Evaluation of Preclinical and Clinical Studies Published in Medical Journals of Bosnia and Herzegovina: Methodology Issues

Abstract

Introduction: Results of preclinical and clinical studies in medicine could be trusted only if their design and statistical analysis were appropriate. Aim: The aim of our study was to investigate whether preclinical and clinical studies published in medical journals of Bosnia and Herzegovina satisfy basic requirements for appropriate design and statistical interpretation of data. Methods: Preclinical and clinical studies published in medical journals of Bosnia and Herzegovina were retrieved from the PubMed database, and the sample for analysis was randomly chosen from the retrieved publications. Implementation rate of basic principles of experimental design (local control, randomization and replication) and rate of the most common errors in design of clinical/observational studies was established by careful reading of the sampled publications and their checking against predefined criteria. Results: Our study showed that only a minority of experimental preclinical studies had basic principles of design completely implemented (7%), while implementation rate of single aspects of appropriate experimental design varied from as low as 12% to as high as 77%. Only one of the clinical/observational studies had none of the errors searched for (2%), and specific errors rates varied from 10% to 89%. Average impact factor of the surveyed studies was around one, and average publication date recent, less than 5 years ago. Conclusion: Prevalence of preclinical studies that did not follow completely basic principles of research design, and that of clinical/observational studies with errors are high, raising suspicion to validity of their results. If incorrect and not protected against bias, results of published studies may adversely influence future research.

Methodological Errors in Clinical Studies Published by Medical Journals of Ex-Yugoslav Countries

“…Number and percent of the evaluated studies that failed to meet each of the methodological criteria tested, the number of the evaluated criteria not satisfied per country, and the number of studies that satisfied more than 4 criteria per country is presented in Table 2 . References of the analyzed studies from Bosnia and Herzegovina could be found in our previous publication ( 12 ), while the references of the studies analyzed from Croatian ( 17 - 59 ), Slovenian ( 60 - 92 ) and Serbian medical journals ( 93 - 135 ) are given on the list at the end of this article.…”

“…The following search strategy was used for each country separately to implement inclusion and exclusion criteria and select the pool of clinical/observational studies for further analysis: (“Title of the journal 1” [All Fields] OR „title of the journal 2“ [All Fields] OR ...) AND ((“observational study”[Publication Type] OR “observational studies as the topic”[MeSH Terms] OR “observational study”[All Fields]) OR (“clinical trial”[Publication Type] OR “clinical trials as the topic”[MeSH Terms] OR “clinical trial”[All Fields])) Filters: Free full text. The data for Bosnia and Herzegovina was used from our previous study published earlier this year ( 12 ). The size of the study sample for clinical/observational studies (n=43) was calculated based on the following assumptions: rate of inappropriate research design 0.5 ( 13 ) and width of the 95% confidence interval ± 0.15.…”

Inflated Co-authorship Introduces Bias to Current Scientometric Indices

“…Regardless of how the new indicators will be constructed, attributing to a co-author only a fraction of citations of his/her paper would (e.g., by dividing number of citations of a paper with number of the co-authors) surely decrease inflation of co-authorship in modern biomedical scientific literature. The accuracy of citation of a certain article is the key to perform a proper scientometric analysis, and editors of the magazine have to take into account very strict rules when quoting references ( 23 - 26 ).…”

Mapping of Medical and Health Studies in Bosnia and Herzegovina using Scopus

“…The average impact factor of the studies was about one, and the average publication date was less than 5 years. [6] Scientometric study analyses India's medical activities during the period 1999-2008, publication growth rate, quality of papers, India's ranking in the global context, International collaboration and Indian collaboration are studied. This study evaluates the research results for different types of Indian medical colleges, hospitals, research institutes, universities and research foundations and the characteristics of literature published in Indian and foreign journals.…”