bims-skolko Biomed News
on Scholarly communication
Issue of 2019–11–17
thirteen papers selected by
Thomas Krichel, Open Library Society
  1. More South Korean academics caught naming kids as co-authors.
  2. The association between exaggeration in health-related science news and academic press releases: a replication study.
  3. Plan S for publishing science in an open access way: not everyone is likely to be happy.
  4. Tracing the path from social attention to scientific impact.
  5. Scientific Medical Writing in Practice: the «IMR@D®» Format.
  6. Critical appraisal of predatory journals in pathology.
  7. Authorship in the Medical Humanities: Breaking Cross-field Boundaries or Maintaining Disciplinary Divides?
  8. Health Researchers' Use of Social Media: Scoping Review.
  9. Specification of Subject Sex in Oncology-Related Animal Studies.
  10. How we evaluate your manuscripts.
  11. Factors affecting global flow of scientific knowledge in environmental sciences.
  12. The reporting of race and/or ethnicity in the medical literature: a retrospective bibliometric analysis confirmed room for improvement.
  13. Open sesame: An in-genie-ous step towards open access.
  1. Nature. 2019 Nov;575(7782): 267-268
    More South Korean academics caught naming kids as co-authors.
    Mark Zastrow.
      
    Keywords:  Authorship; Education; Ethics; Government
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03371-0
  2. Wellcome Open Res. 2019 ;4 148
    The association between exaggeration in health-related science news and academic press releases: a replication study.
    Luke Bratton, Rachel C Adams, Aimée Challenger, Jacky Boivin, Lewis Bott, Christopher D Chambers, Petroc Sumner.
      Background: Exaggerations in health news were previously found to strongly associate with similar exaggerations in press releases. Moreover, such press release exaggerations did not appear to attract more news. Methods: Here we tested the replicability of these findings in a new cohort of news and press releases based on research in UK universities in 2014 and 2015. Press releases and news were compared to their associated peer-reviewed articles to define exaggeration in advice, causal claims and human inference from non-human studies. Results: We found that the association between news and press releases did not replicate for advice exaggeration, while this association did replicate for causal claims and human inference from non-human studies. There was no evidence for higher news uptake for exaggerated press releases, consistent with previous results. Base exaggeration rates were lower for human inference from non-human studies, possibly reflecting the Concordat on Openness on Animal Research in the UK. Conclusions: Overall, the picture remains that the strength of news statements is normally associated with the strength of press release statements, and without evidence that exaggerated statements get significantly more news.
    Keywords:  hype; media; science communication
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.12688/wellcomeopenres.15486.1
  3. Biophys Rev. 2019 Nov 10.
    Plan S for publishing science in an open access way: not everyone is likely to be happy.
    Juan C Gómez-Fernández.
      
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s12551-019-00604-4
  4. Cardiovasc Res. 2019 Nov 12. pii: cvz276. [Epub ahead of print]
    Tracing the path from social attention to scientific impact.
    Adam M Sheikh, Sarah K Brown.
      
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1093/cvr/cvz276
  5. Tunis Med. 2019 Mar;97(3): 407-425
    Scientific Medical Writing in Practice: the «IMR@D®» Format.
    Helmi Ben Saad.
       INTRODUCTION: The quality of an original scientific paper (OSP) depends on compliance with the principles of scientific medical writing. This review aimed to enlighten the authors on the roles, organization, mistakes to be avoided and recommendations, related to the structure of an OSP.
    METHODS: Narrative review of the literature regarding the structure adopted when drafting an OSP.
    RESULTS: The format "IMR@D®" (Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, and References) is now, and will remain, the guiding structure of the majority of OSPs published in biomedical scientific journals. The "Introduction" section is the answer to the question: what is the problem? It describes the reasoning, the purposes and the objectives of the study and concisely describes the study hypothesis. The "Methods" section is the answer to the question: how did the author try to solve the problem? It specifies the study design, the selection process, the applied procedures, the data collected, and the type of statistical analysis that will be performed to confirm/refute the research hypothesis. The section "Results" is the answer to the interrogation: what have the author found? It presents the descriptive and the analytical data of the study. The "Discussion" section is the answer to the question: what difference does it make? It interpreted the results and compared them with these reported in the literature. The "References" section is the answer to the question: what have the author consulted? It clearly explains what is not based on information derived from the study, and provides means to verify that cited statements have been really recorded in the literature.
    CONCLUSION: The "IMR@D®" format should make the scientific medical writing more pleasant while increasing the possibility that the OSP is accepted for publication.
  6. J Clin Pathol. 2019 Nov 15. pii: jclinpath-2019-206245. [Epub ahead of print]
    Critical appraisal of predatory journals in pathology.
    Yaman M AlAhmad, Ibrahim Abdelhafez, Farhan S Cyprian, Saghir Akhtar, Faruk Skenderi, Semir Vranic.
      
    Keywords:  digital pathology; histopathology; surgical pathology
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1136/jclinpath-2019-206245
  7. J Med Humanit. 2019 Nov 14.
    Authorship in the Medical Humanities: Breaking Cross-field Boundaries or Maintaining Disciplinary Divides?
    Róisín King, Jana Al-Khabouri, Brendan Kelly, Desmond O'Neill.
       PURPOSE: Medical humanities is a field which implies collaborative work across disciplines although the degree to which this actually occurs is unknown. Our purpose was to determine the degree of joint work in medical humanities through analysis of authorship and acknowledgements in the two main medical humanities journals.
    METHODS: Observational survey of authorship. We studied authorship data in all papers published in the two major general medical humanities journals between 2009 and 2018 (n=595).
    RESULTS: Two-thirds of papers (67.4%) had single authors, of whom a majority declared a single disciplinary affiliation (70.3%). The titles of 60.8% of papers explicitly suggested collaborative content of which 19.9% had multiple authors from more than one discipline (not within the same school); of the remainder, almost half (48.1%) had a single, single-disciplinary author (although 8.5% demonstrated interdisciplinarity in the acknowledgements). One-third of papers (193/595;33%) referenced one or more people in the acknowledgements. Among papers whose titles suggested humanities or medical content only, authorship lists of 10.2% and 17.9% respectively demonstrated collaborative scholarship.
    CONCLUSIONS: Despite considerable involvement from both humanities and medical practitioners, there is still substantial scope for enhanced emphasis on collaborative (multi-, inter- and trans-disciplinary) seminars and exchanges in the medical humanities and editorial policies to promote transparency of the nature of collaborative work among disciplines. Journal editors and editorial boards should reflect on the opportunity to promote enhanced visibility of joint work in scholarship in the medical humanities through reflection and review of current editorial policies.
    Keywords:  Authorship; Bibliometric analysis; Humanities; Interdisciplinary studies
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-019-09585-7
  8. J Med Internet Res. 2019 Nov 13. 21(11): e13687
    Health Researchers' Use of Social Media: Scoping Review.
    Justine Dol, Perri R Tutelman, Christine T Chambers, Melanie Barwick, Emily K Drake, Jennifer A Parker, Robin Parker, Eric I Benchimol, Ronald B George, Holly O Witteman.
       BACKGROUND: Health researchers are increasingly using social media in a professional capacity, and the applications of social media for health researchers are vast. However, there is currently no published evidence synthesis of the ways in which health researchers use social media professionally, and uncertainty remains as to how best to harness its potential.
    OBJECTIVE: This scoping review aimed to explore how social media is used by health researchers professionally, as reported in the literature.
    METHODS: The scoping review methodology guided by Arksey and O'Malley and Levac et al was used. Comprehensive searches based on the concepts of health research and social media were conducted in MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, ERIC, and Web of Science databases, with no limitations applied. Articles were screened at the title and abstract level and at full text by two reviewers. One reviewer extracted data that were analyzed descriptively to map the available evidence.
    RESULTS: A total of 8359 articles were screened at the title and abstract level, of which 719 were also assessed at full text for eligibility. The 414 articles identified for inclusion were published in 278 different journals. Studies originated from 31 different countries, with the most prevalent being the United States (52.7% [218/414]). The health discipline of the first authors varied, with medicine (33.3% [138/414]) being the most common. A third of the articles covered health generally, with 61 health-specific topics. Papers used a range of social media platforms (mean 1.33 [SD 0.7]). A quarter of the articles screened reported on social media use for participant recruitment (25.1% [104/414]), followed by practical ways to use social media (15.5% [64/414]), and use of social media for content analysis research (13.3% [55/414]). Articles were categorized as celebratory (ie, opportunities for engagement, 72.2% [299/414]), contingent (ie, opportunities and possible limitations, 22.7% [94/414]) and concerned (ie, potentially harmful, 5.1% [21/414]).
    CONCLUSIONS: Health researchers are increasingly publishing on their use of social media for a range of professional purposes. Although most of the sentiment around the use of social media in health research was celebratory, the uses of social media varied widely. Future research is needed to support health researchers to optimize their social media use.
    Keywords:  health; review; social media
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.2196/13687
  9. Acute Crit Care. 2018 Aug;33(3): 178-184
    Specification of Subject Sex in Oncology-Related Animal Studies.
    Sukyo Lee, Won Jun Kim, Yeong Jeon, Choon Hak Lim, Kyung Sun.
       Background: Growing evidence for clinically significant differences between the sexes has attracted the attention of researchers. However, failures to report a test animal sex and balance the sex ratios of study samples remain widespread in preclinical investigations. We analyzed the sex-reporting rate and sex distributions of test animals in published oncology studies.
    Methods: We selected five oncology journals included in the Scientific Citation Index (SCI) based on impact factors. We identified preclinical investigations with in vivo mouse experiments published in 2015 for inclusion in our study sample. We classified each article by whether or not it reported test subject sex, and by which sex was included. We also recorded whether there were justifications for using one particular sex in single-sex studies (e.g., anatomical reasons) and whether sex-based analyses were conducted for both-sex studies.
    Results: We surveyed a total of 382 articles. Half (50.3%) failed to report test animal sex. Among articles that did report sex, 91.7% were single-sex studies, of which 69.4% did not provide any justifications for using the sex included in the study. Relatively few studies 15.7 studies included animals of both sexes, and only 2.3 studies conducted sex-based analyses. These findings are consistent with those of previous research that used other methods to collect data from the literature such as text mining, but our analysis of the provision of justifications for using one sex versus the other is a novel feature.
    Conclusions: Many researchers overlook test subject sex as a factor, but test animal sex should be reported in all preclinical investigations to enhance the reproducibility of research and avoid faulty conclusions drawn from one-sided studies.
    Keywords:  animal experimentation; bias; data accuracy; data curation; research design; research subjects
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.4266/acc.2017.00444
  10. Nat Hum Behav. 2019 Nov;3(11): 1127-1128
    How we evaluate your manuscripts.
      
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0778-0
  11. Sci Total Environ. 2019 Nov 02. pii: S0048-9697(19)35004-1. [Epub ahead of print]701 135012
    Factors affecting global flow of scientific knowledge in environmental sciences.
    Christian Sonne, Rune Dietz, Aage K O Alstrup.
      Here we present our view on the current Open Access debate, predatory journals and the on-going publication and promotion strategy of some countries and research institutions. We urge the world's researchers, journals and grant holders in collaboration to carefully consider how best to ensure continuous high-quality scientific publications in the future in a way so that limited funding results in important data and information being unpublished.
    Keywords:  Knowledge; Open access; Plan S; Publication
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.135012
  12. J Clin Epidemiol. 2019 Nov 09. pii: S0895-4356(19)30244-6. [Epub ahead of print]
    The reporting of race and/or ethnicity in the medical literature: a retrospective bibliometric analysis confirmed room for improvement.
    Therezia Bokor-Billmann, Ewan A Langan, Franck Billmann.
       OBJECTIVE: Although the collection of race and/or ethnicity data is an important way to identify and address inequalities in health care provision and disparities in access to treatment, studies examining the extent to which race and/or ethnicity data are reported in the medical literature, and the quality of this data, are lacking . Therefore, we sought to objectively determine the quality of reporting of race and/or ethnicity in original medical research papers.
    STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: A retrospective bibliometric analysis was used. Two independent investigators analysed original articles investigating race/ethnicity, published between 2007 and 2018, in the 10 top ranking academic journals in each of the following categories: general medicine, surgery and oncology.
    RESULTS: 995 original articles were included in our analysis. Only 45 studies (4.52%) provided a formal definition of race/ethnicity and 8.94% identified the investigator responsible for the classification. Whilst race/ethnicity was a key part of study design in 31.86% of the included investigations, the method used to classify individuals into racial/ethnic groups was described in only 10.25% of articles. In terms of terminology, we identified 81 different race/ethnicity classifications, but these were often imprecise and open to interpretation.
    CONCLUSIONS: There is significant room for improvement in the collection, reporting and publishing of data describing ethnicity and/or race in the medical literature.
    Keywords:  data collection; ethnic groups; guideline adherence; medical writing; population groups; publishing
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclinepi.2019.11.005
  13. Bipolar Disord. 2019 Nov;21(7): 576-578
    Open sesame: An in-genie-ous step towards open access.
    Gin S Malhi, Kadiamada N Roy Chengappa, Lisbeth Cranfield.
      
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1111/bdi.12862
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