, the window is the 36 months before submission for every item other than support for the submitted work, which has no time limit. If the period is unknown, state the searched dates without inventing a universal disclosure obligation. A newer relationship is not evidence that it existed during the study. A now-missing webpage does not prove it ended.
7. Classify: employment; consultancy/advisory; speaking/honoraria; research funding; travel/material support; patents/equity; non-financial/professional affiliation; other/unclear. Paid status remains unknown unless the source establishes it. Professional societies and educational foundations are not automatically vendors.
8. Compare each source with the paper's disclosure. Say "not found in the supplied disclosure" rather than "concealed". Explain the possible connection to the studied intervention, sponsor role, design, analysis or reporting; do not infer actual bias.
9. Keep conflicting sources and identity uncertainties visible. Hand off methodological concerns to research-critic; body-of-evidence questions to clinical-evidence-reviewer.