The data‐index: An author‐level metric that values impactful data and incentivizes data sharing

Author‐level metrics are a widely used measure of scientific success. The h‐index and its variants measure publication output (number of publications) and research impact (number of citations). They are often used to influence decisions, such as allocating funding or jobs. Here, we argue that the emphasis on publication output and impact hinders scientific progress in the fields of ecology and evolution because it disincentivizes two fundamental practices: generating impactful (and therefore often long‐term) datasets and sharing data. We describe a new author‐level metric, the data‐index, which values both dataset output (number of datasets) and impact (number of data‐index citations), so promotes generating and sharing data as a result. We discuss how it could be implemented and provide user guidelines. The data‐index is designed to complement other metrics of scientific success, as scientific contributions are diverse and our value system should reflect that both for the benefit of scientific progress and to create a value system that is more equitable, diverse, and inclusive. Future work should focus on promoting other scientific contributions, such as communicating science, informing policy, mentoring other scientists, and providing open‐access code and tools.     

The h’-Index,Effectively Improving the h-Index Based on the Citation Distribution

Background

Although being a simple and effective index that has been widely used to evaluate academic output of scientists, the h-index suffers from drawbacks. One critical disadvantage is that only h-squared citations can be inferred from the h-index, which completely ignores excess and h-tail citations, leading to unfair and inaccurate evaluations in many cases.

Methodology /Principal Findings

To solve this problem, I propose the h’-index, in which h-squared, excess and h-tail citations are all considered. Based on the citation data of the 100 most prolific economists, comparing to h-index, the h’-index shows better correlation with indices of total-citation number and citations per publication, which, although relatively reliable and widely used, do not carry the information of the citation distribution. In contrast, the h’-index possesses the ability to discriminate the shapes of citation distributions, thus leading to more accurate evaluation.

Conclusions /Significance

The h’-index improves the h-index, as well as indices of total-citation number and citations per publication, by possessing the ability to discriminate shapes of citation distribution, thus making the h’-index a better single-number index for evaluating scientific output in a way that is fairer and more reasonable.     

The Pagerank-Index: Going beyond Citation Counts in Quantifying Scientific Impact of Researchers

Quantifying and comparing the scientific output of researchers has become critical for governments, funding agencies and universities. Comparison by reputation and direct assessment of contributions to the field is no longer possible, as the number of scientists increases and traditional definitions about scientific fields become blurred. The h-index is often used for comparing scientists, but has several well-documented shortcomings. In this paper, we introduce a new index for measuring and comparing the publication records of scientists: the pagerank-index (symbolised as π). The index uses a version of pagerank algorithm and the citation networks of papers in its computation, and is fundamentally different from the existing variants of h-index because it considers not only the number of citations but also the actual impact of each citation. We adapt two approaches to demonstrate the utility of the new index. Firstly, we use a simulation model of a community of authors, whereby we create various ‘groups’ of authors which are different from each other in inherent publication habits, to show that the pagerank-index is fairer than the existing indices in three distinct scenarios: (i) when authors try to ‘massage’ their index by publishing papers in low-quality outlets primarily to self-cite other papers (ii) when authors collaborate in large groups in order to obtain more authorships (iii) when authors spend most of their time in producing genuine but low quality publications that would massage their index. Secondly, we undertake two real world case studies: (i) the evolving author community of quantum game theory, as defined by Google Scholar (ii) a snapshot of the high energy physics (HEP) theory research community in arXiv. In both case studies, we find that the list of top authors vary very significantly when h-index and pagerank-index are used for comparison. We show that in both cases, authors who have collaborated in large groups and/or published less impactful papers tend to be comparatively favoured by the h-index, whereas the pagerank-index highlights authors who have made a relatively small number of definitive contributions, or written papers which served to highlight the link between diverse disciplines, or typically worked in smaller groups. Thus, we argue that the pagerank-index is an inherently fairer and more nuanced metric to quantify the publication records of scientists compared to existing measures.     

Which Neurodevelopmental Disorders Get Researched and Why?

Aim

There are substantial differences in the amount of research concerned with different disorders. This paper considers why.

Methods

Bibliographic searches were conducted to identify publications (1985–2009) concerned with 35 neurodevelopmental disorders: Developmental dyslexia, Developmental dyscalculia, Developmental coordination disorder, Speech sound disorder, Specific language impairment, Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, Autistic spectrum disorder, Tourette syndrome, Intellectual disability, Angelman syndrome, Cerebral palsy, Cornelia de Lange syndrome, Cri du chat syndrome, Down syndrome, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, Fetal alcohol syndrome, Fragile X syndrome, Galactosaemia, Klinefelter syndrome, Lesch-Nyhan syndrome, Lowe syndrome, Marfan syndrome, Neurofibromatosis type 1, Noonan syndrome, Phenylketonuria, Prader-Willi syndrome, Rett syndrome, Rubinstein-Taybi syndrome, Trisomy 18, Tuberous sclerosis, Turner syndrome, Velocardiofacial syndrome, Williams syndrome, XXX and XYY. A publication index reflecting N publications relative to prevalence was derived.

Results

The publication index was higher for rare than common conditions. However, this was partly explained by the tendency for rare disorders to be more severe.

Interpretation

Although research activity is predictable from severity and prevalence, there are exceptions. Low rates of research, and relatively low levels of NIH funding, characterise conditions that are the domain of a single discipline with limited research resources. Growth in research is not explained by severity, and was exceptionally steep for autism and ADHD.     

Relative h-index to compare the scientific performance of researchers

I propose the Relative h-index of a scientist, which is based on his or her Hirsch's h-index divided by the total number of published papers recorded in the database. The Relative index h allows for a comparison of the scientific output among researchers and can be very useful for research support institutions, universities, and institutes to rank researchers for the purposes of recruitment, promotions, awards, and grant funding for projects.     

A Method for the Automated,Reliable Retrieval of Publication-Citation Records

Background

Publication records and citation indices often are used to evaluate academic performance. For this reason, obtaining or computing them accurately is important. This can be difficult, largely due to a lack of complete knowledge of an individual''s publication list and/or lack of time available to manually obtain or construct the publication-citation record. While online publication search engines have somewhat addressed these problems, using raw search results can yield inaccurate estimates of publication-citation records and citation indices.

Methodology

In this paper, we present a new, automated method that produces estimates of an individual''s publication-citation record from an individual''s name and a set of domain-specific vocabulary that may occur in the individual''s publication titles. Because this vocabulary can be harvested directly from a research web page or online (partial) publication list, our method delivers an easy way to obtain estimates of a publication-citation record and the relevant citation indices. Our method works by applying a series of stringent name and content filters to the raw publication search results returned by an online publication search engine. In this paper, our method is run using Google Scholar, but the underlying filters can be easily applied to any existing publication search engine. When compared against a manually constructed data set of individuals and their publication-citation records, our method provides significant improvements over raw search results. The estimated publication-citation records returned by our method have an average sensitivity of and specificity of (in contrast to raw search result specificity of less than 10%). When citation indices are computed using these records, the estimated indices are within of the true value, compared to raw search results which have overestimates of, on average, .

Conclusions

These results confirm that our method provides significantly improved estimates over raw search results, and these can either be used directly for large-scale (departmental or university) analysis or further refined manually to quickly give accurate publication-citation records.     

El duro peregrinaje de las revistas biomédicas españolas hacia la excelencia: ¿quién nos ayuda? Calidad,impacto y méritos de la investigación

Biomedical journals must adhere to strict standards of editorial quality. In a globalized academic scenario, biomedical journals must compete firstly to publish the most relevant original research and secondly to obtain the broadest possible visibility and the widest dissemination of their scientific contents. The cornerstone of the scientific process is still the peer-review system but additional quality criteria should be met. Recently access to medical information has been revolutionized by electronic editions.Bibliometric databases such as MEDLINE, the ISI Web of Science and Scopus offer comprehensive online information on medical literature. Classically, the prestige of biomedical journals has been measured by their impact factor but, recently, other indicators such as SCImago SJR or the Eigenfactor are emerging as alternative indices of a journal's quality. Assessing the scholarly impact of research and the merits of individual scientists remains a major challenge. Allocation of authorship credit also remains controversial.Furthermore, in our Kafkaesque world, we prefer to count rather than read the articles we judge. Quantitative publication metrics (research output) and citations analyses (scientific influence) are key determinants of the scientific success of individual investigators. However, academia is embracing new objective indicators (such as the “h” index) to evaluate scholarly merit. The present review discusses some editorial issues affecting biomedical journals, currently available bibliometric databases, bibliometric indices of journal quality and, finally, indicators of research performance and scientific success.     

Connecting soundscape to landscape: Which acoustic index best describes landscape configuration?

Soundscape assessment has been proposed as a remote ecological monitoring tool for measuring biodiversity, but few studies have examined how soundscape patterns vary with landscape configuration and condition. The goal of our study was to examine a suite of published acoustic indices to determine whether they provide comparable results relative to varying levels of landscape fragmentation and ecological condition in nineteen forest sites in eastern Australia. Our comparison of six acoustic indices according to time of day revealed that two indices, the acoustic complexity and the bioacoustic index, presented a similar pattern that was linked to avian song intensity, but was not related to landscape and biodiversity attributes. The diversity indices, acoustic entropy and acoustic diversity, and the normalized difference soundscape index revealed high nighttime sound, as well as a dawn and dusk chorus. These indices appear to be sensitive to nocturnal biodiversity which is abundant at night in warm, subtropical environments. We argue that there is need to better understand temporal partitioning of the soundscape by specific taxonomic groups, and this should involve integrated research on amphibians, insects and birds during a 24 h cycle. The three indices that best connected the soundscape with landscape characteristics, ecological condition and bird species richness were acoustic entropy, acoustic evenness and the normalized difference soundscape index. This study has demonstrated that remote soundscape assessment can be implemented as an ecological monitoring tool in fragmented Australian forest landscapes. However, further investigation should be dedicated to refining and/or combining existing acoustic indices and also to determine if these indices are appropriate in other landscapes and for other survey purposes.     

Research Trends in Evidence-Based Medicine: A Joinpoint Regression Analysis of More than 50 Years of Publication Data

Background

Evidence-based medicine (EBM) has developed as the dominant paradigm of assessment of evidence that is used in clinical practice. Since its development, EBM has been applied to integrate the best available research into diagnosis and treatment with the purpose of improving patient care. In the EBM era, a hierarchy of evidence has been proposed, including various types of research methods, such as meta-analysis (MA), systematic review (SRV), randomized controlled trial (RCT), case report (CR), practice guideline (PGL), and so on. Although there are numerous studies examining the impact and importance of specific cases of EBM in clinical practice, there is a lack of research quantitatively measuring publication trends in the growth and development of EBM. Therefore, a bibliometric analysis was constructed to determine the scientific productivity of EBM research over decades.

Methods

NCBI PubMed database was used to search, retrieve and classify publications according to research method and year of publication. Joinpoint regression analysis was undertaken to analyze trends in research productivity and the prevalence of individual research methods.

Findings

Analysis indicates that MA and SRV, which are classified as the highest ranking of evidence in the EBM, accounted for a relatively small but auspicious number of publications. For most research methods, the annual percent change (APC) indicates a consistent increase in publication frequency. MA, SRV and RCT show the highest rate of publication growth in the past twenty years. Only controlled clinical trials (CCT) shows a non-significant reduction in publications over the past ten years.

Conclusions

Higher quality research methods, such as MA, SRV and RCT, are showing continuous publication growth, which suggests an acknowledgement of the value of these methods. This study provides the first quantitative assessment of research method publication trends in EBM.     

Global Cardiovascular Research Output,Citations, and Collaborations: A Time-Trend,Bibliometric Analysis (1999–2008)

Introduction

Health research is one mechanism to improve population-level health and should generally match the health needs of populations. However, there have been limited data to assess the trends in national-level cardiovascular research output, even as cardiovascular disease [CVD] has become the leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide.

Materials and Methods

We performed a time trends analysis of cardiovascular research publications (1999–2008) downloaded from Web of Knowledge using a iteratively-tested cardiovascular bibliometric filter with >90% precision and recall. We evaluated cardiovascular research publications, five-year running actual citation indices [ACIs], and degree of international collaboration measured through the ratio of the fractional count of addresses from one country against all addresses for each publication.

Results and Discussion

Global cardiovascular publication volume increased from 40 661 publications in 1999 to 55 284 publications in 2008, which represents a 36% increase. The proportion of cardiovascular publications from high-income, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD] countries declined from 93% to 84% of the total share over the study period. High-income, OECD countries generally had higher fractional counts, which suggest less international collaboration, than lower income countries from 1999–2008. There was an inverse relationship between cardiovascular publications and age-standardized CVD morbidity and mortality rates, but a direct, curvilinear relationship between cardiovascular publications and Human Development Index from 1999–2008.

Conclusions

Cardiovascular health research output has increased substantially in the past decade, with a greater share of citations being published from low- and middle-income countries. However, low- and middle-income countries with the higher burdens of cardiovascular disease continue to have lower research output than high-income countries, and thus require targeted research investments to improve cardiovascular health.     

Characteristics of Randomized Trials Published in Latin America and the Caribbean According to Funding Source

Introduction

Few studies have assessed the nature and quality of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC).

Methods and Findings

The aims of this systematic review are to evaluate the characteristics (including the risk of bias assessment) of RCT conducted in LAC according to funding source. A review of RCTs published in 2010 in which the author''s affiliation was from LAC was performed in PubMed and LILACS. Two reviewers independently extracted data and assessed the risk of bias. The primary outcomes were risk of bias assessment and funding source. A total of 1,695 references were found in PubMed and LILACS databases, of which 526 were RCTs (N = 73.513 participants). English was the dominant publication language (93%) and most of the RCTs were published in non-LAC journals (84.2%). Only five of the 19 identified countries accounted for nearly 95% of all RCTs conducted in the region (Brazil 70.9%, Mexico 10.1%, Argentina 5.9%, Colombia 3.8%, and Chile 3.4%). Few RCTs covered priority areas related with Millennium Development Goals like maternal health (6.7%) or high priority infectious diseases (3.8%). Regarding children, 3.6% and 0.4% RCT evaluated nutrition and diarrhea interventions respectively but none pneumonia. As a comparison, aesthetic and sport related interventions account for 4.6% of all trials. A random sample of RCTs (n = 358) was assessed for funding source: exclusively public (33.8%); private (e.g. pharmaceutical company) (15.3%); other (e.g. mixed, NGO) (15.1%); no funding (35.8%). Overall assessments for risk of bias showed no statistically significant differences between RCTs and type of funding source. Statistically significant differences favoring private and others type of funding was found when assessing trial registration and conflict of interest reporting.

Conclusion

Findings of this study could be used to provide more direction for future research to facilitate innovation, improve health outcomes or address priority health problems.     

The Carbon_h-factor: predicting individuals' research impact at early stages of their career

Assessing an individual's research impact on the basis of a transparent algorithm is an important task for evaluation and comparison purposes. Besides simple but also inaccurate indices such as counting the mere number of publications or the accumulation of overall citations, and highly complex but also overwhelming full-range publication lists in their raw format, Hirsch (2005) introduced a single figure cleverly combining different approaches. The so-called h-index has undoubtedly become the standard in scientometrics of individuals' research impact (note: in the present paper I will always use the term "research impact" to describe the research performance as the logic of the paper is based on the h-index, which quantifies the specific "impact" of, e.g., researchers, but also because the genuine meaning of impact refers to quality as well). As the h-index reflects the number h of papers a researcher has published with at least h citations, the index is inherently positively biased towards senior level researchers. This might sometimes be problematic when predictive tools are needed for assessing young scientists' potential, especially when recruiting early career positions or equipping young scientists' labs. To be compatible with the standard h-index, the proposed index integrates the scientist's research age (Carbon_h-factor) into the h-index, thus reporting the average gain of h-index per year. Comprehensive calculations of the Carbon_h-factor were made for a broad variety of four research-disciplines (economics, neuroscience, physics and psychology) and for researchers performing on three high levels of research impact (substantial, outstanding and epochal) with ten researchers per category. For all research areas and output levels we obtained linear developments of the h-index demonstrating the validity of predicting one's later impact in terms of research impact already at an early stage of their career with the Carbon_h-factor being approx. 0.4, 0.8, and 1.5 for substantial, outstanding and epochal researchers, respectively.     

Looking for Landmarks: The Role of Expert Review and Bibliometric Analysis in Evaluating Scientific Publication Outputs

Objective

To compare expert assessment with bibliometric indicators as tools to assess the quality and importance of scientific research papers.

Methods and Materials

Shortly after their publication in 2005, the quality and importance of a cohort of nearly 700 Wellcome Trust (WT) associated research papers were assessed by expert reviewers; each paper was reviewed by two WT expert reviewers. After 3 years, we compared this initial assessment with other measures of paper impact.

Results

Shortly after publication, 62 (9%) of the 687 research papers were determined to describe at least a ‘major addition to knowledge’ –6 were thought to be ‘landmark’ papers. At an aggregate level, after 3 years, there was a strong positive association between expert assessment and impact as measured by number of citations and F1000 rating. However, there were some important exceptions indicating that bibliometric measures may not be sufficient in isolation as measures of research quality and importance, and especially not for assessing single papers or small groups of research publications.

Conclusion

When attempting to assess the quality and importance of research papers, we found that sole reliance on bibliometric indicators would have led us to miss papers containing important results as judged by expert review. In particular, some papers that were highly rated by experts were not highly cited during the first three years after publication. Tools that link expert peer reviews of research paper quality and importance to more quantitative indicators, such as citation analysis would be valuable additions to the field of research assessment and evaluation.     

The taxonomist - an endangered race. A practical proposal for its survival

Background

Taxonomy or biological systematics is the basic scientific discipline of biology, postulating hypotheses of identity and relationships, on which all other natural sciences dealing with organisms relies. However, the scientific contributions of taxonomists have been largely neglected when using species names in scientific publications by not citing the authority on which they are based.

Discussion

Consequences of this neglect is reduced recognition of the importance of taxonomy, which in turn results in diminished funding, lower interest from journals in publishing taxonomic research, and a reduced number of young scientists entering the field. This has lead to the so-called taxonomic impediment at a time when biodiversity studies are of critical importance. Here we emphasize a practical and obvious solution to this dilemma. We propose that whenever a species name is used, the author(s) of the species hypothesis be included and the original literature source cited, including taxonomic revisions and identification literature - nothing more than what is done for every other hypothesis or assumption included in a scientific publication. In addition, we postulate that journals primarily publishing taxonomic studies should be indexed in ISI^SM.

Summary

The proposal outlined above would make visible the true contribution of taxonomists within the scientific community, and would provide a more accurate assessment for funding agencies impact and importance of taxonomy, and help in the recruitment of young scientists into the field, thus helping to alleviate the taxonomic impediment. In addition, it would also make much of the biological literature more robust by reducing or alleviating taxonomic uncertainty.     

Is There a Relationship between Research Sponsorship and Publication Impact? An Analysis of Funding Acknowledgments in Nanotechnology Papers

This study analyzes funding acknowledgments in scientific papers to investigate relationships between research sponsorship and publication impacts. We identify acknowledgments to research sponsors for nanotechnology papers published in the Web of Science during a one-year sample period. We examine the citations accrued by these papers and the journal impact factors of their publication titles. The results show that publications from grant sponsored research exhibit higher impacts in terms of both journal ranking and citation counts than research that is not grant sponsored. We discuss the method and models used, and the insights provided by this approach as well as it limitations.     

珠江口淇澳岛红树林湿地生态系统健康评价

基于湿地生态系统健康理论和压力-状态-响应模型,以珠江口淇澳岛红树林湿地生态系统为研究对象,构建了红树林湿地生态系统健康评价指标体系,并确定了具体的评价指标、评价标准、指标权重、评价等级和评价方法,对珠江口淇澳岛红树林湿地生态系统健康状况进行了评价.结果表明:2008年,淇澳岛红树林湿地生态系统总健康指数为0.6580,评价等级为Ⅱ级(健康);压力、状态和响应指标的健康指数分别为0.3469、0.8718和0.7554,说明该评价系统存在一定的压力,而状态和响应方面较好.作为省级自然保护区,珠江口淇澳岛红树林湿地生态系统健康水平有待进一步提升.红树林湿地生态系统健康评价研究目前尚不成熟,进一步研究需重点关注针对红树林特征的评价因子筛选、相关数据的长期定位监测、生态系统健康与生态系统功能的定量关系研究等.     

基于熵权法的草原生态安全评价——以甘肃牧区为例

在生态安全评价压力-状态-响应概念框架模型指导下,以甘肃牧区为例,将熵权法与综合评价法有机结合,进行了甘肃牧区草原生态安全评价研究。结果表明,根据该方法得到的草原生态安全评价结论与区域实际相吻合,证明该方法在草原生态安全评价及相关研究领域的应用是科学、可行的。研究中采用熵权法确定评价指标权重,从根本上克服了很多评价指标没有统一标准的问题,减少了人为主观性对评价过程的干扰,从而更客观地反映了各评价指标对区域草原生态安全状况的贡献率,为区域生态安全定量化评价提供了新的手段和研究方法,在定量化评价研究领域具有一定的实用价值和推广意义。     

Global guidance principles for life cycle assessment databases: development of training material and other implementation activities on the publication

Purpose

The paper introduces the publication on “Global Guidance Principles for Life Cycle Assessment Databases”; it focuses on the development of training material and other implementation activities on the publication.

Methods

The document is the output of the “Shonan Guidance Principles” workshop. The publication provides guidance principles for life cycle assessment (LCA) databases; this includes how to collect raw data, how to develop datasets, and how to manage databases. The publication also addresses questions concerning data documentation and review, coordination among databases, capacity building, and future scenarios. As a next step, the publication is used to prepare training material and other implementation activities.

Results

The publication was launched at the LCM 2011 Conference. Since then outreach activities have been organized in particular in emerging economies. Further developments with regard to the guidance principles are foreseen as part of a flagship project within phase 3 of the Life Cycle Initiative. Training material is being developed that will include how to set up databases and develop datasets. The topic has been taken up by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in its Rio?+?20 Voluntary Commitments: UNEP and Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) through the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative commit to facilitate improved access to good quality life cycle data and databases as well as expanded use of key environmental indicators that allows the measurement and monitoring of progress towards the environmental sustainability of selected product chains.

Conclusions

The adoption of the “Global Guidance Principles” publication as a de facto global standard is expected to facilitate the work of database teams, especially, in developing countries, and the collaboration in regional networks. These efforts are supported by the development of training material and other implementation activities.     

Development and Validation of an Index to Measure the Quality of Facility-Based Labor and Delivery Care Processes in Sub-Saharan Africa

Background

High quality care is crucial in ensuring that women and newborns receive interventions that may prevent and treat birth-related complications. As facility deliveries increase in developing countries, there are concerns about service quality. Observation is the gold standard for clinical quality assessment, but existing observation-based measures of obstetric quality of care are lengthy and difficult to administer. There is a lack of consensus on quality indicators for routine intrapartum and immediate postpartum care, including essential newborn care. This study identified key dimensions of the quality of the process of intrapartum and immediate postpartum care (QoPIIPC) in facility deliveries and developed a quality assessment measure representing these dimensions.

Methods and Findings

Global maternal and neonatal care experts identified key dimensions of QoPIIPC through a modified Delphi process. Experts also rated indicators of these dimensions from a comprehensive delivery observation checklist used in quality surveys in sub-Saharan African countries. Potential QoPIIPC indices were developed from combinations of highly-rated indicators. Face, content, and criterion validation of these indices was conducted using data from observations of 1,145 deliveries in Kenya, Madagascar, and Tanzania (including Zanzibar). A best-performing index was selected, composed of 20 indicators of intrapartum/immediate postpartum care, including essential newborn care. This index represented most dimensions of QoPIIPC and effectively discriminated between poorly and well-performed deliveries.

Conclusions

As facility deliveries increase and the global community pays greater attention to the role of care quality in achieving further maternal and newborn mortality reduction, the QoPIIPC index may be a valuable measure. This index complements and addresses gaps in currently used quality assessment tools. Further evaluation of index usability and reliability is needed. The availability of a streamlined, comprehensive, and validated index may enable ongoing and efficient observation-based assessment of care quality during labor and delivery in sub-Saharan Africa, facilitating targeted quality improvement.     

Funding source and research report quality in nutrition practice-related research

Background

The source of funding is one of many possible causes of bias in scientific research. One method of detecting potential for bias is to evaluate the quality of research reports. Research exploring the relationship between funding source and nutrition-related research report quality is limited and in other disciplines the findings are mixed.

Objective

The purpose of this study is to determine whether types of funding sources of nutrition research are associated with differences in research report quality.

Design

A retrospective study of research reporting quality, research design and funding source was conducted on 2539 peer reviewed research articles from the American Dietetic Association''s Evidence Analysis Library® database.

Results

Quality rating frequency distributions indicate 43.3% of research reports were rated as positive, 50.1% neutral, and 6.6% as negative. Multinomial logistic regression results showed that while both funding source and type of research design are significant predictors of quality ratings (χ2 = 118.99, p<0.001), the model''s usefulness in predicting overall research report quality is little better than chance. Compared to research reports with government funding, those not acknowledging any funding sources, followed by studies with University/hospital funding were more likely to receive neutral vs positive quality ratings, OR = 1.85, P <0.001 and OR = 1.54, P<0.001, respectively and those that did not report funding were more likely to receive negative quality ratings (OR = 4.97, P<0.001). After controlling for research design, industry funded research reports were no more likely to receive a neutral or negative quality rating than those funded by government sources.

Conclusion

Research report quality cannot be accurately predicted from the funding source after controlling for research design. Continued vigilance to evaluate the quality of all research regardless of the funding source and to further understand other factors that affect quality ratings are warranted.