Evaluation of Citation Inaccuracies in Surgical Literature by Journal Type, Study Design, and Level of Evidence: Towards Safeguarding the Peer-Review Process.

BACKGROUND: Accurate citation practices are key to furthering knowledge in an efficient and valid manner. The aim of this study is to investigate the prevalence of citation inaccuracies in original research from the top-ranked surgical journals and to evaluate the impact level of evidence has on citation inaccuracy. METHODS: A retrospective study evaluating the citation accuracy of the top 10 ranked surgical journals using the SJCR indicators. For each year between 2015 and 2020, the top 10 cited studies were selected, totaling 60 studies from each journal. From each individual study, 10 citations were randomly selected and evaluated for accuracy. Categories of inaccuracy included fact not found, study not found, contradictory conclusion, citation of a citation, and inaccurate population. RESULTS: A total of 5973 citations were evaluated for accuracy. Of all the citations analyzed, 15.2% of them had an inaccuracy. There was no statistically significant difference in citations inaccuracy rates among the years studied (P = .38) or study level of evidence (P = .21). Annals of Surgery, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery and Annals of Surgical Oncology had significantly more citation inaccuracies than other journals evaluated (P < .05). JAMA Surgery, The Journal of Endovascular Therapy and The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery had significantly fewer citation inaccuracies. CONCLUSIONS: Although 84.8% of citations from 2015-2020 were determined to be accurate, citation inaccuracies continue to be prevalent throughout highly-ranked surgical literature. There were no significant differences identified in citation inaccuracy rates between the years evaluated or based on study level of evidence.

Tracking changes between preprint posting and journal publication during a pandemic.

Amid the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, preprints in the biomedical sciences are being posted and accessed at unprecedented rates, drawing widespread attention from the general public, press, and policymakers for the first time. This phenomenon has sharpened long-standing questions about the reliability of information shared prior to journal peer review. Does the information shared in preprints typically withstand the scrutiny of peer review, or are conclusions likely to change in the version of record? We assessed preprints from bioRxiv and medRxiv that had been posted and subsequently published in a journal through April 30, 2020, representing the initial phase of the pandemic response. We utilised a combination of automatic and manual annotations to quantify how an article changed between the preprinted and published version. We found that the total number of figure panels and tables changed little between preprint and published articles. Moreover, the conclusions of 7.2% of non-COVID-19-related and 17.2% of COVID-19-related abstracts undergo a discrete change by the time of publication, but the majority of these changes do not qualitatively change the conclusions of the paper.

Epidemiology, methodological quality, and reporting characteristics of systematic reviews and meta-analyses on coronavirus disease 2019: A cross-sectional study.

ABSTRACT: During the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, convenient accessibility and rapid publication of studies related to the ongoing pandemic prompted shorter preparation time for studies. Whether the methodological quality and reporting characteristics of published systematic reviews (SRs)/meta-analyses are affected during the specific pandemic condition is yet to be clarified. This study aimed to evaluate the epidemiology, methodological quality, and reporting characteristics of published SRs/meta-analyses related to COVID-19.The Ovid Medline, Ovid Embase, Cochrane Library, and Web of Science electronic databases were searched to identify published SRs/meta-analyses related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Study screening, data extraction, and methodology quality assessment were performed independently by 2 authors. The methodology quality of included SRs/meta-analyses was evaluated using revised version of a measurement tool to assess SRs, and the reporting characteristics were assessed based on the preferred reporting items for SRs and meta-analyses guidelines.A total of 47 SRs/meta-analyses were included with a low to critically low methodological quality. The median number of days from the date of literature retrieval to the date that the study was first available online was 21 days; due to the limited time, only 7 studies had study protocols, and the studies focused on a wide range of COVID-19 topics. The rate of compliance to the preferred reporting items for SRs and meta-analyses checklists of reporting characteristics ranged from 14.9% to 100%. The rate of compliance to the items of protocol and registration, detailed search strategy, and assessment of publication bias was less than 50%.SRs/meta-analyses on COVID-19 were poorly conducted and reported, and thus, need to be substantially improved.

The Two Pandemics.

This article reflects on the importance and the impact of scientific publications in the midst of a global health crisis. It aims to raise awareness about the responsibility of accepting manuscripts in such sensitive times and is intended to motivate the production of high-quality papers through a critical vision.

Mycopathologia 2020: Legacy and Change to Remain Relevant for Content, Creation, and Communication.

The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic had a profound impact on the publishing landscape. The 'pre-peer-review' publication model is likely to become common as a lag in publishing is not acceptable in a pandemic or other time! Mycopathologia is well placed to adopt such changes with its improved editorial processes, article formats, author engagements, and published articles' access and citation. Mycopathologia had an improved journal impact factor and article downloads in 2018-2019. A limited sampling suggested a slight decrease in the total submissions in 2019 (352 articles) compared to 2018 (371 articles). However, the acceptance rate improved to 30% in 2019 from 19% in 2018. Nearly half of all submissions in 2019 were rejected before peer-review or transferred to other Springer Nature journals. The published articles were contributed from 34 different countries, with authors from China, the USA, and Brazil among the top three contributors. An enhanced editorial oversight allowed peer-reviewers to focus on fewer articles that were well-matched to their expertise, which led to lower rejection rates post-peer-review. The introduction of MycopathologiaGENOME and MycopathologiaIMAGE article types received a good reception with notable downloads and citations.

Following the science? Comparison of methodological and reporting quality of covid-19 and other research from the first wave of the pandemic.

BACKGROUND: Following the initial identification of the 2019 coronavirus disease (covid-19), the subsequent months saw substantial increases in published biomedical research. Concerns have been raised in both scientific and lay press around the quality of some of this research. We assessed clinical research from major clinical journals, comparing methodological and reporting quality of covid-19 papers published in the first wave (here defined as December 2019 to May 2020 inclusive) of the viral pandemic with non-covid papers published at the same time. METHODS: We reviewed research publications (print and online) from The BMJ, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), The Lancet, and New England Journal of Medicine, from first publication of a covid-19 research paper (February 2020) to May 2020 inclusive. Paired reviewers were randomly allocated to extract data on methodological quality (risk of bias) and reporting quality (adherence to reporting guidance) from each paper using validated assessment tools. A random 10% of papers were assessed by a third, independent rater. Overall methodological quality for each paper was rated high, low or unclear. Reporting quality was described as percentage of total items reported. RESULTS: From 168 research papers, 165 were eligible, including 54 (33%) papers with a covid-19 focus. For methodological quality, 18 (33%) covid-19 papers and 83 (73%) non-covid papers were rated as low risk of bias, OR 6.32 (95%CI 2.85 to 14.00). The difference in quality was maintained after adjusting for publication date, results, funding, study design, journal and raters (OR 6.09 (95%CI 2.09 to 17.72)). For reporting quality, adherence to reporting guidelines was poorer for covid-19 papers, mean percentage of total items reported 72% (95%CI:66 to 77) for covid-19 papers and 84% (95%CI:81 to 87) for non-covid. CONCLUSIONS: Across various measures, we have demonstrated that covid-19 research from the first wave of the pandemic was potentially of lower quality than contemporaneous non-covid research. While some differences may be an inevitable consequence of conducting research during a viral pandemic, poor reporting should not be accepted.

COVID-19 and education: restructuring after the pandemic.

COVID-19 challenges to keep a valuable educational offer with lockdown measures and social distancing are reviewed. Scientific Societies had to think of new alternatives to maintain meetings with conversion to a virtual format and development of online resources, rapidly available and broadly accessible. Other in person activities as face-to-face clinics have been substituted by telemedicine; the same happened with surgical training in theatre, given the suspension of most of the operations. Finally, the need to share and communicate in a continuous evolving scenario, has impacted negatively the integrity of peer review process, not following the normal procedures to ensure scientific integrity and reproducibility in the earliest phases of the pandemic.