Journal of Clinical Epidemiology
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(2014)
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LETTER TO THE EDITOR We need another guideline To the Editor: The publication of research findings is a crucial part of health research. It is the very foundation of evidencebased medicine. The peer-review process is crucial to ensure the quality of published scientific works. Guidelines such as CONSORT, PRISMA, STROBE, and those from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) strengthen the quality of medical research and reporting further [1e4]. But we need another guideline. Yes, we do. I am an embarrassingly prolific writer. I have published many medical and health services research articles. I have produced hundreds of pages on everything from dengue fever to data sharing policies for the World Health Organization in the Western Pacific. Part of my current role as a visiting professor of health research in Philippines is to teach scientific writing and facilitate the submission and publication of others’ research. I love my work . apart from one very specific aspect of it. As corresponding and lead author, I submitted a systematic review for consideration by a journal this past weekend. The research on which the article was based took a great deal of time, but that’s the nature of research. Ensuring that the article reported the research in accordance with the PRISMA statement took only a few hours and was a useful quality check. But preparing the article to ensure that it conformed to the journal’s detailed formatting requirements before submission took a full day. Line spacing, referencing style, section headings, figure legends, table formatting, abstract word count, abstract sections, abbreviations, symbols, American vs. British spellings, page justification, position of page numbers, resolution of figures and images, character count of running title, paragraph indents. Of course, journals must ensure that the articles they publish adhere to their own in-house style and format requirements. But, are peer reviewers’ and editors’ decisions about the scientific merits of a newly submitted research report affected by page justification, referencing style, and paragraph indents? Cannot such details be attended to if the article is accepted for publication?
Funding: No funding was received for the work. Conflicts of interest: None. 0895-4356/$ - see front matter Ó 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
A great many research articles are submitted to more than one journal before they are published, and often benefit from being peer-reviewed more than once. But each time it is prepared for submission to a different journal, the process of detailed formatting begins again. It is a waste of clinicians’ and researchers’ time. So, yes, we need another guideline. CONSORT, PRISMA, STROBE, and ICMJE provide recommendations on content. We need a similar, widely accepted guideline on standard formatting for articles submitted for peer review. Articles adhering to the guideline’s formatting recommendations could be submitted to any journal, and the journal could simply require authors to agree that they will attend to the detailed formatting of their articles according to in-house requirements if accepted for publication. Of course, such a statement would need a catchy acronym like IMPROVE or FORMAT or STYLE. But I do not have time to work on that right now. I have some important indenting to attend to. Acknowledgments No other authors contributed to the work or need to be acknowledged. Brian S. Buckley Department of Surgery College of Medicine University of the Philippines Philippine General Hospital Taft Avenue Manila 1000, Philippines Institute of Applied Health Sciences University of Aberdeen Aberdeen, Scotland Discipline of General Practice Clinical Sciences Institute National University of Ireland Galway, Ireland Tel./fax: þ63-25264356. E-mail address: [email protected]
References [1] Schulz KF, Altman DG, Moher D, CONSORT Group. CONSORT 2010 statement: updated guidelines for reporting parallel group randomized trials. J Clin EPid 2010;63:834e40. [2] Moher D, Liberati A, Tetzlaff J, Altman DG, The PRISMA Group. Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and
2
Letter to the Editor / Journal of Clinical Epidemiology
meta-analyses: the PRISMA statement. Ann Intern Med 2009;151: 264e9. [3] von Elm E, Altman DG, Egger M, Pocock SJ, Gøtzsche PC, Vandenbroucke JP, et al. The strengthening the reporting of observational studies in epidemiology (STROBE) statement: guidelines for reporting observational studies. Lancet 2007;370:1453e7.
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(2014)
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[4] International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Recommendations for the conduct, reporting, editing, and publication of scholarly work in medical journals. 2013. Available at http://www.icmje.org. Accessed March 3, 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclinepi.2014.03.011
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(2014)
-
LETTER TO THE EDITOR We need another guideline To the Editor: The publication of research findings is a crucial part of health research. It is the very foundation of evidencebased medicine. The peer-review process is crucial to ensure the quality of published scientific works. Guidelines such as CONSORT, PRISMA, STROBE, and those from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) strengthen the quality of medical research and reporting further [1e4]. But we need another guideline. Yes, we do. I am an embarrassingly prolific writer. I have published many medical and health services research articles. I have produced hundreds of pages on everything from dengue fever to data sharing policies for the World Health Organization in the Western Pacific. Part of my current role as a visiting professor of health research in Philippines is to teach scientific writing and facilitate the submission and publication of others’ research. I love my work . apart from one very specific aspect of it. As corresponding and lead author, I submitted a systematic review for consideration by a journal this past weekend. The research on which the article was based took a great deal of time, but that’s the nature of research. Ensuring that the article reported the research in accordance with the PRISMA statement took only a few hours and was a useful quality check. But preparing the article to ensure that it conformed to the journal’s detailed formatting requirements before submission took a full day. Line spacing, referencing style, section headings, figure legends, table formatting, abstract word count, abstract sections, abbreviations, symbols, American vs. British spellings, page justification, position of page numbers, resolution of figures and images, character count of running title, paragraph indents. Of course, journals must ensure that the articles they publish adhere to their own in-house style and format requirements. But, are peer reviewers’ and editors’ decisions about the scientific merits of a newly submitted research report affected by page justification, referencing style, and paragraph indents? Cannot such details be attended to if the article is accepted for publication?
Funding: No funding was received for the work. Conflicts of interest: None. 0895-4356/$ - see front matter Ó 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
A great many research articles are submitted to more than one journal before they are published, and often benefit from being peer-reviewed more than once. But each time it is prepared for submission to a different journal, the process of detailed formatting begins again. It is a waste of clinicians’ and researchers’ time. So, yes, we need another guideline. CONSORT, PRISMA, STROBE, and ICMJE provide recommendations on content. We need a similar, widely accepted guideline on standard formatting for articles submitted for peer review. Articles adhering to the guideline’s formatting recommendations could be submitted to any journal, and the journal could simply require authors to agree that they will attend to the detailed formatting of their articles according to in-house requirements if accepted for publication. Of course, such a statement would need a catchy acronym like IMPROVE or FORMAT or STYLE. But I do not have time to work on that right now. I have some important indenting to attend to. Acknowledgments No other authors contributed to the work or need to be acknowledged. Brian S. Buckley Department of Surgery College of Medicine University of the Philippines Philippine General Hospital Taft Avenue Manila 1000, Philippines Institute of Applied Health Sciences University of Aberdeen Aberdeen, Scotland Discipline of General Practice Clinical Sciences Institute National University of Ireland Galway, Ireland Tel./fax: þ63-25264356. E-mail address: [email protected]
References [1] Schulz KF, Altman DG, Moher D, CONSORT Group. CONSORT 2010 statement: updated guidelines for reporting parallel group randomized trials. J Clin EPid 2010;63:834e40. [2] Moher D, Liberati A, Tetzlaff J, Altman DG, The PRISMA Group. Preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and
2
Letter to the Editor / Journal of Clinical Epidemiology
meta-analyses: the PRISMA statement. Ann Intern Med 2009;151: 264e9. [3] von Elm E, Altman DG, Egger M, Pocock SJ, Gøtzsche PC, Vandenbroucke JP, et al. The strengthening the reporting of observational studies in epidemiology (STROBE) statement: guidelines for reporting observational studies. Lancet 2007;370:1453e7.
-
(2014)
-
[4] International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Recommendations for the conduct, reporting, editing, and publication of scholarly work in medical journals. 2013. Available at http://www.icmje.org. Accessed March 3, 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclinepi.2014.03.011
