{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.021910112359550562, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0047752808988764045, 'mean_word_length': 5.087179487179487, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
A Letter From the Editor

Dear Colleagues: This is the second time that Connective Tissue Research has had the pleasure of publishing the Proceedings of the International Conference on Tooth Morphogenesis and Differentiation . The meeting organizers did a wonderful job in organizing the meeting, arranging the manuscripts, and leading the review process. Professors Henry Magloire, Jean-Christophe Farges, and Françoise Bleicher from the Laboratory of Dental Tissues at Lyon1–University deserve our thanks for their efforts. It was indeed a formidable task. Publishing the papers from a comprehensive, wide-ranging meeting such as this is particularly complex. The Conference itself must meet the requirement of being at the forefront of the fields being covered, thus the primary task of the Organizers is to be selective in choosing the topics to be covered and the individual presenters. However, a Proceedingscan take either one of two forms: it can simply be a publication of the papers and abstracts, as submitted by the invited presenters; or it can be a compendium of the papers reviewed and edited to the highest standard, so that the issue represents a resource with major impact on the covered fields. The advantage of the former is speed in production. Once the manuscripts are collected, there is not much delay in turning out the finished product. The advantage of the latter approach is the enhanced quality of the presentations and the ability of the authors and readers to consider the papers as critically reviewed. The downside is the more extended length of the publication process at every step. Immediacy is sacrificed for permanence and accessibility of the record. Connective Tissue Research has chosen the latter approach for anyProceedingsthat it has published, so that every manuscript has gone through the review process. Since the papers represent an eclectic mix of topics and styles, some are “state of the art” reviews or perspectives, while others are more standard research presentations. The reviewers had to take these differences into account. It is safe to say that every manuscript in this set of papers (including the one from my laboratory!) benefited from the critical comments of the reviewers, and no manuscript escaped the necessity for some revision. Drs. Magloire, Farges, and Bleicher, as “Guest Editors” selected the reviewers principally, but not entirely, from meeting participants. The reviewers treated their task seriously, and provided sharp questions as well as valuable suggestions for the authors. The Guest Editors corresponded with the authors relative to the revisions, then sent the revised manuscripts to my office with their recommendation. In some cases, we requested a further revision. Although we oped to include all manuscripts submitted, there were some rejections. The Meeting was held in mid-June, 2001. The revised, tentatively accepted manuscripts began arriving in the Editorial Office in late October 2001, and the final revised manuscript was received in the last week of February 2002. All of this, comprised of some 1100 manuscript pages, was then sent to our new publisher, Taylor & Francis, for copyediting and production. I must thank my Editorial Assistant, Thomas Dahl, for keeping track of the manuscripts and correspondence, while also managing the regular manuscript flow. I hope you will agree that the effort was worthwhile, and that this issue provides an up-to-date statement of our knowledge relative to craniofacial development and tooth morphogenesis in particular.