News from selected sessions of the International Congress of Biomedical Peer Review for Saturday, September 20
Journal editors "preaching" more
Retracted articles live on in others' work
Still available: News from Sept. 18, Sept. 19 sessions.
Journal editors "preaching" more
Prague, Sept. 20 - Medical journal editors seem to be "preaching" more in
their editorials, suggested an unorthodox study presented today the
International Congress on Biomedical Peer Review and Global Communications.
British Medical Journal Editor Richard Smith, MD, and his son calculated the
total length in centimeters of editorials written by the editors of several
major weekly general medical journals each year since the late 1980s, then
counted the total occurrences of the words "must" and "should" per journal
per year. The resulting index, Smith said, showed increases both in overall
editorial length and the number of "musts" and "shoulds" per centimeter.
Another report indicated that editorial staff and editorial board members
don't agree with readers very often about what medical journals should
emphasize in their published articles. The report, from the Journal of the
American Medical Association (JAMA), found that readers agreed with only 3 of
the 10 topics chosen by the expert panel as "most important."
A related presentation, meanwhile found that the editors of most clinical
journals are "amateurs," practicing clinicians who are self-taught and work
as editors part-time. Just one-quarter of the editors surveyed in that study
had formal training in either editing, writing, statistics, or reviewing.
However, the study added, editors appear willing to receive further training.
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Retracted articles live on in others' work
Prague, Sept. 20 - Scores of medical journal articles retracted due to
serious error or misconduct have since been cited nearly 2,000 times in the
literature, most often by authors seemingly unaware of the retractions,
according to a study presented today at the International Congress on
Biomedical Peer Review and Global Communications.
That problem and other related issues in medical journal publishing were
discussed at an afternoon session entitled "When Things Go Wrong."
In "Phenomena of Retraction," researchers from the University of
Missouri-Columbia found that of 214 articles listed on MEDLINE as retracted,
80 were retracted due to error, 73 for misconduct, 37 because their results
could not be replicated. Still, the 214 articles were cited 1,765 times, and
"many of those citations indicated substantive use of the retracted work,"
the study found.
Two additional studies during the session examined the nature of complaints
brought to ombudsmen at The Lancet and at Harvard Medical School.
Lancet Editor Richard Horton, MD, said his journal's ombudsman received 11
complaints of editorial malpractice in the office's first year of operation
(July 1996-June 1997), with several more received since. The majority of the
complaints were editorial in nature, while the others had to do with
advertising and subscription issues. As a result, the Lancet has reexamined a
number of its processes and policies.
The Ombuds Office at the Harvard Medical School, meanwhile, has seen an
increase in reported intellectual property disputes involving faculty,
trainees and students. Between 1991, when the office opened, and 1996, issues
involving authorship, ownership and professional misconduct rose from 2
percent to 11 percent of the 500 complaints reaching the ombudsperson yearly.
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