Background: Open access publishing has become increasingly popular within the biomedical sciences. SciELO, the Scientific Electronic Library Online, presents digital libraries of scientific journal collections of full text articles with open access. There are some oral health journals among SciELO’s collections, which might receive reports of trials in English, Portuguese and/or Spanish. Due to the cited features, SciELO could play an important role as a source of evidence if those reports present good quality and quantity. Objectives: To identify reports of trials by handsearching Brazilian Oral Health journals in SciELO, and to assess their overall quality. Material and methods: The six Brazilian oral health journals available in SciELO were searched directly in the site www.scielo.br. Reports of trials were classified as randomized controlled trials (RCTs) or controlled clinical trials (CCTs), according to Cochrane eligibility criteria. Systematic reviews (SRs) were also reported. Methodological quality of the trials will be assessed for randomization, concealment of treatment allocation, blinding of outcome assessments and intention-to-treat analysis. Results: Thirty (30) CCTs, forty (40) RCTs and five (5) SRs were available in SciELO until February 2008. Quality assessment will be carried out until August 2008, but preliminary data were obtained from 12 reports, obtained from Brazilian Dental Journal and Revista Dental Press de Ortodontia e Ortopedia Facial. Randomization and allocation concealment were unclear for 10 of them. Blinding was described for participants in two reports, whereas no one described blinding for researchers, outcome assessors or other components. Only one clearly described withdrawals and losses, and no mention was found about intention-to-treat analysis or similar procedures. Conclusions: A sound number of reports of trials and SRs is present in Scielo’s oral health journals. They can provide valuable evidence for clinical decision making, however, preliminary assessment shows that quality is a concern and should be improved.