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The CONSORT statement recommended that investigators should clearly report which key trial persons were blinded to treatment allocation and test for the success of blinding. Clinical researchers, however, more often than not overlook the assessment of the success of blinding. The severe under-reporting on the success of blinding may improve with awareness of existing quantitative methods. The two statistical methods, James' blinding index (BI) and Bang's BI, are currently available. Subjects could be asked to guess their treatment assignment, possibly with an option to express the degree of certainty. Assessments of blinding at various points may serve different purposes, i.e. to evaluate comparability between experimental versus control treatments before the trial by the third party; to examine further comparability and credibility of the control treatment and patients' expectation about treatment received in early stage of the trial, and to summarize the overall maintenance of the blinding success at the end of the trial. In this article, we review BIs and how to use these methods along with discussion of other issues in blinding assessment and reporting. We contend the two BIs that were independently developed but carry complementary properties would characterize blinding behaviours in clinical trials qualitatively as well as quantitatively, and may also shed some lights on the interpretation of the study findings. Finally we urge the Item 11b of the CONSORT statement to be revised to require the assessment/ reporting of blinding success for all trials that adopt blinding schemes. Keywords blinding index; methods; randomized controlled trials; standardsIn randomized controlled trials (RCTs), blinding is widely accepted as an important methodological component to protect internal validity, and significant bias may result from unsuccessful blinding. Because of the importance of the blinding success, the CONSORT statement has incorporated this issue as one (Item 11b) of 22 items to be included when investigators report their RCT (1 How to report the success of blinding Blinding methodsInvestigators undertaking clinical trials are recommended to explicitly describe the methods of blinding they used. Boutron et al. reviewed blinding techniques in pharmacological and nonpharmacological treatments (4,5). These reviews classified blinding methods that could help investigators overcome some barriers to successful implementation and maintenance of blinding. Who is blindedIt has been recommended that investigators should clearly report which of the following five categories of key trial persons were blinded to treatment allocation: (i) participants, (ii) healthcare providers, (iii) data collectors, (iv) outcome assessors (e.g. the data monitoring board or end-point committee or judicial assessors of outcome) and (v) data analysts (6). Furthermore, personnel writing the manuscript could be blinded to treatment allocation (possibly, those writing either of two drafts of a manuscript prior to breaking the randomiza...

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Aim To analyse and visualize the knowledge structure of scientific articles in the field of Endodontology with high altmetric attention scores to discover hot topics, active researchers and the journals involved. Methodology On 5 June 2019, the altmetric database (Altmetric LLP, London, UK) was searched using the titles of 11 endodontic journals. Bibliometric data from endodontic articles and journals with an altmetric score >5 (top 5%) were retrieved from PubMed and analysed using the VOSviewer. Science mapping of articles with an altmetric score >5 at two levels was created: author keywords co‐occurrence and co‐authorship network analysis. Results Of the 2197 articles in the field of Endodontology identified with altmetrics, 192 had altmetric scores >5 (top 5%). Considering the total mentions amongst all altmetric resources, the Journal of Endodontics had the highest rank followed by the International Endodontic Journal and Australian Endodontic Journal. Twitter was the most popular altmetric data resource followed by patents and Facebook. Meta‐analysis, systematic review and pulpitis were the hot topics. At the author level, Dummer P.M.H had the greatest influence on the network. There was no significant correlation between altmetric score and citations count (P > 0.05). Mendeley mentions correlated with citations (P < 0.05). Conclusions Overall, the altmetric scores of topics within Endodontology were low, possibly due to the specific and specialized nature of the specialty, as well as the difficulty members of the public probably have in understanding endodontic research. Journals and researchers with a focus on Endodontology would have more influence if they were to set‐up their own social media profiles and thus enhance their visibility and social impact by immediately sharing research findings and communicating with their network and audience.