How Can the Peer Review Process Be Improved
Research TO Do listing: How can we ameliorate the quality of peer review and research
For Peer review week 2019 Sense almost Science accept asked for a series of blogposts, to begin a Research 'TO Practise' list. What can researchers, universities, funders and governments do to improve the quality of peer review and research? This is just the outset, nosotros need your ideas too.
Imagine a world where lodge has the high-quality evidence it needs to make informed
decisions nigh crime, health and teaching. What activeness tin can researchers, universities, funders and governments accept to get us there?
How can we improve the quality of peer reviewed publications?
Past Professor Gary Collins @GSCollins and Patricia Logullo @patlogullo on behalf of the EQUATOR Network @EQUATORNetwork
It has been estimated that more than eighty% of manufactures in biomedical journals lack of import data. They are published without the details that would be necessary for their findings to assistance researchers and health professionals improve people's lives. Because publications are oft incomplete or biased, this wastes money and homo resources and tin can lead to patient harm. These are the findings of primal systematic reviews on studies published in the last xx years.
Since the early 1990s, researchers and journal editors have tried to tackle this problem by creating reporting guidelines: these are tools that remind authors to provide a minimum listing of information needed to ensure that:
– the article can be understood;
– the study can exist replicated by another researcher;
– the results tin can be used by health professionals or policymakers;
– the report can be included in a systematic review (to inform guidelines for example).
Research has shown that the quality of scientific reporting has improved modestly with the increased use of reporting guidelines. Nevertheless, there is still a long way to go.
Some other source of avoidable harm to patients is when the studies are not reported at all: not publication of research (also called publication bias) is a known cause of inquiry waste. Since 2005, the International Committee of Medical Periodical Editors (ICMJE) has mandated prior registration of trial protocols before clinical trials findings are published, Clinical trial registration makes it easier to identify those studies that accept completed but not yet published.
The EQUATOR Network (www.equator-network.org) is a global initiative dedicated to improving the quality and transparency of health enquiry. We acquit enquiry on reporting, manage a collection of more than 400 reporting guidelines (which are currently being audited), and train authors and editors how to use reporting guidelines. Our enquiry feel allows u.s. to typhoon the post-obit "to-do listing" about improving reporting of wellness care research.
How to ready the problem of poor-quality reporting
Based on the EQUATOR Network feel of conducting and evaluating research-on-research, and helping authors, editors and librarians, these are the activities, procedures, approaches or policies thatto better the completeness of inquiry reporting. Some of these issues are currently being addressed past organisations and researchers, some might non be.
Researchers (research-on-research investigators) TO Practise list:
1. Updating reporting guidelines – The commencement reporting guideline, the CONSORT Argument, designed to guide the reporting of clinical trials, was published in 1996. Since and so, numerous reporting guidelines take been developed for other study designs, including observational studies (STROBE), systematic reviews (PRISMA), diagnostic test accurateness (STARD), prognostic model studies (TRIPOD) studies and many more. Espoused was updated in 2001 and 2010. All the same, many reporting guidelines take been available for a long time now without having been updated. Periodic updating and revising is important to ensuring their ongoing credibility, reflect advancements fabricated in written report methodology and hopefully increment their utilise by researchers when writing up the findings from their study.
ii. Investigating poor adherence – Many reporting guidelines have been published, simply evaluations have shown they are often not fully adhered to, with many key details often omitted — even in reports published in high ranking journals. We therefore demand to investigate and understand why researchers are not fully post-obit the recommendations contained in reporting guidelines or do it poorly (incompletely), and why journals are allowing that to happen.
3. Testing new interventions — What could help authors use reporting guidelines? What would be alternative approaches to improving reporting quality? Does training assist? Nosotros should examination them equally interventions, in controlled and carefully planned trials.
Publishers and journal editors TO Practice list:
i. Knowing reporting guidelines well — Editors working for journals that endorse or claim to enforce the use of reporting guidelines are not always sufficiently familiar with the contents of all the chief reporting guidelines and the corresponding checklists. This creates the state of affairs where the editors can ask authors to fill in the wrong checklist as a mandatory stride of submission. Training editors on the fundamental reporting guidelines is important to sympathize whether the relevant guideline and checklist has been correctly followed and completed.
ii. Standardise the instructions for authors — The journals' instructions for authors vary substantially, even between journals that share the same publisher: this means they have quite different expectations of how authors should write and format their papers. This variation persists even in journals that have adopted ICMJE (International Committee of Medical Periodical Editors) recommendations. In order to reach greater consistency and quality, journals should consistently endorse the cardinal reporting guidelines (namely those listed on the EQUATOR homepage).
3. Check usage — Many journals endorse or recommend following reporting guidelines, expecting authors to attach to them and submit a completed checklist (providing page numbers where key information are reported in the submitted article). Even so, journals seldom check if reporting guidelines were followed, or indeed if the completed checklist is accurate. Effective solutions are required during the submission and peer review procedure to identify key data, recommended in the reporting guideline, that has non been reported before acceptance of the article.
4. Increase peer reviewers awareness — Ideally, peer reviewers should be aware of the relevant reporting guidelines for the study design of the article they are reviewing and consult them during the peer review. Peer reviewers have the opportunity to help to better reporting, by requesting that authors provide details on aspects of the study that are missing.
5. Create the citizen box — Journals could get-go requiring authors to consummate a pocket-size paragraph of the manuscripts with information directly relevant to patients and citizens in general, about the importance of the study. This could make manuscripts more than understandable to the full general public.
Systematic reviewers TO Practise list:
1. Provide risk of bias feedback — 1 of the daily tasks of systematic reviewers is to evaluate the risk of bias of studies. For that, reviewers need detailed information about how the study was done and what information technology found. When at that place is "risk of bias due to poor reporting", we don't know what happened next. Nosotros don't know what information was asked from authors, because little is reported about this communication between reviewers and triallists. Also, at that place should be a mode to publish data that was collected through direct contact with the authors.
2. Improve reporting — While systematic reviews endure from a lack of information in the papers they review, non all systematic reviews are well reported, understandable by everybody or useful. Therefore, at that place is room for improvement in the quality of the systematic reviews reports. This goes from reporting a minimum gear up of information following the PRISMA reporting guideline to aid describe the included studies, to improving the quality of linguistic communication and format. This is disquisitional for the abstracts and plain language summaries that are frequently used by policymakers and patients.
Authorities, policymakers and funders TO-Practice list:
1. Get to know and require the minimum sets — Funders should mandate the use of reporting guidelines, so that policymakers can make informed decisions on whether or non to adopt a new treatment. This ways they need information on harms (an item on several reporting guidelines), feasibility of implementation (providing sufficient detail on the interventions, east.1000. by following the TiDIER reporting guideline) and cost effectiveness.
two. Examine protocol methods using reporting guidelines — Funders routinely evaluate applications for funding. These do not always provide all the important details on how authors intend to comport the research (where reporting guidelines such every bit SPIRIT and PRISMA-P for clinical trials and systematic reviews can help). If funders start to require adherence to reporting guidelines, at least for the methods section (which can then be readily evaluated during peer review), this might help make improve informed decisions on whether to fund studies.
Patients TO-DO list
ane. Involve! – Patients should be actively involved in inquiry. This is increasingly happening in Europe, but however in clinical areas only. Patients could besides be encouraged to participate in research-on-enquiry projects. We need to know their view on what is essential or important to be reported in a manuscript.
2. Review! –Patients and members of the public could and should participate in the revision procedure of new reporting guidelines. Research is done with them and for them. So why not ask them to verify the draft items of reporting guidelines checklists, even when they did not participate in their building?
Nosotros extend our thanks to David Tovey @DavidTovey for his piece of work editing these blogposts.
Please tweet your ideas #ResearchTODOlist #PeerRevWk19 and #QualityInPeerReview or email us at hello@senseaboutscience.org.
Source: https://peerreviewweek.wordpress.com/2019/09/17/research-to-do-list-how-can-we-improve-the-quality-of-peer-review-and-research/
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