JAMA : the journal of the American Medical Association
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Authorship in biomedical publications establishes accountability, responsibility, and credit. Misappropriation of authorship undermines the integrity of the authorship system, but accurate data on its prevalence are limited. ⋯ A substantial proportion of articles in peer-reviewed medical journals demonstrate evidence of honorary authors or ghost authors.
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Comparative Study
A comparison of the opinions of experts and readers as to what topics a general medical journal (JAMA) should address.
Journal editors are responsible to many publics, and their choices of articles to publish are a frequent source of dispute. ⋯ Expert opinion and the opinion of readers as to what JAMA should emphasize vary widely.
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Scientific journals issue press releases to disseminate scientific news about articles they publish. ⋯ Journal articles described in press releases, in particular those described first or second in the press release, are associated with the subsequent publication of newspaper stories on the same topic.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical Trial
Does masking author identity improve peer review quality? A randomized controlled trial. PEER Investigators.
All authors may not be equal in the eyes of reviewers. Specifically, well-known authors may receive less objective (poorer quality) reviews. One study at a single journal found a small improvement in review quality when reviewers were masked to author identity. ⋯ Masking reviewers to author identity as commonly practiced does not improve quality of reviews. Since manuscripts of well-known authors are more difficult to mask, and those manuscripts may be more likely to benefit from masking, the inability to mask reviewers to the identity of well-known authors may have contributed to the lack of effect.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical Trial
Effect on the quality of peer review of blinding reviewers and asking them to sign their reports: a randomized controlled trial.
Anxiety about bias, lack of accountability, and poor quality of peer review has led to questions about the imbalance in anonymity between reviewers and authors. ⋯ Neither blinding reviewers to the authors and origin of the paper nor requiring them to sign their reports had any effect on rate of detection of errors. Such measures are unlikely to improve the quality of peer review reports.