Most Common Publication Types in Radiology Journals:: What is the Level of Evidence?

Business and publication models of radiology journals

OBJECTIVE

Traditional and open-access publication models have been increasingly scrutinized, particularly in light of the recent impasse regarding cost and access between Elsevier and the University of California. Peer-reviewed publications are the main source through which science is disseminated, yet the industry remains an enigma to most. Our aim was to determine radiology publisher market-share, access type, geographic distribution and relative research impact in order to better understand the traditionally opaque realm of academic publishing.

METHODS

During April 2020, Scopus was queried to extract all entries in the "Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging" subcategory of "Medicine." Journal name, publisher, SCImago Journal Ranking (SJR) score, country and publication model were cataloged. Publishers were grouped by their ownership type and journals were grouped by their publication model. Overall trends were assessed across publisher type, publication model, and geographic location.

RESULTS

Commercial publishers are used by 82% (239 of 293) of radiology journals. Elsevier and Springer Nature together published 40% (118/293) of journal titles within the category. Approximately one fourth (77/293) of radiology journals were open-access. On average, SJRs were highest for journals published commercially. Mean SJR across the top 10 publishers and publication model were similar (p = 0.06 and p = 0.48, respectively).

DISCUSSION

Radiology journal publication is heavily consolidated amongst a few global commercial organizations. Most radiology journals were subscription-based, but their impact did not differ significantly from open-access counterparts. Further disputes between universities and publishers could influence future manuscript submission, review, and citation, which has the potential to destabilize traditional publication models.

A bibliometric study of the journal Radiología during the period 2010-2019

BACKGROUND AND AIMS

Bibliometrics makes it possible to measure the relative importance of a scientific journal in its field. The current study analyzed the scientific publications in Radiología and the bibliometric parameters of the journal in the period comprising 2010 through 2019.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

We reviewed the bibliometrics for Radiología through information obtained from three sources: Scopus, the online version of the journal, and the publisher (Elsevier). We retrospectively analyzed aspects related to the editorial process (final decision and speed), the articles published (type, subspecialty of radiology, and imaging technique), the trends in citation and various indices (CiteScore, SNIP, and SJR), visibility, downloads, author characteristics (geographical origin and institutional collaboration), and the most cited articles.

RESULTS

The number of articles published in Radiología gradually decreased during the decade, and the time to publication increased. Original research articles account for the largest share of the articles published. The most common subject areas were radiology of the digestive tract and neuroradiology. Nevertheless, the bibliometric indicators and the number of downloads of articles increased every year. Regarding the authorship of the articles published, although authors from Spain predominate, the participation of authors from other countries became increasingly common. Collaboration among different institutions also became increasingly common in the period analyzed.

CONCLUSIONS

This review shows the progression of the journal's scientific work and some aspects that must be addressed to favor the growth of Radiología.

An analysis of key indicators of reproducibility in radiology

BACKGROUND

Given the central role of radiology in patient care, it is important that radiological research is grounded in reproducible science. It is unclear whether there is a lack of reproducibility or transparency in radiologic research.

PURPOSE

To analyze published radiology literature for the presence or lack of key indicators of reproducibility.

METHODS

This cross-sectional retrospective study was performed by conducting a search of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) for publications contained within journals in the field of radiology. Our inclusion criteria were being MEDLINE indexed, written in English, and published from January 1, 2014, to December 31, 2018. We randomly sampled 300 publications for this study. A pilot-tested Google form was used to record information from the publications regarding indicators of reproducibility. Following peer-review, we extracted data from an additional 200 publications in an attempt to reproduce our initial results. The additional 200 publications were selected from the list of initially randomized publications.

RESULTS

Our initial search returned 295,543 records, from which 300 were randomly selected for analysis. Of these 300 records, 294 met inclusion criteria and 6 did not. Among the empirical publications, 5.6% (11/195, [3.0-8.3]) contained a data availability statement, 0.51% (1/195) provided clear documented raw data, 12.0% (23/191, [8.4-15.7]) provided a materials availability statement, 0% provided analysis scripts, 4.1% (8/195, [1.9-6.3]) provided a pre-registration statement, 2.1% (4/195, [0.4-3.7]) provided a protocol statement, and 3.6% (7/195, [1.5-5.7]) were pre-registered. The validation study of the 5 key indicators of reproducibility-availability of data, materials, protocols, analysis scripts, and pre-registration-resulted in 2 indicators (availability of protocols and analysis scripts) being reproduced, as they fell within the 95% confidence intervals for the proportions from the original sample. However, materials' availability and pre-registration proportions from the validation sample were lower than what was found in the original sample.

CONCLUSION

Our findings demonstrate key indicators of reproducibility are missing in the field of radiology. Thus, the ability to reproduce studies contained in radiology publications may be problematic and may have potential clinical implications.

Most Common Publication Types of Neuroimaging Literature: Papers With High Levels of Evidence Are on the Rise

Objective: This study evaluated the bibliometric data of the most common publication types of the neuroimaging literature.

Methods: PubMed was searched to identify all published papers with “neuroimaging” as their MeSH Major Topics, and they were further searched by the following publication types: case report, clinical trial, comparative study, editorial, evaluation study, guideline, meta-analysis, multicenter study, randomized controlled trial, review, technical report, and validation study. The proportion of papers belonging to each publication type published in neuroimaging journals was calculated. Year-adjusted mean citation counts for each publication type were computed using data from Web of Science. Publication trend and its correlation with citation performance were assessed.

Results: Review and comparative study were the most common publication types. Publication types with the highest proportion in neuroimaging journals were guideline, validation study, and technical reports. Since the year 2000, multicenter study, review, and meta-analysis showed the strongest linear increase in annual publication count. These publication types also had the highest year-adjusted citation counts (4.7–10.0). Publication types with the lowest year-adjusted citation counts were editorial and case report (0.5–1.0). It was estimated that 12.5% of the publications labeled as case reports were incorrectly labeled.

Conclusions: Neuroimaging literature has been expanding with papers of higher levels of evidence, such as meta-analyses, multicenter studies, and randomized controlled trials.

Researcher and Author Impact Metrics: Variety, Value, and Context

Numerous quantitative indicators are currently available for evaluating research productivity. No single metric is suitable for comprehensive evaluation of the author-level impact. The choice of particular metrics depends on the purpose and context of the evaluation. The aim of this article is to overview some of the widely employed author impact metrics and highlight perspectives of their optimal use. The h-index is one of the most popular metrics for research evaluation, which is easy to calculate and understandable for non-experts. It is automatically displayed on researcher and author profiles on citation databases such as Scopus and Web of Science. Its main advantage relates to the combined approach to the quantification of publication and citation counts. This index is increasingly cited globally. Being an appropriate indicator of publication and citation activity of highly productive and successfully promoted authors, the h-index has been criticized primarily for disadvantaging early career researchers and authors with a few indexed publications. Numerous variants of the index have been proposed to overcome its limitations. Alternative metrics have also emerged to highlight 'societal impact.' However, each of these traditional and alternative metrics has its own drawbacks, necessitating careful analyses of the context of social attention and value of publication and citation sets. Perspectives of the optimal use of researcher and author metrics is dependent on evaluation purposes and compounded by information sourced from various global, national, and specialist bibliographic databases.

Characteristics, Trends, and Quality of Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis in General Radiology between 2007 and 2015

RATIONALE AND OBJECTIVES

To evaluate the trends, characteristics, and quality of systematic review and meta-analysis in general radiology journals.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

We performed a PubMed search to identify systematic reviews and meta-analyses that had been carried out in the field of radiology between 2007 and 2015. The following data were extracted: journal, impact factor, type of research, year of publication, radiological subspecialty, imaging modalities used, number of authors, affiliated department of the first and corresponding authors, presence of a radiologist and a statistician among the authors, discordance between the first and corresponding authors, funding, country of first author, methodological quality, methods used for quality assessment, and statistics.

RESULTS

Ultimately, we included 210 articles from nine general radiology journals. The European Journal of Radiology was the most common journal represented (47 of 210; 22.4%). Meta-analyses (n = 177; 84.3%) were published about five times more than systematic reviews without meta-analysis (n = 33; 15.7%). Radiology of the gastrointestinal tract was the most commonly represented subspecialty (n = 49, 23.3%). The first authors were most frequently located in China (n = 64; 30.3%). In terms of modality, magnetic resonance imaging was used most often (n = 59; 28.1%). The number of authors tended to progressively increase over time, and the ratio of discordance between the first and corresponding authors also increased significantly, as did the proportion of research that has received funding from an external source. The mean AMSTAR assessment score improved over time (5.87/11 in 2007-2009, 7.11/11 in 2010-2012, and 7.49/11 in 2013-2015). In this regard, the journal Radiology had the highest score (7.59/11).

CONCLUSIONS

The quantity and quality of radiological meta-analyses have significantly increased over the past 9 years; however, specific weak areas remain, providing the opportunity for quality improvement.