bims-skolko Biomed News
on Scholarly communication
Issue of 2022–12–18
sixteen papers selected by
Thomas Krichel, Open Library Society
  1. Whose research benefits more from Twitter? On Twitter-worthiness of communication research and its role in reinforcing disparities of the field.
  2. Supporting patient and public partners in writing lay summaries of scientific evidence in healthcare: a scoping review protocol.
  3. Author-suggested reviewers rate manuscripts much more favorably: A cross-sectional analysis of the neuroscience section of PLOS ONE.
  4. Publication speed across neurosurgery journals: a bibliometric analysis.
  5. High Prevalence of Causal Language and Inferences in Observational Hip and Knee Arthroplasty Database Studies: A Review of Papers Published Across Four Orthopaedic Journals.
  6. Survey of quality and clarity of methods and results reporting in 1 year of intervention studies published in high-impact medical and psychiatric journals.
  7. Evaluating Research Transparency and Openness in Communication Sciences and Disorders Journals.
  8. Decline of case reports in pathology and their renewal in the digital age: an analysis of publication trends over four decades.
  9. Letter to the Editor: Predatory journals: Advice for plastic surgery trainees.
  10. The hidden curriculum of academic writing: Toward demystifying manuscript preparation in counseling psychology.
  11. Images in scientific writing.
  12. What does scientific publishing in public health mean?
  13. Best impact factor ever and CPHEN, a new acronym for a successful manuscript type.
  14. Further action toward valid science in Law and Human Behavior: Requiring open data, analytic code, and research materials.
  15. Looking Back on My Time as Editor-in-Chief.
  16. Details matter in quality science. Adopting a checklist for magnetic resonance spectroscopy can help you get them right.
  1. PLoS One. 2022 ;17(12): e0278840
    Whose research benefits more from Twitter? On Twitter-worthiness of communication research and its role in reinforcing disparities of the field.
    Chung-Hong Chan, Jing Zeng, Mike S Schäfer.
      Twitter has become an important promotional tool for scholarly work, but individual academic publications have varied degrees of visibility on the platform. We explain this variation through the concept of Twitter-worthiness: factors making certain academic publications more likely to be visible on Twitter. Using publications from communication studies as our analytical case, we conduct statistical analyses of 32187 articles spanning 82 journals. Findings show that publications from G12 countries, covering social media topics and published open access tend to be mentioned more on Twitter. Similar to prior studies, this study demonstrates that Twitter mentions are associated with peer citations. Nevertheless, Twitter also has the potential to reinforce pre-existing disparities between communication research communities, especially between researchers from developed and less-developed regions. Open access, however, does not reinforce such disparities.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278840
  2. BMJ Open. 2022 Dec 14. 12(12): e062981
    Supporting patient and public partners in writing lay summaries of scientific evidence in healthcare: a scoping review protocol.
    Sareh Zarshenas, JoAnne Mosel, Adora Chui, Samantha Seaton, Hardeep Singh, Sandra Moroz, Tayaba Khan, Heather Colquhoun.
       INTRODUCTION: Despite growing interest among patient and public partners to engage in writing lay summaries, evidence is scarce regarding the availability of resources to support them. This protocol describes the process of conducting a scoping review to: (1) summarise the source, criteria and characteristics, content, format, intended target audience, patient and public involvement in preparing guidance and development processes in the available guidance for writing lay summaries; (2) contextualise the available guidance to the needs/preferences of patient and public partners and (3) create a patient and public partner-informed output to support their engagement in writing lay summaries.
    METHOD AND ANALYSIS: A scoping review with an integrated knowledge translation approach will be used to ensure the collaboration between patient/public partners and researchers in all steps of the review. To meet objective 1, the English language evidence within a healthcare context that provides guidance for writing lay summaries will be searched in peer-reviewed publications and grey literature. All screening and extraction steps will be performed independently by two reviewers. Extracted data will be organised by adapting the European Union's principles for summaries of clinical trials for laypersons. For objectives 2 and 3, a consultation exercise will be held with patient and public partners to review and contextualise the findings from objective 1. A directed content analysis will be used to organise the data to the needs of the public audience. Output development will follow based on the results.
    ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: Ethics approval will be obtained for the consultation exercise. Our target audience will be stakeholders who engage or are interested in writing lay summaries. Our dissemination products will include a manuscript, a lay summary and an output to support patient and public partners with writing lay summaries. Findings will be published in a peer-reviewed journal and presented at relevant conferences. OPEN SCIENCE FRAMEWORK REGISTRATION: osf.io/2dvfg.
    Keywords:  Health policy; PUBLIC HEALTH; Protocols & guidelines
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2022-062981
  3. PLoS One. 2022 ;17(12): e0273994
    Author-suggested reviewers rate manuscripts much more favorably: A cross-sectional analysis of the neuroscience section of PLOS ONE.
    Daniel E Acuna, Misha Teplitskiy, James A Evans, Konrad Kording.
      Peer review is an important part of science, aimed at providing expert and objective assessment of a manuscript. Because of many factors, including time constraints, unique expertise needs, and deference, many journals ask authors to suggest peer reviewers for their own manuscript. Previous researchers have found differing effects about this practice that might be inconclusive due to sample sizes. In this article, we analyze the association between author-suggested reviewers and review invitation, review scores, acceptance rates, and subjective review quality using a large dataset of close to 8K manuscripts from 46K authors and 21K reviewers from the journal PLOS ONE's Neuroscience section. We found that all-author-suggested review panels increase the chances of acceptance by 20 percent points vs all-editor-suggested panels while agreeing to review less often. While PLOS ONE has since ended the practice of asking for suggested reviewers, many others still use them and perhaps should consider the results presented here.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0273994
  4. World Neurosurg. 2022 Dec 08. pii: S1878-8750(22)01703-X. [Epub ahead of print]
    Publication speed across neurosurgery journals: a bibliometric analysis.
    Jubran H Jubran, Lea Scherschinski, Dimitri Benner, Marian T Park, Emmajane G Rhodenhiser, Sufyan Ibrahim, M Maher Hulou, Rohin Singh, Katherine Karahalios, Visish M Srinivasan, Christopher S Graffeo, Michael T Lawton.
       OBJECTIVE: Many factors influence an author's choice for journal submission, including journal impact factor and publication speed. These and other bibliometric data points have not been assessed in journals dedicated to neurosurgery.
    METHODS: Eight leading neurosurgery journals were analyzed to identify original articles and reviews, collected via randomized, stratified sampling per published issue per year from 2016 to 2020. Bibliometric data on publication speed were gathered for each article. Journal impact factor, article processing fees, and open access availability were determined using Clarivate Journal Citation Reports. Correlation analysis and a linear regression model were used to estimate the effect of impact factor and publication year on publication speed.
    RESULTS: Across 8 neurosurgery journals, 1617 published articles were reviewed. The mean (standard deviation) time from submission to acceptance was 131 (101) days, from acceptance to online publication was 77 (61) days, and from submission to online publication was 207 (123) days. Higher impact factors correlated with longer publication times for all metrics. Later years of publication correlated with longer times from submission to acceptance and submission to online publication. For each point increase in a journal's impact factor, multivariate regression modeling estimated a 19.2-day increase in time from submission to acceptance, a 19.7-day increase in time from acceptance to online publication, and a 38.9-day increase in time from submission to online publication (p<0.001 for all).
    CONCLUSIONS: Publication speeds vary widely among neurosurgery journals and appear to be associated with the journal impact factor. Time to publication increased over the study period.
    Keywords:  Bibliometrics; impact factor; journal; neurosurgery; open access; publications; submission
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wneu.2022.12.008
  5. J Arthroplasty. 2022 Dec 12. pii: S0883-5403(22)01063-4. [Epub ahead of print]
    High Prevalence of Causal Language and Inferences in Observational Hip and Knee Arthroplasty Database Studies: A Review of Papers Published Across Four Orthopaedic Journals.
    Nadim Barakat, Wendy M Novicoff, Brian C Werner, James A Browne.
       BACKGROUND: The use of administrative databases and clinical registries in lower extremity arthroplasty research is growing. Such observational studies are unable to fully control for confounders and cannot establish causality. However, many authors use causal language when describing their aims or findings, potentially misleading readers. We examined the prevalence of causal language and inferences in the lower extremity arthroplasty literature.
    METHODS: We systematically identified administrative database and registry studies on hip and knee arthroplasty that were published in 4 orthopaedic journals in 2020. Papers were graded independently by two reviewers for the presence of causal language in both the title and abstract as well as the full text. Chi-squared analyses were conducted to determine the relationship between the causality grading and article characteristics including the journal of publication.
    RESULTS: Of 116 eligible articles, we classified 79.3% of titles and abstracts as either consistently causal or inconsistently causal, with only 20.7% as consistently non-causal. A total of 40.5% of full texts were consistently causal, 49.1% were inconsistent, and 10.3% were consistently non-causal. Chi-squared analyses revealed no statistically significant association between the title and abstract's grading and the journal (p = .720), nor with the use of a database or registry (p = .716).
    CONCLUSION: Causal language and inferences were present in 79.3% of titles and abstracts of lower extremity arthroplasty observational database studies published in 2020. The high prevalence of causal language and inferences in the arthroplasty literature may mislead readers.
    Keywords:  arthroplasty research; causal language; causality; joint replacement registries; nationwide databases
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.arth.2022.12.008
  6. BMJ Open. 2022 Dec 12. 12(12): e061882
    Survey of quality and clarity of methods and results reporting in 1 year of intervention studies published in high-impact medical and psychiatric journals.
    Caitlin Ravichandran, Suzann M Babb, Dost Ongur, Peter Q Harris, Bruce M Cohen.
       OBJECTIVE: We assessed how well articles in major medical and psychiatric journals followed best reporting practices in presenting results of intervention studies.
    METHOD: Standardised data collection was used to review studies in high-impact and widely read medical (JAMA, Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine) and psychiatric (American Journal of Psychiatry, JAMA Psychiatry, Journal of Clinical Psychiatry and Lancet Psychiatry) journals, published between 1 September 2018 and 31 August 2019. Two team members independently reviewed each article.
    MEASURES: The primary outcome measure was proportion of papers reporting consensus elements required to understand and evaluate the results of the intervention. The secondary outcome measure was comparison of complete and accessible reporting in the major medical versus the major psychiatric journals.
    RESULTS: One hundred twenty-seven articles were identified for inclusion. At least 90% of articles in both medical and psychiatric journals included sample size, statistical significance, randomisation method, elements of study flow, and age, sex, and illness severity by randomisation group. Selected elements less frequently reported by either journal type were confidence intervals in the abstract, reported in 93% (95% CI 84% to 97%) of medical journal articles and 58% (95% CI 45% to 69%) of psychiatric journal articles, and sample size method (93%, 95% CI 84% to 97% medical; 69%, 95% CI 57% to 80% psychiatric), race and ethnicity by randomisation group (51%, 95% CI 40% to 63% medical; 73%, 95% CI 60% to 83% psychiatric), and adverse events (94%; 95% CI 86% to 98% medical; 80%, 95% CI 68% to 88% psychiatric) in the main text. CIs were included less often in psychiatric than medical journals (p<0.004 abstract, p=0.04 main text, after multiple-testing correction).
    CONCLUSIONS: Recommendations include standard inclusion of a table specifying the outcome(s) designated as primary, and the sample size, effect size(s), CI(s) and p value(s) corresponding to the primary test(s) for efficacy.
    Keywords:  GENERAL MEDICINE (see Internal Medicine); PSYCHIATRY; STATISTICS & RESEARCH METHODS
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2022-061882
  7. J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2022 Dec 14. 1-9
    Evaluating Research Transparency and Openness in Communication Sciences and Disorders Journals.
    Scott R Schroeder, Laura Gaeta, Mariam El Amin, Jason C Chow, James C Borders.
       PURPOSE: To improve the credibility, reproducibility, and clinical utility of research findings, many scientific fields are implementing transparent and open research practices. Such open science practices include researchers making their data publicly available and preregistering their hypotheses and analyses. A way to enhance the adoption of open science practices is for journals to encourage or require submitting authors to participate in such practices. Accordingly, the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association's Journals Program has recently announced their intention to promote open science practices. Here, we quantitatively assess the extent to which several journals in communication sciences and disorders (CSD) encourage or require participation in several open science practices by using the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Factor metric.
    METHOD: TOP Factors were assessed for 34 CSD journals, as well as several journals in related fields. TOP Factors measure the level of implementation across 10 open science-related practices (e.g., data transparency, analysis plan preregistration, and replication) for a total possible score of 29 points.
    RESULTS: Collectively, CSD journals had very low TOP Factors (M = 1.4, range: 0-8). The related fields of Psychology (M = 4.0), Rehabilitation (M = 3.2), Linguistics (M = 1.7), and Education (M = 1.6) also had low scores, though Psychology and Rehabilitation had higher scores than CSD.
    CONCLUSION: CSD journals currently have low levels of encouraging or requiring participation in open science practices, which may impede adoption. Open Science Form: https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.21699458.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1044/2022_JSLHR-22-00330
  8. J Clin Pathol. 2022 Dec 16. pii: jcp-2022-208626. [Epub ahead of print]
    Decline of case reports in pathology and their renewal in the digital age: an analysis of publication trends over four decades.
    Luca Cima, Francesca Pagliuca, Evelin Torresani, Antonio Polonia, Catarina Eloy, Venkatesh Dhanasekeran, Rifat Mannan, Silvia Gamba Torrez, Nicola Mirabassi, Angelo Cassisa, Andrea Palicelli, Mattia Barbareschi.
       AIMS: We investigated the trend in case reports (CRs) publication in a sample of pathology journals. Furthermore, we proposed an alternative publishing route through new digital communication platforms, represented by the 'social media case report'.
    METHODS: 28 pathology journals were selected from SCImago database and searched in PubMed to identify the number of published CRs. Four reference decades (1981-2020) were selected. The 5-year impact factor (IF) was retrieved from the Academic Accelerator database.
    RESULTS: CRs increased during the first three decades (6752, 8698 and 11148, respectively; mean values: 355, 27.3%; 334, 26.4%; 398, 28.8%) as the number of CR-publishing journals (19, 26 and 28, respectively). In the last decade, CRs significantly decreased (9341; mean 334, 23.6%) without variation in the number of CR-publishing journals (28). Half of the journals reduced CRs (from -1.1% to -37.9%; mean decreasing percentage -14.7%), especially if active since the first decade (11/14, 79%); the other half increased CRs (from +0.5% to +34.2%; mean increasing percentage +11.8%), with 8/14 (57%) starting publishing in the first decade. The 5-year IF ranged from 0.504 to 5.722. Most of the journals with IF ≥2 (10/14, 71%) reduced the CRs number, while 71% of journals with IF <2 increased CRs publication (especially journals with IF <1, +15.1%).
    CONCLUSIONS: CRs publication decreased during the last decade, especially for journals which are older or have higher IF. Social media CRs may represent a valid alternative and by using standardised templates to enter all relevant data may be organised in digital databases and/or transformed in traditional CRs.
    Keywords:  EDUCATION; Education, Medical; Pathology, Surgical
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1136/jcp-2022-208626
  9. J Plast Reconstr Aesthet Surg. 2022 Nov 23. pii: S1748-6815(22)00678-7. [Epub ahead of print]76 54-55
    Letter to the Editor: Predatory journals: Advice for plastic surgery trainees.
    Tamara Mertz, Alexander J Baldwin.
      
    Keywords:  Beall's list; Cabells’ criteria; National training number; Plastic surgery; Predatory journals; Predatory publications
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bjps.2022.11.043
  10. J Couns Psychol. 2022 Dec 15.
    The hidden curriculum of academic writing: Toward demystifying manuscript preparation in counseling psychology.
    Bonnie Moradi, Melanie E Brewster, Patrick R Grzanka, Matthew J Miller.
      In this article, we aim to unpack some of the hidden curriculum in publishing successfully in the Journal of Counseling Psychology (JCP) and other academic outlets. The many unspoken and implicit considerations behind writing a successful academic article can reinforce epistemic exclusions around class, gender, race, sexuality, and other axes of power that ultimately limit who gets to publish in academic journals and about what. Thus, we work to articulate the processes behind writing an academic article. Specifically, we offer suggestions for (a) writing compelling, precise, and parsimonious introductions, (b) clearly addressing the goals of the study via an accurate and detailed description of the method, (c) aligning analytic decisions with the research questions or hypotheses and the data parameters at hand, and (d) discussing the story of data in the context of prior scholarship, study limitations, and real-world implications. Where applicable, we provide concrete examples of published studies to "unhide" writing processes and to illustrate the invisible narratives and intentions behind key writing practices. We also present a checklist as an easy-to-reference companion to this article to help demystify the writing process. This article aligns with the commitment of JCP's editorial leadership to play an active role in opening up the scholarly publication process so that the pipeline of manuscripts submitted to and accepted by JCP shapes a more inclusive future for the field. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1037/cou0000650
  11. J Indian Prosthodont Soc. 2022 Apr-Jun;22(2):22(2): 107-110
    Images in scientific writing.
    Anand Kumar Vaidyanathan.
      
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.4103/jips.jips_137_22
  12. Front Public Health. 2022 ;10 1048580
    What does scientific publishing in public health mean?
    Paolo Vineis.
      
    Keywords:  ethics; paper mills; public health; publishing; scientific peer review
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2022.1048580
  13. Cytometry A. 2022 Dec;101(12): 993-994
    Best impact factor ever and CPHEN, a new acronym for a successful manuscript type.
    Genny Del Zotto, Attila Tárnok.
      
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1002/cyto.a.24706
  14. Law Hum Behav. 2022 Dec;46(6): 395-397
    Further action toward valid science in Law and Human Behavior: Requiring open data, analytic code, and research materials.
    Bradley D McAuliff, David DeMatteo, Jennifer Cox, Jennifer S Hunt, Lora M Levett, Kyle C Scherr.
      In 2019, the inaugural editorial of Law and Human Behavior promised a measured approach to increasing transparency, openness, and replicability practices in the journal. Now, 3 years later, and on the brink of the present authors' last year as the editorial team, it seems only fitting that they take further action to bolster the validity of science published in the journal by requiring that authors openly report data, analytic code, and research materials. The purpose of this editorial is to briefly outline Law and Human Behavior's new requirements. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1037/lhb0000519
  15. J Neurosci. 2022 Dec 14. 42(50): 9294-9295
    Looking Back on My Time as Editor-in-Chief.
    Marina Picciotto.
      
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2137-22.2022
  16. J Neurochem. 2022 Dec 10.
    Details matter in quality science. Adopting a checklist for magnetic resonance spectroscopy can help you get them right.
    Caroline D Rae, Stephen R Williams.
      The ISMRM study group on magnetic resonance spectroscopy has produced recommendations for reporting methods. The Journal of Neurochemistry has decided to encourage the use of the checklist for these standards by authors and reviewers in order to improve reproducibility and reliability of the science, make it easier for reviewers and to help educate the scientific community. Here, we explain why getting the details right is important.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1111/jnc.15725
This page is being maintained by Thomas Krichel. It was last updated on 2024‒11‒22 at 4:28.