JAMA : the journal of the American Medical Association
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This study examined the impact of retracted articles on biomedical communication. ⋯ Retracted articles continue to be cited as valid work in the biomedical literature after publication of the retraction; these citations signal potential problems for biomedical science.
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Studies with positive results are more likely to be published in biomedical journals than are studies with negative results. However, many studies submitted for consideration at scientific meetings are never published in full; bias in this setting is poorly studied. ⋯ Positive-outcome bias was evident when studies were submitted for consideration and was amplified in the selection of abstracts for both presentation and publication, neither of which was strongly related to study design or quality.
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Quality of reviewers is crucial to journal quality, but there are usually too many for editors to know them all personally. A reliable method of rating them (for education and monitoring) is needed. ⋯ Subjective editor ratings of individual reviewers were moderately reliable and correlated with reviewer ability to report manuscript flaws. Individual reviewer rate of recommendation for acceptance and decision congruence might be thought to be markers of a discriminating (ie, high-quality) reviewer, but these variables were poorly correlated with editors' ratings of review quality or the reviewer's ability to detect flaws in a fictitious manuscript. Therefore, they cannot be substituted for actual quality ratings by editors.
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Comparative Study
A comparison of the opinions of experts and readers as to what topics a general medical journal (JAMA) should address.
Journal editors are responsible to many publics, and their choices of articles to publish are a frequent source of dispute. ⋯ Expert opinion and the opinion of readers as to what JAMA should emphasize vary widely.
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Authorship in biomedical publications establishes accountability, responsibility, and credit. Misappropriation of authorship undermines the integrity of the authorship system, but accurate data on its prevalence are limited. ⋯ A substantial proportion of articles in peer-reviewed medical journals demonstrate evidence of honorary authors or ghost authors.