Archives des mots-clés : biomedical research

Characteristics of academic publications, preprints, and registered clinical trials on the COVID-19 pandemic

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Authors : Silvia Gianola, Tiago S. Jesus, Silvia Bargeri, Greta Castellini

The COVID-19 pandemic has unleashed a deluge of publications. For this cross-sectional study we compared the amount and reporting characteristics of COVID-19-related academic articles and preprints and the number of ongoing clinical trials and systematic reviews.

To do this, we searched the PubMed database of citations and abstracts for published life science journals by using appropriate combinations of medical subject headings (MeSH terms), and the COVID-19 section of the MedRxiv and BioRxiv archives up to 20 May 2020 (21 weeks).

In addition, we searched Clinicaltrial.gov, Chinese Clinical Trial Registry, EU Clinical Trials Register, and 15 other trial registers, as well as PROSPERO, the international prospective register of systematic reviews.

The characteristics of each publication were extracted. Regression analyses and Z tests were used to detect publication trends and their relative proportions. A total of 3635 academic publications and 3805 preprints were retrieved. Only 8.6% (n = 329) of the preprints were already published in indexed journals. The number of academic and preprint publications increased significantly over time (p<0.001).

Case reports (6% academic vs 0.9% preprints; p<0.001) and letters (17.4% academic vs 0.5% preprints; p<0.001) accounted for a greater share of academic compared to preprint publications. Differently, randomized controlled trials (0.22% vs 0.63%; p<0.001) and systematic reviews (0.08% vs 5%) made up a greater share of the preprints.

The relative proportion of clinical studies registered at Clinicaltrials.gov, Chinese Clinical Trial Registry, and EU Clinical Trials Register was 57.9%, 49.5%, and 98.9%, respectively, most of which were still “recruiting”.

PROSPERO listed 962 systematic review protocols. Preprints were slightly more prevalent than academic articles but both were increasing in number.

The void left by the lack of primary studies was filled by an outpour of immediate opinions (i.e., letters to the editor) published in PubMed-indexed journals. Summarizing, preprints have gained traction as a publishing response to the demand for prompt access to empirical, albeit not peer-reviewed, findings during the present pandemic.

URL : Characteristics of academic publications, preprints, and registered clinical trials on the COVID-19 pandemic

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0240123

How often do leading biomedical journals use statistical experts to evaluate statistical methods? The results of a survey

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Authors : Tom E. Hardwicke, Steven N. Goodman

Scientific claims in biomedical research are typically derived from statistical analyses. However, misuse or misunderstanding of statistical procedures and results permeate the biomedical literature, affecting the validity of those claims.

One approach journals have taken to address this issue is to enlist expert statistical reviewers. How many journals do this, how statistical review is incorporated, and how its value is perceived by editors is of interest.

Here we report an expanded version of a survey conducted more than 20 years ago by Goodman and colleagues (1998) with the intention of characterizing contemporary statistical review policies at leading biomedical journals.

We received eligible responses from 107 of 364 (28%) journals surveyed, across 57 fields, mostly from editors in chief. 34% (36/107) rarely or never use specialized statistical review, 34% (36/107) used it for 10–50% of their articles and 23% used it for all articles.

These numbers have changed little since 1998 in spite of dramatically increased concern about research validity. The vast majority of editors regarded statistical review as having substantial incremental value beyond regular peer review and expressed comparatively little concern about the potential increase in reviewing time, cost, and difficulty identifying suitable statistical reviewers. Improved statistical education of researchers and different ways of employing statistical expertise are needed. Several proposals are discussed.

URL : How often do leading biomedical journals use statistical experts to evaluate statistical methods? The results of a survey

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0239598

Disadvantages in preparing and publishing scientific papers caused by the dominance of the English language in science: The case of Colombian researchers in biological sciences

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Author : Valeria Ramírez-Castañeda

The success of a scientist depends on their production of scientific papers and the impact factor of the journal in which they publish. Because most major scientific journals are published in English, success is related to publishing in this language.

Currently, 98% of publications in science are written in English, including researchers from English as a Foreign Language (EFL) countries. Colombia is among the countries with the lowest English proficiency in the world. Thus, understanding the disadvantages that Colombians face in publishing is crucial to reducing global inequality in science.

This paper quantifies the disadvantages that result from the language hegemony in scientific publishing by examining the additional costs that communicating in English creates in the production of articles.

It was identified that more than 90% of the scientific articles published by Colombian researchers are in English, and that publishing in a second language creates additional financial costs to Colombian doctoral students and results in problems with reading comprehension, writing ease and time, and anxiety.

Rejection or revision of their articles because of the English grammar was reported by 43.5% of the doctoral students, and 33% elected not to attend international conferences and meetings due to the mandatory use of English in oral presentations.

Finally, among the translation/editing services reviewed, the cost per article is between one-quarter and one-half of a doctoral monthly salary in Colombia. Of particular note, we identified a positive correlation between English proficiency and higher socioeconomic origin of the researcher.

Overall, this study exhibits the negative consequences of hegemony of English that preserves the global gap in science. Although having a common language is important for science communication, generating multilinguistic alternatives would promote diversity while conserving a communication channel. Such an effort should come from different actors and should not fall solely on EFL researchers.

URL : Disadvantages in preparing and publishing scientific papers caused by the dominance of the English language in science: The case of Colombian researchers in biological sciences

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0238372

Quantifying and contextualizing the impact of bioRxiv preprints through automated social media audience segmentation

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Authors : Jedidiah Carlson, Kelley Harris

Engagement with scientific manuscripts is frequently facilitated by Twitter and other social media platforms. As such, the demographics of a paper’s social media audience provide a wealth of information about how scholarly research is transmitted, consumed, and interpreted by online communities.

By paying attention to public perceptions of their publications, scientists can learn whether their research is stimulating positive scholarly and public thought. They can also become aware of potentially negative patterns of interest from groups that misinterpret their work in harmful ways, either willfully or unintentionally, and devise strategies for altering their messaging to mitigate these impacts.

In this study, we collected 331,696 Twitter posts referencing 1,800 highly tweeted bioRxiv preprints and leveraged topic modeling to infer the characteristics of various communities engaging with each preprint on Twitter.

We agnostically learned the characteristics of these audience sectors from keywords each user’s followers provide in their Twitter biographies. We estimate that 96% of the preprints analyzed are dominated by academic audiences on Twitter, suggesting that social media attention does not always correspond to greater public exposure.

We further demonstrate how our audience segmentation method can quantify the level of interest from nonspecialist audience sectors such as mental health advocates, dog lovers, video game developers, vegans, bitcoin investors, conspiracy theorists, journalists, religious groups, and political constituencies.

Surprisingly, we also found that 10% of the preprints analyzed have sizable (>5%) audience sectors that are associated with right-wing white nationalist communities. Although none of these preprints appear to intentionally espouse any right-wing extremist messages, cases exist in which extremist appropriation comprises more than 50% of the tweets referencing a given preprint.

These results present unique opportunities for improving and contextualizing the public discourse surrounding scientific research.

URL : Quantifying and contextualizing the impact of bioRxiv preprints through automated social media audience segmentation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000860

Publication by association: the Covid-19 pandemic reveals relationships between authors and editors

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Authors : Clara Locher, David Moher, Ioana Cristea, Florian Naudet

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the rush to scientific and political judgments on the merits of hydroxychloroquine was fuelled by dubious papers which may have been published because the authors were not independent from the practices of the journals in which they appeared.

This example leads us to consider a new type of illegitimate publishing entity, “self-promotion journals” which could be deployed to serve the instrumentalisation of productivity-based metrics, with a ripple effect on decisions about promotion, tenure, and grant funding.

URL : Publication by association: the Covid-19 pandemic reveals relationships between authors and editors

DOI : https://doi.org/10.31222/osf.io/64u3s

Quantifying professionalism in peer review

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Authors : Travis G. Gerwing, Alyssa M. Allen Gerwing, Stephanie Avery-Gomm, Chi-Yeung Choi, Jeff C. Clements, Joshua A. Rash

Background

The process of peer-review in academia has attracted criticism surrounding issues of bias, fairness, and professionalism; however, frequency of occurrence of such comments is unknown.

Methods

We evaluated 1491 sets of reviewer comments from the fields of “Ecology and Evolution” and “Behavioural Medicine,” of which 920 were retrieved from the online review repository Publons and 571 were obtained from six early career investigators.

Comment sets were coded for the occurrence of “unprofessional comments” and “incomplete, inaccurate or unsubstantiated critiques” using an a-prior rubric based on our published research. Results are presented as absolute numbers and percentages.

Results

Overall, 12% (179) of comment sets included at least one unprofessional comment towards the author or their work, and 41% (611) contained incomplete, inaccurate of unsubstantiated critiques (IIUC).

Conclusions

The large number of unprofessional comments, and IIUCs observed could heighten psychological distress among investigators, particularly those at an early stage in their career. We suggest that development and adherence to a universally agreed upon reviewer code of conduct is necessary to improve the quality and professional experience of peer review.

URL : Quantifying professionalism in peer review

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s41073-020-00096-x

Researcher’s Perceptions on Publishing “Negative” Results and Open Access

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Authors : Lucía Echevarría, Alberto Malerba, Virginia Arechavala-Gomeza

Scientific advance is based on reproducibility, corroboration, and availability of research results. However, large numbers of experimental results that contradict previous work do not get published and many research results are not freely available as they are hidden behind paywalls.

As part of COST Action “DARTER”, a network of researchers in the field of RNA therapeutics, we have performed a small survey among our members and their colleagues to assess their opinion on the subject of publishing contradictory or ambiguous results and their attitude to open access (OA) publishing.

Our survey indicates that, although researchers highly value publication of “negative” results, they often do not publish their own, citing lack of time and the perception that those results may not be as highly cited. OA, on the other hand, seems to be widely accepted, but in many cases not actively sought by researchers due to higher costs associated with it.

URL : Researcher’s Perceptions on Publishing “Negative” Results and Open Access

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1089/nat.2020.0865