| Source | What it covers | Access | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nigerian Dental Journal | Nigeria-specific dentistry research across all sub-specialties, indexed on African Journals Online | Open access via AJOL | National studies, case reports and local prevalence data for your literature review |
| Nigerian Journal of Dental Research | Nigeria-specific dental research, indexed on African Journals Online | Open access via AJOL | A second Nigerian dental-specific source to cross-check against the Nigerian Dental Journal |
| Nigerian Journal of Clinical Practice | Broader Nigerian clinical medicine that regularly carries dental and oral health research alongside other specialties | Open access via AJOL | Nigerian studies that sit at the border of dentistry and general clinical medicine (oral manifestations of systemic disease, for example) |
| PubMed / MEDLINE | Global biomedical and life-sciences literature, including dentistry, indexed from thousands of journals worldwide | Free to search; full text depends on the individual journal’s access policy | The international and methodological literature your Chapter Two needs to sit alongside the Nigerian studies |
| Google Scholar | Broad scholarly content including journal articles, theses and conference papers, with citation counts | Free | Discovering how often a source has been cited, and finding Nigerian university theses and dissertations on your topic |
| African Journals Online (AJOL) | The platform hosting the three Nigerian journals above, plus hundreds of other African-published journals across medicine and dentistry | Free, open access | A single search point for African-published dental and clinical research rather than searching each journal’s own site separately |
Recommendation and Runner-Up
For a Nigerian dentistry final year project, search African Journals Online first, since it is the single platform that surfaces all three Nigerian journals above in one search and is free throughout. Use it to build the Nigeria-specific spine of your literature review — local prevalence data, case reports and studies conducted in Nigerian teaching hospitals and dental schools. For the international and methodological literature that situates your Nigerian findings against a wider evidence base, the runner-up is PubMed/MEDLINE, which indexes a far larger volume of dental literature than any single African journal or platform can, though its full-text access varies article by article, so budget time for some abstracts-only results.
Why These Three Nigerian Journals, Specifically
Searching African Journals Online for dental research surfaces three Nigerian journals consistently: the Nigerian Dental Journal and the Nigerian Journal of Dental Research, both dedicated dentistry titles, and the Nigerian Journal of Clinical Practice, a broader clinical-medicine journal that regularly publishes dental and oral-health research alongside its other specialties. This last one is worth knowing specifically, because a student searching only for dentistry-titled journals will miss it — and it is where studies bridging dentistry and general medicine (the oral manifestations of diabetes, for example, or dental findings in a broader health survey) are more likely to appear than in a dentistry-only title.
Search Terms by Dental Sub-Field
A broad search for “dental” or “dentistry” returns too wide and unfocused a set of results across any of the platforms above. Narrow your search to your specific sub-field instead: for periodontics, try “periodontal disease Nigeria” or “gingivitis prevalence Nigerian”; for oral and maxillofacial surgery, try “impacted third molar Nigeria” or “maxillofacial trauma Nigerian”; for paediatric dentistry, try “dental caries children Nigeria” or “early childhood caries Nigerian”; for orthodontics, try “malocclusion prevalence Nigeria”; for prosthodontics, try “edentulism Nigeria” or “removable denture Nigerian”; for oral pathology, try “oral squamous cell carcinoma Nigeria” or “oral lesion prevalence Nigerian”; and for community dentistry and public health, try “oral health knowledge attitude Nigeria” or “oral hygiene practice Nigerian students.” A narrower, sub-field-specific search term consistently returns a more usable, more relevant set of results on any of the platforms in the table above than the generic term does.
How to Search AJOL Efficiently
Use AJOL’s own search function with your specific sub-field term rather than the broad word “dental” or “dentistry” alone. Read the journal each result belongs to before you cite it, since AJOL indexes journals of varying editorial rigour — the three named above have an established publishing history, which is one reasonable signal of quality alongside checking whether the specific article has been cited elsewhere (Google Scholar’s citation count is a quick, free way to check this). Where AJOL’s own search returns few results for your exact sub-field term, broaden one word at a time rather than jumping straight back to the generic “dental” search — drop the location qualifier before you drop the clinical term, since the clinical specificity is usually what makes a result actually usable in your review.
How to Search PubMed for Nigerian and African Dental Research
PubMed’s search is not limited to international literature; searching a specific term alongside “Nigeria” or “Nigerian” (for example, “dental caries Nigeria”) returns Nigerian-authored or Nigeria-based studies published in journals PubMed indexes, some of which will be different from what AJOL surfaces, since the two platforms index different, only partially overlapping sets of journals. Running the same search term on both platforms and combining the results, rather than relying on only one, is the single habit most likely to improve your literature review’s coverage. PubMed’s filter panel also lets you restrict results by publication date, which is worth using if your topic needs recent literature only — a ten-year-old prevalence figure presented as current is a common, avoidable fault panels flag.
What About University Repositories and Dissertation Archives?
Several Nigerian dental schools and their parent universities maintain institutional repositories holding past theses, dissertations and project reports, which are a genuinely useful source for seeing how a similar topic was approached locally, what instrument was used, and what the department’s own convention for structure and citation looks like. Access and completeness vary considerably from one institution’s repository to another, and not every repository is indexed by Google Scholar or searchable from outside the institution, so the most reliable route is often to ask your own department’s library directly which repository it maintains and how to search it, rather than assuming a general web search will surface it. Where you do draw on a past student’s thesis, cite it as a thesis in your chosen reference style, and treat its literature review as a starting point to verify and extend rather than a shortcut to copy from — a panel that has supervised the earlier thesis will recognise a body of text lifted from it immediately.
What to Do When a Source Is Not Freely Available
Where PubMed links to a journal that requires a subscription for the full text, first check whether your institution’s library provides access, then check whether the authors have posted a freely available version on a repository such as ResearchGate or their institution’s own repository, and only cite from the abstract, clearly noting that you have not read the full text, if neither route works and the abstract alone is genuinely sufficient for the point you are making. Never cite a finding, figure or methodological detail from a paper whose full text you have not actually read.
Watching for Signs of a Predatory or Low-Quality Journal
Not every journal that appears in a search result is one a panel will accept as a reliable source. Before citing an unfamiliar journal, check a few basic signals: does it have a clearly stated, named editorial board with identifiable academic affiliations; does it publish a consistent volume and issue schedule rather than irregular, sporadic issues; is it indexed on a recognised platform such as AJOL, PubMed or a listed reputable index, rather than existing only on its own standalone website; and does it charge an unusually low or unusually fast “guaranteed acceptance” publication fee, which is one of the most reliable predatory-journal red flags across all disciplines, not only dentistry. The three Nigerian journals named in the table above are all indexed on AJOL with an established publishing history, which is one part of why they are recommended here over an unfamiliar journal a general web search might surface.
Building Your Reference List Across Sources
A dentistry literature review that draws only on Nigerian journals reads as narrow to a panel that expects your Chapter Two to situate Nigerian findings against the wider dental research literature; one that draws only on international PubMed results without any Nigerian studies reads as disconnected from your own study’s national context. The strongest Chapter Two structure uses the three Nigerian journals for local prevalence, practice and case-report evidence, and PubMed/MEDLINE for the international methodological and comparative literature. Once you have gathered sources, the verb you use to introduce each one matters as much as the source itself — our guide to choosing reporting verbs for a literature review covers how strongly you can state what a dental study actually found, and our guide to which referencing style your Nigerian university actually requires covers the citation format itself, since it is rarely a single national default.
Once you have gathered sources from both the Nigerian and international literature, Tesify helps you organise them consistently and keeps your citations aligned across every chapter as your review grows. Start your dentistry project with Tesify — over 9,000 students and 15,000+ chapters written, 100% written by you.
Frequently asked questions
Is African Journals Online the same thing as PubMed?
No. AJOL is a platform specifically hosting African-published journals, including the three Nigerian dental and clinical journals covered here; PubMed is a much larger, US National Library of Medicine-run index covering biomedical journals worldwide, only some of which are African-published.
Can I cite a dental thesis I found on Google Scholar?
You can cite an unpublished thesis or dissertation if your faculty’s referencing style permits it and you can access enough of the actual document to verify what it says, though a peer-reviewed published article is generally a stronger citation than an unpublished thesis where both are available on the same point.
Are the three Nigerian journals mentioned here peer-reviewed?
All three carry an established academic publishing history on AJOL, which is generally associated with a peer-review process, though the specific peer-review policy of each journal is stated on its own journal page on AJOL and is worth checking directly if a question about it comes up at your defence.
Should I prioritise Nigerian journals or international journals in my literature review?
Use both, deliberately. Nigerian journals give you the local prevalence and practice evidence your study is situated in; international journals, primarily through PubMed, give you the methodological and comparative evidence that shows your study understands the wider field.
What if I cannot find any Nigerian research on my specific dental topic?
State that explicitly in your literature review as part of your research gap, rather than stretching a loosely related Nigerian study to fill the space; a genuine gap in the Nigerian literature is itself part of your study’s justification.
How many sources should a dentistry Chapter Two literature review cite?
There is no fixed national number, and it depends on your topic’s breadth and your department’s own convention; what matters more than the count is that your sources are a genuine mix of Nigerian and international literature, all read in full rather than cited from an abstract alone.
Is it acceptable to cite a conference abstract instead of a full journal article?
Only where no full article on the same finding exists and your faculty’s referencing style explicitly permits conference-abstract citations; a full peer-reviewed article is the stronger source wherever one is available on the same point.
Can I access PubMed’s full-text articles for free?
Some are freely available in full, particularly those deposited in PubMed Central, while others require a subscription through your institution’s library or the publisher directly; PubMed’s search results indicate which option applies to each specific article.
How do I know if a dental journal is predatory before I cite it?
Check for a named, identifiable editorial board, a consistent publication schedule, and indexing on a recognised platform such as AJOL or PubMed rather than the journal existing only on its own standalone site. An unusually fast, low-cost, near-guaranteed acceptance offer is the clearest single warning sign.