Abstract:

Introduction:
The specialty of orthodontics is a clinical discipline. However, some academic orthodontic programs also teach literacy skills. These skills enable students to better describe their clinical cases. Graduation from these programs requires a thesis, a dissertation, or an essay. Our orthodontic program requires a thesis, dissertation, or essay, as a final requirement for graduation. To prepare students to fulfill this requirement, it is very important that students master the review of literature, as well as organizational and information processing skills. Likewise, it is desirable that the student who works with a clinical case, review relevant literature to obtain information and to organize the photograph of the patient with this information in a single presentation and document. In our specialty, the final work is presented by the student and defended before an academic tribunal. The final work is presented using PowerPoint and as a Word document, that includes a literature review. To do this it is very important for the student to develop review and citation skills..

Objective:
To train students in reading and writing skills, as well as to efficiently cite articles from literature. Our hypothesis was that students can evidence a good sequence of citations and a good organization of their manuscripts, using a citation pilot repository (CPR).

Methodology:
A small repository of pilot citations was generated, in which students reported two to three citations, from 9 scientific articles. The citations were recorded in the right margin of the manuscript, in order and using different colors to identify each relevant cited article. The students also wrote a paraphrase of each quotation. The maximum limit of the trial was 7 pages not including references. RESULTS: 100% of students were able to search, cite and paraphrase 2 to 3 citations per article. The references were cited with excellent organization and sequence. The students reported that they quoted easily, without worrying about feeling lost when quoting.

Conclusion:
Students of the orthodontic specialty were able to develop skills of organization, sequencing, and visualization of references, throughout the writing of an essay, using CPR. CPR avoided repetitive information when citing and, more importantly, students felt comfortable and safe conducting a literature review.

Keywords:

Citation repository, literature review and citation skills, students self-confidence in literature review.