Characteristics of Medical Research News Reported on Front Pages of Newspapers

Background

The placement of medical research news on a newspaper''s front page is intended to gain the public''s attention, so it is important to understand the source of the news in terms of research maturity and evidence level.

Methodology/Principal Findings

We searched LexisNexis to identify medical research reported on front pages of major newspapers published from January 1, 2000 to December 31, 2002. We used MEDLINE and Google Scholar to find journal articles corresponding to the research, and determined their evidence level.Of 734 front-page medical research stories identified, 417 (57%) referred to mature research published in peer-reviewed journals. The remaining 317 stories referred to preliminary findings presented at scientific or press meetings; 144 (45%) of those stories mentioned studies that later matured (i.e. were published in journals within 3 years after news coverage). The evidence-level distribution of the 515 journal articles quoted in news stories reporting on mature research (3% level I, 21% level II, 42% level III, 4% level IV, and 31% level V) differed from that of the 170 reports of preliminary research that later matured (1%, 19%, 35%, 12%, and 33%, respectively; chi-square test, P = .0009). No news stories indicated evidence level. Fewer than 1 in 5 news stories reporting preliminary findings acknowledged the preliminary nature of their content.

Conclusions/Significance

Only 57% of front-page stories reporting on medical research are based on mature research, which tends to have a higher evidence level than research with preliminary findings. Medical research news should be clearly referenced and state the evidence level and limitations to inform the public of the maturity and quality of the source.     

Integrative Approach to Quality Assessment of Medical Journals Using Impact Factor,Eigenfactor, and Article Influence Scores

Background

Impact factor (IF) is a commonly used surrogate for assessing the scientific quality of journals and articles. There is growing discontent in the medical community with the use of this quality assessment tool because of its many inherent limitations. To help address such concerns, Eigenfactor (ES) and Article Influence scores (AIS) have been devised to assess scientific impact of journals. The principal aim was to compare the temporal trends in IF, ES, and AIS on the rank order of leading medical journals over time.

Methods

The 2001 to 2008 IF, ES, AIS, and number of citable items (CI) of 35 leading medical journals were collected from the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) and the http://www.eigenfactor.org databases. The journals were ranked based on the published 2008 ES, AIS, and IF scores. Temporal score trends and variations were analyzed.

Results

In general, the AIS and IF values provided similar rank orders. Using ES values resulted in large changes in the rank orders with higher ranking being assigned to journals that publish a large volume of articles. Since 2001, the IF and AIS of most journals increased significantly; however the ES increased in only 51% of the journals in the analysis. Conversely, 26% of journals experienced a downward trend in their ES, while the rest experienced no significant changes (23%). This discordance between temporal trends in IF and ES was largely driven by temporal changes in the number of CI published by the journals.

Conclusion

The rank order of medical journals changes depending on whether IF, AIS or ES is used. All of these metrics are sensitive to the number of citable items published by journals. Consumers should thus consider all of these metrics rather than just IF alone in assessing the influence and importance of medical journals in their respective disciplines.     

Comparison of Journal Self-Citation Rates between Some Chinese and Non-Chinese International Journals

Background

The past 3 decades have witnessed a boost in science development in China; in parallel, more and more Chinese scientific journals are indexed by the Journal Citation Reports issued by Thomson Reuters (SCI). Evaluation of the performance of these Chinese SCI journals is necessary and helpful to improve their quality. This study aimed to evaluate these journals by calculating various journal self-citation rates, which are important parameters influencing a journal impact factor.

Methodology/Principal Findings

We defined three journal self-citation rates, and studied these rates for 99 Chinese scientific journals, almost exhausting all Chinese SCI journals currently available. Likewise, we selected 99 non-Chinese international (abbreviated as ‘world’) journals, with each being in the same JCR subject category and having similar impact factors as their Chinese counterparts. Generally, Chinese journals tended to be higher in all the three self-citation rates than world journal counterparts. Particularly, a few Chinese scientific journals had much higher self-citation rates.

Conclusions/Significance

Our results show that generally Chinese scientific journals have higher self-citation rates than those of world journals. Consequently, Chinese scientific journals tend to have lower visibility and are more isolated in the relevant fields. Considering the fact that sciences are rapidly developing in China and so are Chinese scientific journals, we expect that the differences of journal self-citation rates between Chinese and world scientific journals will gradually disappear in the future. Some suggestions to solve the problems are presented.     

The Impact of National Institutes of Health Funding on U.S. Cardiovascular Disease Research

Background

Intense interest surrounds the recent expansion of US National Institutes of Health (NIH) budgets as part of economic stimulus legislation. However, the relationship between NIH funding and cardiovascular disease research is poorly understood, making the likely impact of this policy change unclear.

Methods

The National Library of Medicine''s PubMed database was searched for articles published from 1996 to 2006, originating from U.S. institutions, and containing the phrases “cardiolog,” “cardiovascular,” or “cardiac,” in the first author''s department. Research methodology, journal of publication, journal impact factor, and receipt of NIH funding were recorded. Differences in means and trends were tested with t-tests and linear regression, respectively, with P≤0.05 for significance.

Results

Of 117,643 world cardiovascular articles, 36,684 (31.2%) originated from the U.S., of which 10,293 (28.1%) received NIH funding. The NIH funded 40.1% of U.S. basic science articles, 20.3% of overall clinical trials, 18.1% of randomized-controlled, and 12.2% of multicenter clinical trials. NIH-funded and total articles grew significantly (65 articles/year, P<0.001 and 218 articles/year, P<0.001, respectively). The proportion of articles receiving NIH funding was stable, but grew significantly for basic science and clinical trials (0.87%/year, P<0.001 and 0.67%/year, P = 0.029, respectively). NIH-funded articles had greater journal impact factors than non NIH-funded articles (5.76 vs. 3.71, P<0.001).

Conclusions

NIH influence on U.S. cardiovascular research expanded in the past decade, during the period of NIH budget doubling. A substantial fraction of research is now directly funded and thus likely sensitive to budget fluctuations, particularly in basic science research. NIH funding predicts greater journal impact.     

Searching PubMed during a Pandemic

Background

The 2009 influenza A(H1N1) pandemic has generated thousands of articles and news items. However, finding relevant scientific articles in such rapidly developing health crises is a major challenge which, in turn, can affect decision-makers'' ability to utilise up-to-date findings and ultimately shape public health interventions. This study set out to show the impact that the inconsistent naming of the pandemic can have on retrieving relevant scientific articles in PubMed/MEDLINE.

Methodology

We first formulated a PubMed search algorithm covering different names of the influenza pandemic and simulated the results that it would have retrieved from weekly searches for relevant new records during the first 10 weeks of the pandemic. To assess the impact of failing to include every term in this search, we then conducted the same searches but omitted in turn “h1n1,” “swine,” “influenza” and “flu” from the search string, and compared the results to those for the full string.

Principal Findings

On average, our core search string identified 44.3 potentially relevant new records at the end of each week. Of these, we determined that an average of 27.8 records were relevant. When we excluded one term from the string, the percentage of records missed out of the total number of relevant records averaged 18.7% for omitting “h1n1,” 13.6% for “swine,” 17.5% for “influenza,” and 20.6% for “flu.”

Conclusions

Due to inconsistent naming, while searching for scientific material about rapidly evolving situations such as the influenza A(H1N1) pandemic, there is a risk that one will miss relevant articles. To address this problem, the international scientific community should agree on nomenclature and the specific name to be used earlier, and the National Library of Medicine in the US could index potentially relevant materials faster and allow publishers to add alert tags to such materials.     

Temporal trends in the impact factor of European versus USA biomedical journals

Background

The impact factors of biomedical journals tend to rise over time. We sought to assess the trend in the impact factor, during the past decade, of journals published on behalf of United States (US) and European scientific societies, in four select biomedical subject categories (Biology, Cell Biology, Critical Care Medicine, and Infectious Diseases).

Methods

We identified all journals included in the above-mentioned subject categories of Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Reports® for the years 1999, 2002, 2005, and 2008. We selected those that were published on behalf of US or European scientific societies, as documented in journal websites.

Results

We included 167 journals (35 in the subject category of Biology, 79 in Cell Biology, 27 in Critical Care Medicine, and 26 in Infectious Diseases). Between 1999 and 2008, the percentage increase in the impact factor of the European journals was higher than for the US journals (73.7±110.0% compared with 39.7±70.0%, p = 0.049). Regarding specific subject categories, the percentage change in the factor of the European journals tended to be higher than the respective US journals for Cell Biology (61.7% versus 16.3%), Critical Care Medicine (212.4% versus 65.4%), Infectious Diseases (88.3% versus 48.7%), whereas the opposite was observed for journals in Biology (41.0% versus 62.5%).

Conclusion

Journals published on behalf of European scientific societies, in select biomedical fields, may tend to close the “gap” in impact factor compared with those of US societies.

What''s Already Known About This Topic?

The impact factors of biomedical journals tend to rise through years. The leading positions in productivity in biomedical research are held by developed countries, including those from North America and Western Europe.

What Does This Article Add?

The journals from European biomedical scientific societies tended, over the past decade, to increase their impact factor more than the respective US journals.     

Assessment of the Quality of Reporting in Abstracts of Randomized Controlled Trials Published in Five Leading Chinese Medical Journals

Background

Clear, transparent and sufficiently detailed abstracts of randomized trials (RCTs), published in journal articles are important because readers will often base their initial assessment of a trial on such information. However, little is known about the quality of reporting in abstracts of RCTs published in medical journals in China.

Methods

We identified RCTs abstracts from 5 five leading Chinese medical journals published between 1998 and 2007 and indexed in MEDLINE. We assessed the quality of reporting of these abstracts based on the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) abstract checklist. We also sought to identify whether any differences exist in reporting between the Chinese and English language version of the same abstract.

Results

We identified 332 RCT abstracts eligible for examination. Overall, the abstracts we examined reported 0–8 items as designated in the CONSORT checklist. On average, three items were reported per abstract. Details of the interventions (288/332; 87%), the number of participants randomized (216/332; 65%) and study objectives (109/332; 33%) were the top three items reported. Only two RCT abstracts reported details of trial registration, no abstracts reported the method of allocation concealment and only one mentioned specifically who was blinded. In terms of the proportion of RCT abstracts fulfilling a criterion, the absolute difference (percentage points) between the Chinese and English abstracts was 10% (ranging from 0 to 25%) on average, per item.

Conclusions

The quality of reporting in abstracts of RCTs published in Chinese medical journals needs to be improved. We hope that the introduction and endorsement of the CONSORT for Abstracts guidelines by journals reporting RCTs will lead to improvements in the quality of reporting.     

The Unbearable Lightness of Health Science Reporting: A Week Examining Italian Print Media

Background

Although being an important source of science news information to the public, print news media have often been criticized in their credibility. Health-related content of press media articles has been examined by many studies underlining that information about benefits, risks and costs are often incomplete or inadequate and financial conflicts of interest are rarely reported. However, these studies have focused their analysis on very selected science articles. The present research aimed at adopting a wider explorative approach, by analysing all types of health science information appearing on the Italian national press in one-week period. Moreover, we attempted to score the balance of the articles.

Methodology/Principal Findings

We collected 146 health science communication articles defined as articles aiming at improving the reader''s knowledge on health from a scientific perspective. Articles were evaluated by 3 independent physicians with respect to different divulgation parameters: benefits, costs, risks, sources of information, disclosure of financial conflicts of interest and balance. Balance was evaluated with regard to exaggerated or non correct claims. The selected articles appeared on 41 Italian national daily newspapers and 41 weekly magazines, representing 89% of national circulation copies: 97 articles (66%) covered common medical treatments or basic scientific research and 49 (34%) were about new medical treatments, procedures, tests or products. We found that only 6/49 (12%) articles on new treatments, procedures, tests or products mentioned costs or risks to patients. Moreover, benefits were always maximized and in 16/49 cases (33%) they were presented in relative rather than absolute terms. The majority of stories (133/146, 91%) did not report any financial conflict of interest. Among these, 15 were shown to underreport them (15/146, 9.5%), as we demonstrated that conflicts of interest did actually exist. Unbalanced articles were 27/146 (18%). Specifically, the probability of unbalanced reporting was significantly increased in stories about a new treatment, procedure, test or product (22/49, 45%), compared to stories covering common treatments or basic scientific research (5/97, 5%) (risk ratio, 8.72).

Conclusions/Significance

Consistent with prior research on health science communication in other countries, we report undisclosed costs and risks, emphasized benefits, unrevealed financial conflicts of interest and exaggerated claims in Italian print media. In addition, we show that the risk for a story about a new medical approach to be unbalanced is almost 9 times higher with respect to stories about any other kind of health science-related topics. These findings raise again the fundamental issue whether popular media is detrimental rather than useful to public health.     

Media Coverage of Medical Journals: Do the Best Articles Make the News?

Background

News coverage of medical research is followed closely by many Americans and affects the practice of medicine and influence of scientific research. Prior work has examined the quality of media coverage, but no investigation has characterized the choice of stories covered in a controlled manner. We examined whether the media systematically covers stories of weaker study design.

Methods

We compared study characteristics of 75 clinically-oriented journal articles that received coverage in the top five newspapers by circulation against 75 clinically-oriented journal articles that appeared in the top five medical journals by impact factor over a similar timespan. Subgroup analysis was performed to determine whether differences between investigations from both sources varied by study type (randomized controlled trial [RCT] or observational study).

Results

Investigations receiving coverage from newspapers were less likely to be RCTs (17% vs. 35%, p = 0.016) and more likely to be observational studies (75% vs. 47%, p<0.001). No difference was observed in number of people studied (median: 1034 vs. 1901, p = 0.14) or length of follow-up (median: 1.80 vs. 1.00 years, p = 0.22). In subgroup analysis, observational studies from the media used smaller sample sizes (median: 1984 vs. 21136, p = 0.029) and were more likely to be cross-sectional (71% vs. 31%, p<0.001), while no differences were observed for RCTs.

Conclusions

Newspapers were more likely to cover observational studies and less likely to cover RCTs than high impact journals. Additionally, when the media does cover observational studies, they select articles of inferior quality. Newspapers preferentially cover medical research with weaker methodology.     

A systematic review of African studies on intimate partner violence against pregnant women: prevalence and risk factors

Background

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is very high in Africa. However, information obtained from the increasing number of African studies on IPV among pregnant women has not been scientifically analyzed. This paper presents a systematic review summing up the evidence from African studies on IPV prevalence and risk factors among pregnant women.

Methods

A key-word defined search of various electronic databases, specific journals and reference lists on IPV prevalence and risk factors during pregnancy resulted in 19 peer-reviewed journal articles which matched our inclusion criteria. Quantitative articles about pregnant women from Africa published in English between 2000 and 2010 were reviewed. At least two reviewers assessed each paper for quality and content. We conducted meta-analysis of prevalence data and reported odds ratios of risk factors.

Results

The prevalence of IPV during pregnancy ranges from 2% to 57% (n = 13 studies) with meta-analysis yielding an overall prevalence of 15.23% (95% CI: 14.38 to 16.08%). After adjustment for known confounders, five studies retained significant associations between HIV and IPV during pregnancy (OR1.48–3.10). Five studies demonstrated strong evidence that a history of violence is significantly associated with IPV in pregnancy and alcohol abuse by a partner also increases a woman''s chances of being abused during pregnancy (OR 2.89–11.60). Other risk factors include risky sexual behaviours, low socioeconomic status and young age.

Conclusion

The prevalence of IPV among pregnant women in Africa is one of the highest reported globally. The major risk factors included HIV infection, history of violence and alcohol and drug use. This evidence points to the importance of further research to both better understand IPV during pregnancy and feed into interventions in reproductive health services to prevent and minimize the impact of such violence.     

Articles by Latin American Authors in Prestigious Journals Have Fewer Citations

Background

The journal Impact factor (IF) is generally accepted to be a good measurement of the relevance/quality of articles that a journal publishes. In spite of an, apparently, homogenous peer-review process for a given journal, we hypothesize that the country affiliation of authors from developing Latin American (LA) countries affects the IF of a journal detrimentally.

Methodology/Principal Findings

Seven prestigious international journals, one multidisciplinary journal and six serving specific branches of science, were examined in terms of their IF in the Web of Science. Two subsets of each journal were then selected to evaluate the influence of author''s affiliation on the IF. They comprised contributions (i) with authorship from four Latin American (LA) countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico) and (ii) with authorship from five developed countries (England, France, Germany, Japan and USA). Both subsets were further subdivided into two groups: articles with authorship from one country only and collaborative articles with authorship from other countries. Articles from the five developed countries had IF close to the overall IF of the journals and the influence of collaboration on this value was minor. In the case of LA articles the effect of collaboration (virtually all with developed countries) was significant. The IFs for non-collaborative articles averaged 66% of the overall IF of the journals whereas the articles in collaboration raised the IFs to values close to the overall IF.

Conclusion/Significance

The study shows a significantly lower IF in the group of the subsets of non-collaborative LA articles and thus that country affiliation of authors from non-developed LA countries does affect the IF of a journal detrimentally. There are no data to indicate whether the lower IFs of LA articles were due to their inherent inferior quality/relevance or psycho-social trend towards under-citation of articles from these countries. However, further study is required since there are foreseeable consequences of this trend as it may stimulate strategies by editors to turn down articles that tend to be under-cited.     

Methodological Deficits in Diagnostic Research Using ‘-Omics’ Technologies: Evaluation of the QUADOMICS Tool and Quality of Recently Published Studies

Background

QUADOMICS is an adaptation of QUADAS (a quality assessment tool for use in systematic reviews of diagnostic accuracy studies), which takes into account the particular challenges presented by ‘-omics’ based technologies. Our primary objective was to evaluate the applicability and consistency of QUADOMICS. Subsequently we evaluated and describe the methodological quality of a sample of recently published studies using the tool.

Methodology/Principal Findings

45‘-omics’- based diagnostic studies were identified by systematic search of Pubmed using suitable MeSH terms (“Genomics”, “Sensitivity and specificity”, “Diagnosis”). Three investigators independently assessed the quality of the articles using QUADOMICS and met to compare observations and generate a consensus. Consistency and applicability was assessed by comparing each reviewer''s original rating with the consensus. Methodological quality was described using the consensus rating. Agreement was above 80% for all three reviewers. Four items presented difficulties with application, mostly due to the lack of a clearly defined gold standard. Methodological quality of our sample was poor; studies met roughly half of the applied criteria (mean ± sd, 54.7±18.4%). Few studies were carried out in a population that mirrored the clinical situation in which the test would be used in practice, (6, 13.3%); none described patient recruitment sufficiently; and less than half described clinical and physiological factors that might influence the biomarker profile (20, 44.4%).

Conclusions

The QUADOMICS tool can consistently be applied to diagnostic ‘-omics’ studies presently published in biomedical journals. A substantial proportion of reports in this research field fail to address design issues that are fundamental to make inferences relevant for patient care.