JAMA : the journal of the American Medical Association
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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.
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Editorial management of articles on health economics may benefit from guidelines for peer review and revision. ⋯ Publication of the guidelines helped the BMJ editors improve the efficiency of the editorial process but had no impact on the quality of economics evaluations submitted or published.
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This study examined the impact of retracted articles on biomedical communication. ⋯ Retracted articles continue to be cited as valid work in the biomedical literature after publication of the retraction; these citations signal potential problems for biomedical science.