B - Can the highly cited psychiatric paper be predicted early?

Matthew Hyett, Gordon Parker

Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psichiatry 2009; (43): 173-176

Normally, the importance of a scientific contribution is seen by citation frequency over time and time is the key factor for most of psychiatric researchers. A presentation of paper from preparation to publication is a lengthy process as well as recognition by the scientific community. Can citation perspectives of an article published after two years be predicted 3 weeks* after publication as reported in a recent study by BMJ? The authors sampled 1274 articles from 105 top medicine journals on the basis of 20 potential predictors applying a multiple regression analysis over a longer review period. The conclusions are not consistent with the BMJ report and the authors also indicate that the inclusion of lower impact journals would give a better understanding in predicting future citation success.

* Lokker C, McKibbon KA, McKinlay RJ, Wilczynshi NL, Haynes RB.

“Prediction of citation counts for clinical articles at 2 years using data available within three weeks of publication: retrospective cohort study”

BMJ 2008;(336): 655-657

B - Common Weaknesses in Traditional Abstracts in the Social Sciences

James Hartley - School of Psychology, Keele University, Keele, Staffordshire, ST55BG, United Kingdom

Lucy Betts - Department of Psychology, Notthingham Trent University, Nottingham, NG1 4BU, United Kingdom.

Journal of the American Society for information science and technology 2009;60(10):2010-2018.

An article by James Hartley on traditional abstracts “versus” structured abstracts. 100 traditional abstracts were downloaded from 53 journals in social science and evaluated. The article question the appropriateness of information contained in the object of study of these articles presented to the readers. The article also makes reference to other studies that have pointed to an evaluation of abstracts based on accuracy, presentation, readability, density of information, briefness and completeness of information at the same time. The method followed here specifically highlights the general inaccuracy of traditional abstracts presented in a “single-block” format compared (but not in depth) with the more recent “structured abstracts” (way of writing scientific articles). A straightforward “Yes” and “No” checklist, hierarchically presented in terms of Background, Aims, Method, Participants (sex and age), Place (country of study), Results and Conclusions was used. Following the above checklist - the overall traditional abstracts examined found to be poor in content and sometimes also lacking of useful if not crucial information – the conclusions suggest that switching from a traditional abstracts format to a more accurate way of writing scientific articles (in a structured format) and furthermore, releasing the word constrain imposed by editors, can improve the quality as well as the chances to be cited in the future.

B - The Psychology of Referencing in Psychology Journal Articles

Martin A. Safer and Rong Tang

The Psychology of Referencing in Psychology Journal Articles

Perspective on Psychological Science - 2009;4(1):51-53

How important is citation in research papers? Forty nine psychology empirical articles randomly selected were submitted for ratings to their authors (psycyhologists) with regards to the importance of references in their own work. A scale of 1 (slightly important) to 7 (absolutely important) was used. Location of references (“method”, “results”, “discussion section”), citation frequencies, citation length, reasons for citations and depth were also examined. In addition, the weight of personal citation compared to citation of works of others, citation for credibility, appearance rather than substance, self-citations in relation to location and frequency were also taken into account. The study suggests that a more complete evaluation of citation metadata (frequency, location, treatment, etc;) as opposed to a mere statistic citation of references would give more information to the user in view of the fact that citation itself has a relevance within the construct of a scientific paper.

B - "Strategic Reading, Ontologies, and the Future of Scientific Publishing"

Since its first "unseccessful step" - the launch of the “Online Journal of Current Clinical Trials” in1992 - information gathering have become, in the past decade, more and more sophisticated. The turning point of such progress is clear when more than ten years later, technical, medical and scientific journals had nearly them all their online version. Nowadays, new softwares aimed at a more structured, fast and detailed research of data on the web have become an essential tool and aid for researchers and scientific publishing. Scientific articles becomes not just a mere electronic representation of text: thanks to a “strategic reading” scientists can work simultaneously with many articles without the need of reading them individually (dramatically changing the reading practices among scientists). This is possible thanks to ontologies, which the author describe as “structured terminology for representing scientific data” ... “speaking a language that can also be understood by computers”.

Thanks to Ernesto Costabile

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/32

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090818182058.htm

B - Does analysis using "last observation carried forward" introduce bias in dementia research?

CMAJ • October 2008; 179 (8). doi:10.1503/cmaj.080820.

A very critical standpoint on a widely used analytical technique in dementia research drug trials, called " last observation carried forward". Patients affected by dementia who are on drug trials are followed over a period of time. When there is a drop-out from the evaluation trial, the so called "last observation carried forward" (statistical technique) is applied; taking into account the last result of the observation period (which eliminates the actual state of the patient's progress or decline after the interruption of the evaluation test) creating, therefore, an artificial analytical result. When the trial stops, the data obtained is, so to say, "outstretched" to obtain what in the end is a fake outcome of a drug trial that should be intended to realistically measure the ongoing test to its completion and for its eventual benefits to such patients.

http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/179/8/751

N - Opening up scholarly research

A wiki allowing academics to summarise and discuss published papers has launched in October 2009. AcaWiki makes use of semantic web technology to allow organisation and sharing of summaries, as well as user profiles, comments, discussion, tagging and RSS feeds. Users can summarise their own or others' research or literature reviews. Inspired partly by the open-access movement, this nonprofit site aims to improve accessibility of academic research using interactive media. See http://acawiki.org/Home.

N - JAMA revises without correction

An editorial in JAMA published online by its editors that outlined the journal’s revised policy on investigating conflicts of interest was replaced by a milder version, without an erratum or notice of retraction, reports Udo Schuklenk on his ethics blog (http://ethxblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/jama-follow-up.html). The editorial was also changed in all biomedical databases. This follows heavy criticism of the way JAMA dealt with a complaint from Jonathan Leo about the journal’s handling of undisclosed competing interests in a paper. The original editorial had the DOI 10.1001/jama.2009.480; the revision has the citation 2009;302:198-9, http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/302/2/198. See http://ese-bookshelf.blogspot.com/2009/03/jama-gags-whistleblowers.html