Raising the Concern Among the Scientific Community in the Asia Pacific: Some Thoughts about Quality of the Published Literature in the Biomedical Journals

Ahmed Ibrahim Fathelrahman, Ph. D candidate

INTRODUCTION

Nowadays, the number of the published articles in the biomedical journals is increasing in a dramatic manner due to the increase in the numbers of journals and publishers, ease of access to the literature and the tremendous increase in the research performed in various fields. For example there were only 3000 articles related to tobacco research been identified to be published during two decades from 1975 to 1994, and within the next five years (1995- 1999) this number was almost doubled (Doering, 2002). The number of publications indexed on MEDLINE reporting randomized clinical trials has increased three times from around 35,000 in 1980s to around 93,000 in the 1990s (Ghersi and Dickersin, 2007). The total number of records in the ISSN register has increased by about 40% from the year 2001 to the year 2008 (ISSN International Center, 2009).

This is a good thing since it broadens the scope of our knowledge and increases the depth of our understanding. The ease in the access to the biomedical literature and the improvement in the dissemination of knowledge minimize the inequalities between countries and result in worldwide share of science making and use. Substantial part of current human awareness is the result of global contribution through the scientific research conducted everywhere in the world. With such increase in the information overload, the issue of quality of the research and accuracy of the literature circulated should always be raised.

The quality control on biomedical literature is performed at various steps pre-publication and post-publication. The peer review process forms the main point for checking and improving the quality of a scientific paper. Despite the significant and the valuable efforts done by the reviewers, little evidence support the idea that peer review process ensures the quality of the published papers (Jefferson et al, 2007).

Accordingly, a lot of efforts have been made to establish scientific tools to evaluate and critically appraise the quality of already published literature using certain techniques (Jones, 2002; Heller et al, 2008). This is important to decide which source of information is trusted and which one is of good quality to be used and applied for example when making certain position statement, establishing a protocol or setting guidelines.

The open access (free online access to scientific materials) is one of the tools that could generally improve the quality of the biomedical literature since it enhances the accessibility of all scientists to a substantial proportion of the available information. This is very crucial for large number of researchers particularly in the developing countries to make comprehensive literature review before performing any new research, which means avoiding doing un-necessary efforts and saving the available resources for more urgent issues. Some open access publishers publish only open access journals like Medknow Publications (http://www.medknow.com/aboutus.asp) the leading publisher in India for academic and scientific journals, and the Public Library of Science (PLoS: http://www.plos.org/); and some publish open access journals as well as subscription-based material, like BioMed Central (BMC: http://www.biomedcentral.com/). Currently the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) includes 4000 open access journals related to various fields of science that represents about ten to fifteen percent of 20- 25,000 peer-reviewed journals (DOAJ, 2009; Wikipedia, 2009).

Another effort that has been done and that may enhance the quality of biomedical literature is the tendency of some journals to accept for publication any work conducted on scientifically sound bases regardless of the significance of finding (e.g. BMC- Research Notes). This could minimize the publication bias that arise when there is a need to put various research findings together to get the full understanding of a phenomenon or to prove the effectiveness of certain intervention among different populations or under different conditions (e.g. meta-analyses of randomized clinical trials). Only by evaluating findings from different studies; in a context of similarities and differences, pros and cons, and positivity and negativity; a whole picture could be achieved. This requires considering every work done including a research that shows a statistically non-significant result. This is why publication bias represents an important threat to evidences derived from meta-analyses. Publication bias has been defined as the tendency on the part of investigators to submit, or the reviewers and editors, to accept manuscripts based on the direction or strength of the study findings (Scholey and Harrison, 2003).

It is important to acknowledge that some issues related to the quality of the biomedical literature cannot be captured by the peer-review process or the critical appraisal. This is like the unnecessary publications done intentionally or un-intentionally by some authors when they write similar papers under different titles after making slight modifications or when they repeat the same information in different papers without any real justifiable need. The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) placed guidelines on good publication practice (COPE, 2000). COPE stated that “published studies do not need to be repeated unless further confirmation is required”. COPE described such practice as redundant publication and defined it as a publication of two or more papers sharing the same hypothesis, data, discussion points, or conclusions without full cross reference.

Other issue is the misinterpretation of the others’ work while citing them in a literature review or discussion. This is due to the lack of focusing and the careless reading of the work cited when a writer is in hurry to publish his research finding. Reviewers are unlikely to check the appropriateness of a citation unless they feel inconsistency in the provided evidence.
Ethical aspects like the informed consent and ethical clearance were investigated by Chaturvedi and Somashekar (2009). They reviewed reporting such issues by researchers in the published psychiatric research in the main journal of psychiatry in India. There was a clear improvement in reporting these issues in the latest years compared to the earliest ones (reporting the informed consent increased from 51% in 2000 to 82% in the year 2007, whereas, reporting ethics committee approvals increased from 2% in 2000 to 25% in 2007).

Points discussed here briefly pertaining to the quality of the biomedical literature should be the concern of the scientific community in the Asia Pacific region. This article represents only a slight touch and a concise demonstration of the topic and further input from other researchers and scientists may be required to address various issues. Some problems mentioned above are ethics- related and the responsibility of controlling them relies mainly on the researcher who conducts the work. Yet, a search for suitable tools that could be used to monitor, assess, and resolve such problems or similar ones should always be sought.

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Scholey, J.M. and Harrison, J.E. Publication bias: raising awareness of a potential problem in dental research. British Dental Journal 2003; 194 (5): 235-237.

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(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access_(publishing), accessed 21 April 2009).