How international are the editorial boards in the field of hand research? A cross-sectional study of leading subspecialty hand journals

BACKGROUND

Although low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) have great disease burden, but the lack of studies from LMIC have been shown in several fields. Multiple researchers from LMIC perceive editorial bias against their studies. Editorial board members (EBMs) from LMIC are under-represented across many medical journals. It is still unclear whether this phenomenon exists in the field of hand research. The purpose of this study was to investigate the composition of EBMs in leading subspecialty hand journals, and to reveal the international representation of EBMs in the field of hand research.

METHODS

This cross-sectional study included seven leading subspecialty hand journals. The EBMs were obtained from the journals' websites. The country affiliations of EBMs were categorized based on their locations and economy status. The composition of EBMs was investigated.

RESULTS

There were 211 EBMs in the seven journals. A total of 185 EBMs (87.7%) were affiliated with high-income countries (HIC), 18 (8.5%) with upper middle-income countries, and 8 (3.8%) with lower middle-income countries. None EBMs were affiliated with low income countries. The EBMs were affiliated with 30 countries. The biggest number of EBMs were affiliated with the USA 74 (35.07%), followed by the United Kingdom (45, 21.33%), and France (13, 6.16%). Most of EBMs were based in Europe and Central Asia (86, 40.8%) and North America (81, 38.4%).

CONCLUSIONS

The EBMs of leading subspecialty hand journals are dominated by HIC with a very low representation of LMIC. There is a need to make the editorial boards more international in the field of hand research.

Reporting quality of CONSORT flow diagrams in published early phase dose-finding clinical trial reports: Improvement is needed

BACKGROUND

This project aims to: (1) assess the completeness of information in flow diagrams of published early phase dose-finding (EPDF) trials based on CONSORT recommendations, and if additional features on dose (de-)escalation were presented; (2) propose new flow diagrams presenting how doses were (de-)escalated throughout the trial.

METHODS

Flow diagrams were extracted from a random sample of 259 EPDF trials, published from 2011 to 2020 indexed in PubMed. Diagrams were scored out of 15 following CONSORT recommendations with an additional score for presence of (de-)escalation. New templates were proposed for features that were deficient and presented to 39 methodologists and 11 clinical trialists in October and December 2022.

RESULTS

98 (38%) papers included a flow diagram. Flow diagrams were most deficient in the reporting of reasons for lost to follow up (2%) and reasons for not receiving allocated intervention (14%). Few (39%) presented sequential dose-decision stages. Of voting methodologists, 33/38 (87%) agreed or strongly agreed that for participants recruited in cohorts, presenting the (de-)escalation steps in the flow diagram is a useful feature, also expressed by the trial investigators. Most workshop attendees (35/39, 90%) preferred a larger dose to be displayed higher up within the flow diagram than a smaller dose.

CONCLUSION

Most published trials do not provide a flow diagram, and for those that do, essential information is often omitted. EPDF flow diagrams capturing information on participant flow in the trial's journey, encapsulated within one figure, are highly recommended to promote transparency and interpretability of trial results.

Four Decades of Foot and Ankle Research Activity: A Scientometric study of Subspecialty Foot and Ankle Journals

Objectives

To evaluate foot and ankle documents using scientometric methods and provide insight into global research activities.

Methods

This scientometric study was conducted at the Department of Spine Surgery, Ganzhou People's Hospital, China. Documents on foot and ankle from 1980 to 2019 were retrieved from the Scopus database. The number of documents, year of publication, journal, country, institution, author, h-index, and top-cited documents were analyzed.

Results

In total, 11313 documents were retrieved. The annual research output on foot and ankle showed a dramatic increase over the past four decades, especially in the past decade (p = 0.000). Foot & Ankle International published the biggest number of documents (44.48%). The United States contributed more than half (52.17%) of the global production, followed by the United Kingdom (11.39%), and Germany (3.62%). The United States had the highest h-index (109). The Hospital for Special Surgery (1.87%) ranked first in terms of productivity, followed by Union Memorial Hospital (1.37%), and Duke University Medical Center (1.24%). The most productive author was Myerson MS (1.25%), followed by Schon LC (0.77%), and Hyer CF (0.74%).

Conclusion

Research on foot and ankle has thrived rapidly over the past four decades, particularly in the last decade. The United States contributes the most to the quantity and quality of foot and ankle documents.

Guidance for Qualitative Research Manuscripts in Pharmacy Education

The goal of this Best Practice Review is to support researchers in successfully preparing and publishing qualitative research in pharmacy education. Standard practice from the literature and journals' guidance from related fields were reviewed, and recommendations and resources applicable to qualitative research in pharmacy education were compiled for researchers planning to conduct and publish qualitative research. This review provides recommendations, not requirements, for publication in the Journal and is intended to be a guide, especially for authors and reviewers relatively new to the field of qualitative research. Additionally, researchers planning to publish their qualitative research are advised to review available best practices and standards, such as the Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research checklist and the Standards for Reporting Qualitative Research. Given the diverse methodology of qualitative research, it is important for authors to provide sufficient details and justifications of selected methods for transparency and to report collected results in a manner that allows reviewers and readers to adequately assess the validity of their study and the applicability of the findings.

Publication rate and factors associated with publication of research projects by obstetrics residents in an academic department over 10 years

OBJECTIVES

To determine the publication rate of mandatory research projects conducted by obstetrics residents and to evaluate the publication-associated factors and reported obstacles.

STUDY DESIGN

This retrospective cohort study included all consecutive residents in an academic obstetrics-gynecology department in Paris, France, between 2010 and 2020. All residents were required to conduct a research project. Information about publication was collected by searching PubMed. A closed-ended questions questionnaire was sent to former residents about their characteristics, subsequent professional development, and research project characteristics. Factors associated with publication were identified by univariable and multivariable analysis with logistic regression.

RESULTS

During the study period, 156 residents trained in our obstetrics-gynecology department. The overall publication rate was 30.8% (48/156) and the median time to publication 27 months (IQR, 18-37). The resident was first author in 36 (75.0%) publications. Among the 130 (83.3%) residents who completed the questionnaire, 43 (33%) had published their research project. Overall, 74/130 (60.8%) residents used their project for their mandatory medical thesis. Factors associated with publication in univariable analysis were younger age (median), completion of a PhD, planned career in academic medicine, prospective study design, presentation at a conference or congress and use their project for their medical thesis. The only factors associated with publication in the multivariable analysis were planned career in academic medicine (aOR 5.62 95 %CI[1.84-17.19]) and the prospective study design of the research project (aOR 6.1 95 %CI[1.24-29.56]). The main reasons for nonpublication reported by resident were lack of time and failure to complete the project.

CONCLUSION

Among the mandatory clinical research projects conducted by obstetrics residents over a decade in our department, 30.8% were published. The main factors associated with publication were planned career in academic medicine and a prospective design of the research project.

How to select a journal for your research

Publication in a peer-reviewed journal is the goal of any research project. One of the most important (and possibly the least understood) aspects of the publication process is the choice of a suitable journal that is likely to accept your work. Detailed information and tips and tricks to success are given in this editorial.

ChatGPT and conversational artificial intelligence: Friend, foe, or future of research?

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are increasingly utilized across healthcare. More recently, there has been a rise in the use AI within research, particularly through novel conversational AI platforms, such as ChatGPT. In this Controversies paper, we discuss the advantages, limitations, and future directions for ChatGPT and other forms of conversational AI in research and scholarly dissemination.

The relation between social media mentions and academic citations in orthodontic journals: A preliminary study

BACKGROUND

To study the relation between social media mentions and academic citations for articles published in peer-reviewed orthodontic journals.

METHODS

Articles published in early 2018 in seven peer-reviewed orthodontic journals were retrospectively analyzed in September 2022. Citation counts of the articles were evaluated using two databases: Google Scholar (GS) and Web of Science (WoS). The Altmetric Attention Score, Twitter, Facebook mentions, and Mendeley reads were tracked using the Altmetric Bookmarklet. The citation counts and social media mentions were correlated using Spearman rho.

RESULTS

A total of 84 articles were identified during the initial search; 64 (76%) were original studies and systematic review articles and included in the analysis. A total of 38% of the articles had at least one mention on social media. Over the study period, the average number of citations of the articles mentioned on social media was higher than the non-mentioned articles for GS and WoS, respectively. Moreover, significant positive correlations existed between the Altmetric Attention Score and the number of citations in GS and WoS (r_s = 0.31, P = 0.001 and r_s = 0.26, P = 0.04).

CONCLUSIONS

Social media mentions and citations of articles published in peer-reviewed orthodontic journals are correlated, with a clear difference in the number of citations in articles mentioned on social media versus those not mentioned, indicating possible increased reach of articles disseminated on social media.

Bibliometric analyses of publications in the field of restless legs syndrome

PURPOSE

Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS) is a chronic neurological disorder and the incidence of RLS is a more common disease than known is accepted. This study was performed to identify and analyze the characteristics of RLS-related articles published from 2001 to 2020 using bibliometric analyses.

METHODS

RLS-related articles published from 2001 to 2020 were retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection database with predefined search terms. VOSviewer software was used to visualize various bibliographic coupling networks on data. The top 10 lists (about organizations, papers, journals, most commonly cited articles, authors, countries, and keywords) extracted from 2001 to 2020 were also analyzed.

RESULTS

A total of 2311 articles were included and the total number of publications from 2001 to 2020 was increased by 5.02-fold. The highest number of RLS publications (n = 171) since 2001 was observed in 2020. The United States is contributed the highest number of RLS-related publications (34.53%). The top productive journal was Sleep Medicine and the most prominent organization was Johns Hopkins University. In the list of top 10 authors, Allen RP was the first author.

CONCLUSIONS

This study is the first bibliometric analysis that provides a general perspective on the RLS from 2001 to 2020 and may be useful as a guide for further research in this field.

h-Index, Journal Citation Indicator, and Other Impact Factors in Neurosurgical Publications: Is There a Cost Factor That Determines the Quality?

OBJECTIVE

There has been an increase in number of Neurosurgical publications, including open access (OA), in recent years. We aimed to compare journals' performance and the relationship to submission fees incurred in publication.

METHODS

We identified 53 journals issuing neurosurgery-related work. Quantitative analysis from various search engines involved obtaining h-index, Journal Citation Indicator (JCI), and other metrics such as Immediacy Index and 5-year impact factor utilising Journal Citation Reports. OA fees and individual subscription fees were collected. Correlations were produced using Spearman rho (ρ) (P < 0.05).

RESULTS

Median h-index for 53 journals was 54 (range: 0-292), with JCI median reported as 0.785 (range: 0-2.45). Median Immediacy Index was 0.797 (range: 0-4.076), and median for 5-year impact factor was 2.76 (range: 0-12.704). There was a very strong positive correlation between JCI and Immediacy Index, JCI and 5-year impact factor, and 5-year impact factor and Immediacy Index (ρ > 0.7, P < 0.05). It is unclear whether there was any correlation between the indices and the OA costs and subscription costs for personal usage (P > 0.05).

CONCLUSIONS

Larger costs incurred for OA fees and subscription costs for personal use do not clearly reflect on the journals' performance, as quantified by using various indices. There appears to be a strong association with performance across the journals' metrics. It would be beneficial to include learning about bibliometric indices' impact for research publications in medical education training to maximize the quality of the scientific work produced and increase the visibility of the information produced. The potential full movement to exclusively OA journals would create a significant barrier for junior researchers, small institutions, and full time-trainee physicians with limited funding available. This study suggests the need for a robust measurement of journals' output and the quality of the work produced.

Tips and guidelines for being a good peer reviewer

Publication is the key means by which science spreads. The purpose of scientific journals is to publish novel and quality articles. The editors of the journals evaluate the content of the manuscripts by submitting them to a process called «peer review», considered today the gold standard to guarantee the adequate publication of scientific articles. A well-crafted and critical peer-review report is a treasure for both authors and editors. In the present manuscript we will examine the key aspects of the peer review process. We will begin by explaining what exactly this process consists of and since when it has existed, and then clarifying why it is so important. Then we will argue why we should want to be reviewers of scientific papers. We will then review what are the fundamental rules to carry out a good review of a manuscript and what aspects of it we should focus on. Later we will see what format a peer review report should have and how to write its different sections, as well as the options for its final resolution. We will pay special attention to commenting on the ethical aspects and the most frequent errors that are made in the evaluation of manuscripts. Finally, we will recognize what the fundamental limitations of peer review are, and we will end by proposing some suggestions for their improvement. Our ultimate goal is to stimulate researchers -and authors- to go one step further and undertake the challenge of being peer reviewers of scientific manuscripts.

'Mind-forg'd Manacles': Virtual Experience and Innocent Publication

In Fairfax Media Publications Pty Ltd v Voller ('Voller') the Australian High Court held that media companies maintaining Facebook comment pages could be liable for the defamatory posts of commenters on those sites. The decision focussed entirely on whether, by maintaining the Facebook page, the companies had 'published' the statements of commenters. Hearings on other aspects of the tort litigation continue. This paper considers the implications of the tort of defamation on public participation on political will formation where, as is increasingly the case, the participation occurs virtually. Australian law has already tackled the law of defamation as a threat to freedom of political communication; Voller continues the jurisprudence by considering whether hosting an online forum for debate amounts to publication. The more recent High Court judgment in Google LLC v Defteros demonstrated the necessity of the law to align the 'acts' necessary to found legal action with the new environment of automated search engines. The troubled intersection of dematerialised practices of political and cultural discourse and jurisdictionally bound laws of defamation challenges participatory governance as tribes form and dissolve and shift between geographical interests. Defamation in Australia is a tort of strict liability; and, absenting applicable defences, any participation in communication is sufficient to make that participant a publisher and a party to the defamation. The online environment stretches words across geographical and jurisdictional boundaries, but it also stretches and contorts concepts of fault and responsibility. Participatory digital cultural practices integrating users in the creation of cultural heritage simultaneously draw participants into transgressions, both cultural and legal, which are amplified by the medium. Questions of collective guilt, 'shades' of moral responsibility and disproportionality between blameworthiness and legal liability challenge laws formulated for the printing press but now deployed in the online environment. In this way the digitized participatory environment presents deep challenges to law and legal systems, which are chained to geography. This paper considers the concept of innocent publication in the context of the digitized participatory environment and the way in which the virtual experience is dissolving concepts of geographically defined jurisdictions.

The life and death of living systematic reviews: a methodological survey

OBJECTIVES

The objectives of this study are to describe the characteristics of living systematic reviews (LSRs) and to understand their life cycles.

STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING

We conducted a comprehensive search up to April 2021 then selected articles and abstracted data in duplicate and independently. We undertook descriptive analyses and calculated delay in version update and delay since the last published version.

RESULTS

We included 76 eligible LSRs with a total of 279 eligible versions. The majority of LSRs was from the clinical field (70%), was COVID-19 related (63%), and had a funding source specified (62%). The median number of versions per LSR was 2 (interquartile range (IQR) 1-4; range 1-19). The median and IQR for the ratio of the actual period of update to the planned period of update was 1.12 (0.81; 1.71). Out of all reviews with a 'planned period of update' and at least one update (N = 19), eight LSRs (42%) had a period since last published version greater than 3 times the planned period of update. No LSR included a 'retirement notice' in their latest published version.

CONCLUSION

While most LSR complied with the planned period of producing updates, a substantive proportion lagged since their last update.

Comment on the article: The state of social science research on COVID‑19

A well-written and interesting article was published on November 21, 2021. Future relevant studies, however, may be improved by implementing (1) a framework that outlines the overall research; (2) an author-weighted scheme (AWS) that accurately quantifies the contributions of entities to articles; and (3) a more appropriate size for the nodes representing the proportional counts for each entity in social network analysis (SNA). VOSviewer was used to construct and visualize the scientometric networks and the relation-based analyses included three categories: (1) citation relations, (2) word cooccurrences, and (3) coauthorship relations. Nevertheless, the counts for each topical entity have not been consistently integrated. As a result, the nodes of the keyword co-occurrence network are large when compared to the number of connections between the entities or terms (i.e., the total number of relationships between co-occurring terms or entities). Additionally, all weighted counts in keywords (or the total link strength of a country/region) should equal the total number of documents (e.g., n = 9954 in that article). This would lead to biases in the calculation of publications (or citations) for entities, as is common in traditional SNA. This node illustrates a study framework and a couple of AWSs (i.e., equal and nonequal AWSs) to improve the article, and discusses the need to understand the requirement that the total centrality degree in SNA equals the total number of documents (or citations).

Text classification technique for discovering country-based publications from international COVID-19 publications

Objective

The significant increase in the number of COVID-19 publications, on the one hand, and the strategic importance of this subject area for research and treatment systems in the health field, on the other hand, reveals the need for text-mining research more than ever. The main objective of the present paper is to discover country-based publications from international COVID-19 publications with text classification techniques.

Methods

The present paper is applied research that has been performed using text-mining techniques such as clustering and text classification. The statistical population is all COVID-19 publications from PubMed Central® (PMC), extracted from November 2019 to June 2021. Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) was used for clustering, and support vector machine (SVM), scikit-learn library, and Python programming language were used for text classification. Text classification was applied to discover the consistency of Iranian and international topics.

Results

The findings showed that seven topics were extracted using the LDA algorithm for international and Iranian publications on COVID-19. Moreover, the COVID-19 publications show the largest share in the subject area of "Social and Technology in COVID-19" at the international (April 2021) and national (February 2021) levels with 50.61% and 39.44%, respectively. The highest rate of publications at international and national levels was in April 2021 and February 2021, respectively.

Conclusion

One of the most important results of this study was discovering a common trend and consistency of Iranian and international publications on COVID-19. Accordingly, in the topic category "Covid-19 Proteins: Vaccine and Antibody Response," Iranian publications have a common publishing and research trend with international ones.

Academic Productivity of Early Career Transfusion Medicine Specialists: A Workforce Study

Blood Banking/Transfusion Medicine (BB/TM) specialists oversee all aspects of blood component transfusions and are often involved with apheresis, coagulation, and cellular therapy services as well. This study characterizes the BB/TM workforce to determine the scholarly productivity in the first 3 to 5 years after obtaining board certification and the impact of job type, job location, and academic rank on scholarly productivity. Academic productivity was assessed among individuals passing the American Board of Pathology BB/TM board exam between 2016 and 2018 using the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Portfolio Analysis tool, iCite. One hundred and 28 BB/TM specialists were included in the analysis. The majority of BB/TM specialists work in academia, are located in the Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic regions, and have a rank of Assistant Professor. Since passing the board exam, 76.5% (98/128) of BB/TM specialists have published papers, with 4.0 (IQR = 1-8) total number of published papers per individual, and 791 total papers amongst the group. The median publications per individual per year since passing boards is 0.9 (IQR = 0.2-2.3) the number of publications per year since passing boards for BB/TM specialists in academia is significantly higher compared to other jobs at 1.33 (IQR, 0.5-2.89, Kruskal-Wallis P = .03) per individual Assistant Professors and Associate Professors (1.3, IQR= 0.4-2.7 and 1.4, IQR = 0.6-3.3, Mann-Whitney test P > .99). BB/TM specialists who passed the board exam between 2016 and 2018 are highly academically productive, especially those working in academia where publications are necessary for promotion. BB/TM physicians are an extensively trained and academically-minded group of practitioners.

Papers perpetually in press: intellect left to rot

BACKGROUND

One of the satisfactions of publishing a paper in an academic journal is seeing the process reach closure after potentially weeks or months of peer review and editorial processing. Typically, in the latter step, a proof is developed and the paper stays in press until the paper is assigned to a journal issue, in the case of a print journal. In some cases, it is possible to find papers that are in press for years.

AIMS

Although it is unclear why this is the case, when a paper stays in an "in limbo" status for so long, it almost defeats the purpose of rapid proof and online publication.

METHOD

The date of the last "in press" article was manually extracted and compared in 23 medicine-related journals indexed in Elsevier's Science Direct.

RESULTS

Among the 23 journals, "in press" articles ranged from less than one month to almost 16 years.

CONCLUSION

Editors and publishers should endeavor to publish all "in press" papers within a reasonable amount of time. If not, they should rethink their publication process so as not to leave the intellect of some academics in a perpetual state of publishing "limbo".