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Rapid Responses: Rapid Responses published:
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Transparency is key
- Liz Wager (5 January 2007)
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Transparency and quality assurance at the BMJ
- Trish Groves, Sara Schroter, senior researcher BMJ (6 January 2007)
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Competing Interests: None
- Christopher K Kee (6 January 2007)
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BMJ, high impact- for a reason!
- Shirish .G. Prabhudesai (6 January 2007)
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The BMJ also wants good studies on research methods and EBM
- Trish Groves (9 January 2007)
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BMJ should encourage publications from developing countries
- AnandaGiri M Shankar, Sam Ramaiah, Director of Public Health and Medial Director (10 January 2007)
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Does the BMJ publish trials of drugs or devices?
- Trish Groves (25 November 2008)
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Liz Wager, Medical Writer & Publications Consultant Sideview, Princes Risborough, HP27 9DE
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Congratulations to the BMJ for explaining its editorial processes in such detail. Despite being in the communication business, many journals are surprisingly poor at explaining what they do or what they want, so it's nice to see this from the BMJ. Trish Groves mentions several targets, so my challenge to the journal is to audit these and publish the results. The BMJ was one of the pioneers of transparency and used to publish its performance figures (eg BMJ 307:223 and 311:1196) but hasn't done so for over a decade now (I think the last time was in 1995). I hope it will revive the practice. I'm sure such audits would be helpful to the BMJ's editors and I certainly find them useful when I run training courses in publication strategy or advise authors about how to pick the right journal for their work. Competing interests: None declared |
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Trish Groves, deputy editor BMJ, Sara Schroter, senior researcher BMJ
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We stopped publishing data on our decision times because, in switching to a new manuscript handling system, we lost the automated log that generated detailed data easily for us. We do, however, plan to publish regularly at least the basic data on decision times that our current system generates. One of us (Sara Schroter) has just completed a detailed audit of all original research articles published in the BMJ in 2005 focusing on both process and outcome data. We want BMJ research articles to be scientifically valid, highly visible, widely read, frequently cited, clinically relevant and interesting to international readers. We also want to avoid delays in publication and decision making. This audit used a series of indicators to see how well we achieved these objectives. For instance, 30% of the original research articles published in the BMJ in 2005 were randomised controlled trials or systematic reviews, and these articles received most citations in year of publication, most rapid responses, most online accesses in first 12 months after publication. For just under half of all the research articles the lead author was based outside the UK. About a third of articles were picked up in secondary sources (BMJUpdates and Journal Watch General Medicine).The median interval between paper acceptance and online publication was 44 days, though this was skewed considerably by a few long delays. The next phase is to compare the 2005 data with those from 2006, and we will continue to collect cumulative outcomes over time. Another editorial soon will explain what we're doing to make our editorial processes and policies as transparent as possible. Our transparency policy already pulls together the basics at bmj.com/advice (soon to be in a new section on bmj.com called Resources for authors), but the editorial will say more. And later this month we're reinstating an annual post-publication meeting for editors to learn from when things go wrong - specifically, from incidents when we could and should have done a better job in handling certain articles. Like all critical incident review, this will be for internal learning. But we hope it'll become an important part of the BMJ's efforts to assure the quality of what we do. Competing interests: Trish Groves wrote the editorial |
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Christopher K Kee, GP Registrar Lancaster
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Trish Groves, deputy and research editor 1 BMJ, London WC1H 9JR tgroves@bmj.com Competing interests: None declared. I enjoyed this article, however, I wonder whether Trish's article has been vetted by the same rigorous approach to that described to the article. Will BMJ offer accountability to its readers in this article? Competing interests: I am a subscriber to the BMA |
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Shirish .G. Prabhudesai, Clinical Research Fellow Dept. of Biosurgery & Surgical Technology, Imperial College , St. Mary's Hospital, London W2 1NY
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Acceptance of original work in a medical journal is indeed a progressive stride in the career of any young researcher. In present times when the scientific world is inundated with medical journals, it is ironical that good work/information can remain unpublished. Few of the difficulties encountered by a young researcher is rejection purely due to lack of clear information on what the journal expects from authors and the time taken by the reviewers to point out easily rectifiable 'inadequacies'. The information provided by Trish Grove on what BMJ expects from its authors and how it could benefit them as well as the readers comes as a pleasant change. The transparent editorial process adapted by BMJ in assessing articles, the flexibility given to authors in terms of length of a research article and a prompt decision by the editorial team reflects its high standards and impact factor. This has reinforced my confidence in the BMJ not only as a regular reader of the journal but also as a young researcher keen to publish his work. Competing interests: None declared |
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Trish Groves, deputy editor BMJ
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I should have mentioned in the editorial that the BMJ is also interested in original studies on research methodology, research reporting, and evidence based medicine. The same criteria apply, though, as for all the other types of research we consider. We will give priority to studies that will be relevant and interesting to enough of our readers (not only to editors and experts on methodology) and will help them make better decisions when conducting research, searching for evidence, or using evidence in their practice. Competing interests: I wrote the editorial |
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AnandaGiri M Shankar, Specialist Registrar in Public Health Medicine Department of Public Health, Walsall Teaching PCT, Walsall WS2 7JL, Sam Ramaiah, Director of Public Health and Medial Director
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The editorial by Trish Groves (1), explains very well as to why researchers should submit their research work for publication to the BMJ. It is indeed very encouraging and thought provoking. Being regular readers of BMJ, we find that a large proportion of published material is of work done in the UK, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and the United States, in other words from developed nations. It would be interesting to see more research work from the developing countries, predominantly from South Asian countries and African countries being published in the BMJ. Speaking from personal experiences of having qualified and worked in India, there is a wealth of information available on various aspects of communicable and non-communicable diseases, delivery of health care, health policy and public health practice. Although, some of this gets published in local journals, it does miss the attention of the international readers. We strongly urge the BMJ to develop a policy to encourage researchers from developing countries to have their work published in the BMJ. We believe that these researchers should get adequate encouragement and support from the Editors to help them meet the required standards. For example, the authors could be helped in refining the English language, in structurally organising their research material etc. We are sure that this will bring out excellent research work into the lime light, from which the medical fraternity across the world could benefit, as there are mutual lessons to be learnt. We are aware that BMJ does not have author or page charges, which is a boon for researchers in developing countries. This is because, it is difficult to secure funding for research and if, journals charge authors for publishing, then it will act as a strong disincentive. Reference: (1) Groves T. Why submit your research to the BMJ? BMJ 2007; 334: 4- 5 (6 January) Competing interests: None declared |
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Trish Groves, deputy editor BMJ
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We're often asked this as we don't publish many industry-sponsored trials. But that's partly because we just don't receive many. We welcome submission of any drug or device trial that: 1. asks an original research question that will aid enough doctors' decisions, whether they're clinicians, researchers, educators, or policymakers 2. compares a new drug or device (or new regimen/indication) head to head against the best current treatment(s), using clinically valid doses/administration of both study and comparator interventions. Placebo controlled trials often have much more limited relevance to practice than head to head trials and may not sufficiently help BMJ readers' decisions, but we welcome emailed presubmission inquiries about these too 3. has a main outcome measure that's sufficiently clinically relevant and, if it's a composite outcome, matters enough to patients 4. has an important result: we welcome negative trials as long as their research questions are important, new, and relevant and their designs are appropriate and robust 5. is reported fully in line with the CONSORT statement or relevant extension statement and has sufficient internal and external validity 6. is submitted with the original study protocol, for use in confidence during peer review 7. is reported transparently ie with trial registration details; assurance that the trial met ICHGCP standards; BMJ statements of competing interests, funding, contributorship (fully crediting all authors, contributors, and medical writers), and copyright/licence to publish; signed consent to publication from any identifiable living patients reported in the paper; written assurance that the authors followed the guidelines on good publication practice for drug trials http://www.gpp-guidelines.org/; description of the study sponsor(s)'s role in study design, handling of data, and writing and submission of the paper; statement of the independence of researchers from funders; and statement that all authors had full access to all of the data (including statistical reports and tables) and can take responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis. To put it another way: we are pleased to consider fully transparent articles reporting industry-sponsored phase III and IV trials and phase "IIIB" trials for "label expansion” as long as they ask research questions that are sufficiently new and relevant to practice. Competing interests: All BMJ research articles are published with open access. Nevertheless, authors and study sponsors/funders may buy reprints (http://group.bmj.com/group/advertising/policy/policy-on-reprints-1 and http://resources.bmj.com/bmj/contact-us/reprints) and hence industry-sponsored trials are a potential source of income for the BMJ. I have spoken on transparency in research conduct and reporting at several industry-focused conferences in 2007 and 2008. To attend some of these I have received reimbursement for modest accommodation and travel costs but no speaker's fees, and only when these meetings have been organised by not-for-profit organisations. |
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