Introducing the EMPIRE Index: A novel, value-based metric framework to measure the impact of medical publications

Measuring the impact of scientific publications and publication extenders: examples of novel approaches

Different stakeholders, such as authors, research institutions, and healthcare professionals (HCPs) may determine the impact of peer-reviewed publications in different ways. Commonly-used measures of research impact, such as the Journal Impact Factor or the H-index, are not designed to evaluate the impact of individual articles. They are heavily dependent on citations, and therefore only measure impact of the overall journal or researcher respectively, taking months or years to accrue. The past decade has seen the development of article-level metrics (ALMs), that measure the online attention received by an individual publication in contexts including social media platforms, news media, citation activity, and policy and patent citations. These new tools can complement traditional bibliometric data and provide a more holistic evaluation of the impact of a publication. This commentary discusses the need for ALMs, and summarizes several examples - PlumX Metrics, Altmetric, the Better Article Metrics score, the EMPIRE Index, and scite. We also discuss how metrics may be used to evaluate the value of "publication extenders" - educational microcontent such as animations, videos and plain-language summaries that are often hosted on HCP education platforms. Publication extenders adapt a publication's key data to audience needs and thereby extend a publication's reach. These new approaches have the potential to address the limitations of traditional metrics, but the diversity of new metrics requires that users have a keen understanding of which forms of impact are relevant to a specific publication and select and monitor ALMs accordingly.

Reading Between the Lines: Navigating Nuance in Medical Literature to Optimize Clinical Decision-Making and Health Care Outcomes

Research-based articles published in medical journals are key to communicating the results of clinical trials, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses. But there are challenges inherent in the communication process. While clinicians rely on the information they read in medical journals to help guide clinical decision-making, most are overwhelmed by the amount of information being published and many receive only limited training on how to critically assess what they read. This can result in suboptimal clinical decision-making, leading to inefficient use of health care resources, avoidance of interventions that may be indicated and useful, or use of interventions that do more harm than good. A literature search of PubMed® was conducted to answer the question, what are the challenges affecting the interpretation of clinical trial results reported in the medical literature that may adversely affect clinical decision making and patient outcomes and how can those challenges be overcome? Results of this review indicate it remains challenging for readers to fully appreciate the nuances that affect the accuracy, utility, and applicability of reported data, and opportunities exist for future continuing professional development interventions to address this challenge by giving health care professionals the knowledge and skills to critically evaluate and interpret literature-based information. The objective of this article is to assist new and aspiring clinicians as well as experienced practitioners in critically assessing the medical literature so they can be informed about the latest medical advances in their areas of specialty and interest and confidently and appropriately integrate this knowledge into clinical practice. This article aspires to be a tool for residency and fellowship program directors, clerkship faculty, mentors, and other HCPs engaged in clinical education.

2000-2019: Twenty Years of Highly Influential Publications in Molecular Plant Immunity

Molecular plant immunity is a dynamic research field that broadly addresses how plants interact with their associated organisms and defend themselves against pests and pathogens. Here, we aimed at providing readers with a snapshot of influential molecular plant immunity research by identifying and analyzing 170 highly influential publications in molecular plant immunity (hereafter called HIPPYs) published in this field between 2000 and 2019. Our analysis draws a broad analytical knowledge of influential scientific advances in the field as well as of the research community that made them. We notably show that HIPPYs are shared by a small, structured, and connected research community. The HIPPYs address coherent research questions using a handful of key model objects (i.e., organisms or molecules) and report findings and concepts that contribute to our integrated understanding of the molecular interactions between plants and their associated organisms. Our 'HIP in' ('highly influential publication in' ...) method is easily transposable to other large research areas and may help early career researchers to gain a broader knowledge of their field of interest. [Formula: see text] Copyright © 2022 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY 4.0 International license.