BACKGROUND Over the last decade there have been a number of guidelines published, aimed at improving the quality of reporting in published studies and reviews. In systematic reviews this may be measured by their compliance with the PRISMA statement. This review aims to evaluate the quality of reporting in published meta-analyses of diagnostic tests, using the PRISMA statement and establish whet...

A COMPARISON OF THE ROWE AND THE LEE MODELS FOR COMPLEX-VALUED FUNCTIONAL MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING Zhaoyang Teng Marquette University, 2010 In 2005, Rowe published an fMRI magnitude and/or phase activation model that utilized both of the real and imaginary data in each voxel [1]. This model described the magnitude and phase time course as varying linearly with different design matrices where ...

BACKGROUND Inadequate description of non-pharmacological complex interventions in trial publications means that they cannot be replicated or assessed for generalisability. There are published guidelines on how to describe an intervention, such as those from the CONSORT Group. However, there have been few evaluations of whether intervention reporting is improving. METHODS We aimed to assess wh...

BACKGROUND Clear, transparent and sufficiently detailed abstracts of randomized trials (RCTs), published in journal articles are important because readers will often base their initial assessment of a trial on such information. However, little is known about the quality of reporting in abstracts of RCTs published in medical journals in China. METHODS We identified RCTs abstracts from 5 five l...

BACKGROUND Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs) are the preferred study design when comparing therapeutical interventions in medicine. To improve clarity, consistency and transparency of reporting RCTs, the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) statement was developed. OBJECTIVES (1) To assess the quality of reports and abstracts of RCTs in otorhinolaryngologic literature by usi...

BACKGROUND As a result of the various telemedicine projects in the past years a large number of studies were recently published in this field. However, a precise bibliometric analysis of telemedicine publications does not exist so far. METHODS The present study was conducted to establish a data base of the existing approaches. Density-equalizing algorithms were used and data was retrieved fro...

Siler et al. (1) argue that “editors and peer reviewers generally—but not always—make good decisions regarding the identification and promotion of quality in scientific manuscripts.” Here, we provide a new perspective on the ongoing discussion regarding the quality of peer review and editing processes and discuss how the effectiveness of editors and peer reviewers can be measured. As well, we u...

OBJECTIVES Media advocacy plays a critical role in tobacco control, shaping the content of news in ways that generate public support for tobacco control. We examined US media coverage of nonsmoker-only hiring policies, which have little US public support, exploring the extent to which tobacco control advocates and experts have engaged the media on this controversial issue. METHODS We searched...