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Importance of Evidence-Based Medicine on Research and Practice
Categories Scientific Communication

Importance of Evidence-Based Medicine on Research and Practice

Author krishna kumar 9 Comments on Importance of Evidence-Based Medicine on Research and Practice Posted on

Introduction

Evidence-based medicine is the system of practicing medicine in such a way that it results in improving outcomes and reduces the overall healthcare cost. Evidence-based medicine also takes care of the individual preference of the patients, along with the clinical expertise of the clinicians.

Evidence-Based Medicine

Evidence-based medicine is the multidisciplinary approach to provide the best care to the patient at the right time. Evidence-based medicine involves the use of the experience of the clinician and the updated evidence available to make the best decision related to the treatment regimen.

It is to be noted that the research article required to alter or continue the treatment strategy should be strong and fulfil the criteria to become credible evidence. This creates a basic difference between evidence-based medicine and traditional medicine.

In evidence-based medicine, the doctor and the healthcare professionals should make the best possible application of the evidence to raise the standard of patient care. The process of evidence-based medicine comprises evidence selection and knowledge translation in terms of patient care.

Evolution of the Evidence-Based Medicine

Gordon Guyatt coined the term ‘Evidence-Based Medicine’ in the year 1990. This term was first used in an article published in the year 1992 in JAMA. However, the use of evidence-based medicine started much before this.

Before evidence-based medicine, medical decisions were made based on individual clinician’s experience or the marketing strategies of pharmaceutical companies. Many clinicians disagreed with this approach and advocate for the practice, which is backed up by the latest medical knowledge.

Evidence-based medicine is based on two important pillars. While one pillar indicates the use of best healthcare practice based on concrete evidence, the other pillar ensures that the clinicians should inform in detail the new treatment to the patients so that the patient can make informed decisions.

Importance in Research and Practice

Evidence-based medicine is positively affecting all the important aspects of healthcare, which include patient care, patient’s health, and the related cost. This system of medicine has its importance in research and practice in the following manner:

Updated information to the clinicians: Evidence-based medicine requires the clinicians to read the information and latest research articles related to their therapeutic area. This helps the clinicians to remain updated with the latest evidences for treating patients.

Data for making treatment decisions: Because of the advancements in technology, and the availability of user-friendly databases, the clinicians now have access to the research data and knowledge. This helps clinicians to make informed decisions for better patient care.

Enhance the quality of overall care: Through the best-quality peer-reviewed articles, the clinicians have the data and procedures for caring for the patients. The data is reviewed by experts in the healthcare domain. This improves the overall quality of patient care.

Make the healthcare system more accountable and transparent: Patients and their relatives, many times, have concerns about the treatment strategy of the doctor. Evidence-based medicine makes clinicians more accountable and helps in improving transparency in the healthcare system.

Improves outcomes: It is one of the best effects of evidence-based medicine. A lot of data is available that indicates that if evidence-based medicine is applied logically, it will help in improving the overall healthcare outcomes.

Practicing the Evidence-Based Medicine

Information from evidence-based medicine is not readily available. The clinicians should be able to extract the information from the available evidence. For this, considerable experience and time is required. Following are the steps that help in effectively practicing evidence-based medicine:

Step I: In the first step, the clinicians should determine the problem that requires to be solved. The primary aim of problem identification should be such that solving the problem will result in improves outcomes and prevent or reduce the frequency of recurrent of the condition.

Step II: In the next step, the clinicians should search for evidence that may best solve their problems. For searching the evidence, the clinician should look for credible evidence. The sources of evidence may be categorized through an evidence-based medicine pyramid.

Step III: The clinicians then critically analyze every evidence to determine whether it aligns with the solution that needs to be determined. The clinicians should also ensure that the evidence should apply to the population under consideration.

Step IV: Once the best solution, through the evidence, is determined, the doctor may apply the solution in his clinical practice.

Step V: The clinicians should evaluate the performance of the new treatment strategy. They should measure if there is an overall improvement in health outcomes.

Conclusion

Evidence-based medicine plays an important role in research and practice. Through evidence-based medicine, clinicians can implement the best treatment regimens for their patients.

Criteria for Selecting Journal for Publication
Categories Scientific Communication

Criteria for Selecting Journal for Publication

Author krishna kumar 6 Comments on Criteria for Selecting Journal for Publication Posted on

Introduction

Publishing an article in the journal adds to the academic performance of the researcher. Almost every researcher desire to publish their research articles in the reputed journal to ensure that it reaches maximum readers. Hundreds of journals are publishing the research article. This article will throw light on some criteria that will help you to select the best journal for your manuscript.

Criteria for Selecting Journal

There is no straight formula to determine the best journal to publish your manuscript. However, analyzing various parameters may help you to decide the journal that best suits you for publishing. Following are some of those criteria:

Impact factor: The impact factor is an important criterion to determine the importance of the journal. The impact factor of a journal is the measure of the average number of citations provided to the articles published in the last two years in that particular journal. The impact factor is a scientometric index.  The JCR impact factor is old and effective in providing the names of high impact journals. However, you should also have a look at other impact factor scores. It is important to note that you do not rely only on the impact factor as the high impact factor scores may also be vague.

Peer Review Process: The peer-review process is important to maintain the quality of articles. High-quality articles increase the reputation of journals. The quality journals have a strict peer-review process. All the details for the peer review process are available on the website of the journal. The journal will inform you about the peer review process, the selection of reviewers, the timeline of the peer-review process, and handling other information. Many poor-quality journals do not follow a strict procedure for peer review.

Right of the authors: While considering the target journal, also look into the policies of copyright and other rights mentioned on the website. High transparency of the journal about these rights indicates a high quality of the journal. Some good journals allow the author to have full rights over their manuscript and permit them to disseminate the research. Read the full copyright agreement while before signing.

Business model: The business model of the journal should be clearly stated on the website. All the related cost should be clearly mentioned, and the author should be surprised with any fee which was not mentioned. Further, the name of the sponsors and the mission statement of the journal should be clearly stated and should be followed.

The reputation of the journal: The reputation of the journal should not be seen in isolation and is viewed through various parameters. It includes the quality of articles published in the journal, the society under which the journal is published, the impact factor, the number of people in your circle knows about the journal and other factors.

Indexing: You should identify whether the journal is indexed in a reputed database. Indexing in the reputed database allows the article of the author to reach maximum readers. Some of the citation databases include CINAHL, MEDLINE, EMBASE, and Scopus. These databases list the journal based on various parameters, and their inclusion increases the reputation of journals.

Scope of the journal: You should get information about the scope of the journal and the research domain for publishing your manuscript. Ensure that the scope and aim of the journal are in a line similar to your research. This will help you to make information available to your target readers. Websites of many journals categorically indicate the domain of research that is not under their spectrum of publications.

Journal ethics: Ethical issues are important while publishing the original research. Many journals require detailed information related to ethical aspects of your research. These include conflict of interest, informed consent form, and confidentiality. Good journals are also concerned about data and conclusion manipulation. Journal also checks the manuscript for plagiarism, fraud, segmented publications, and review board approval.

Instructions for authors: You should read and understand the “author guidelines” in detail. You should target the journal and make your manuscript according to the requirement of the journal. Many journals have limited the number of pages, images, or word count. Check the complete list of requirements before drafting and submitting the manuscript.

Editors of the journal: Every good journal has an editorial board comprising of highly reputed reviewers who have credibility in their respective domains. The website of the journal must show the name, position, and contact information of the editors. In case you require more information about the editors, communicate with the journal before submitting your manuscript for peer review.

Conclusion

Various factors should be considered before sending the manuscript for peer review and subsequent publication. These factors are impact factor, the peer review process, aim and scope of the journal, and ethics.

Journals Offering Fee Waivers for Articles Related to COVID-19
Categories Medical news

Journals Offering Fee Waivers for Articles Related to COVID-19

Author krishna kumar 98 Comments on Journals Offering Fee Waivers for Articles Related to COVID-19 Posted on

Introduction

The virus spreading COVID-19 is a novel coronavirus. Not much has been known about the virus. Any accurate and authentic information about coronavirus and the related disease is of vital importance to the researchers. This information will help the researchers to tackle this pandemic more effectively. Articles published in journals are a great source of information on this new pandemic. Many journals have either reduced or have completely waived off the publication charges.

Journals Offering a Fee-Waiver for COVID-19 Articles

Many publishing houses that are into publishing the journals have waived off the article processing charges and set up a rapid review process for researches related to COVID-19. Some of these journals are:

1) PEERJ

PeerJ is one of the leading publishers of various research articles. The editorial board of PeerJ includes 5 Nobel Laureates. Started in the year 2011, it has 70000 researchers that have subscribed to PeerJ article alerts. It publishes research across 228 subjects.  PeerJ has 37.5 million views and downloads. Because of the immediate need for dissemination of information on COVID-19, PeerJ has decided to waive the article processing charges on articles related to COVID-19. For more information visit https://peerj.com/blog/post/115284882180/covid-19-full-fee-waivers-fast-track-peer-review/

2) AIJR PUBLISHERS

AIJR is the publisher of open access refereed journals and books. It publishes articles related to all areas of research and technology. AIJR is involved in publishing abstract books, peer-reviewed journals, thesis, dissertation, books, conference proceedings, open access, and academic journals. The articles published through AIJR must go through the peer-review process. To distribute high-quality information through a research article on COVID-19, AIJR is inviting submissions on COVID-19. The paper would be accepted and published for free as for invited submission, the article submission fee has been waived. For more information visit https://www.aijr.in/call-for-publications-on-covid19-impact-of-coronavirus-outbreak/

3) HINDAWI JOURNAL

Hindawi is a large publishing house that publishes 230 peer-reviewed journals. With headquarters in London, the publishing house publishes approximately 20,000 articles per year. It was founded in 1997 and is the founder member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association. The article processing charges of Hindawi varies according to the journal. Hindawi has been offering a fast-track review process for the articles related to COVID-19 pandemic and have the fees waived if the article is suitable for publication. For more information, please visit https://www.hindawi.com/post/sharing-findings-related-covid-19-these-extraordinary-times/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=owned+referral&utm_campaign=HDW_COMR_GBL_AWA_TWTR_OWN_OSOC_BLOG_X_10113

4) FRONTIERS

Frontiers is a publishing house, publishing research articles in 600 different academic disciplines. The journals are peer-reviewed before publication, and the house has more than 1,00,000 researchers for peer-reviewing. It has an open science technology platform that also includes Artificial Intelligence Review Assistant. There are more than 500 million views, and downloads, and the articles published have more than 1 million citations. The publisher has waived the Article processing charges for the manuscript in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. For more information visit https://coronavirus.frontiersin.org/

5) FACETS

Facets are Canada’s first multidisciplinary open access journals. Being a multi-disciplinary publishing house, it has various subject specialists to review the submitted articles. It has a partnership with various research organizations and helps them to disseminate the information. It publishes 20 technical and scientific journals. It publishes review articles, editorials, notes, perspectives, and science application forum papers. For the manuscript related to human epidemiology (COVID-19), the article processing charges have been waived by Facets journal. For more information, please visit https://medium.com/facets/waived-fees-for-human-epidemiology-manuscripts-5ab9283c0767

6) SAGE PUBLISHING

Sage publishing is the publisher of books and journals. The publisher is also into library products and suites including data, case studies, archives, and videos. It publishes more than 1000 journals, and 900 new books every year. It was founded in the year 1965. To provide accurate information related to COVID-19 at a faster rate, the research papers are reviewed on a fast track basis. The Sage publishing also announces to waive of article processing charges for research papers related to COVID-19. For more information please visit https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/press/sage-waives-article-processing-charges-for-research-related-to-covid-19

7) AOSIS

Aosis publishers publish various journals. The house has a peer-review process. Aosis has various services such as online publication engagement, plagiarism detection management, strategic development, and indexing services management. For the articles submitted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Aosis publications have announced to waive off the article processing charges. The publisher has also established a rapid review process to quickly publish the article for the immediate dissemination of information. For more information, please visit https://aosis.co.za/covid-19-apc-statement/.

8) BRITISH JOURNAL OF RADIOLOGY

British Journal of Radiology is one of the oldest scientific journals in the field of radiology. The journal has a long history dating back to 1896 and is known for publishing various landmark researches in the field of radiology. The journal publishes multidisciplinary articles related to radiotherapy, medical physics, and imaging techniques. To disseminate the information about COVID-19, the journal has announced to waive of all open access article processing charges and for rapidly reviewing the articles related to COVID-19. For more information, please visit https://www.birpublications.org/covid-19

9) BLOOD AND BLOOD ADVANCES

Blood is the journal published by The American Society of Hematology. The journal is published weekly with 52 journals a year. In the year 2018, the impact factor of the journal was 16.601. The journal is published every Thursday except in the last week of the year. The submission and publication fees for the research papers related to COVID-19 published in Blood and Blood Journals are waived. For more information, please visit https://ashpublications.org/journals/pages/covid_19

SANRA Tool for Assessing Narrative Review Articles
Categories Medical Writing

SANRA: Tool for Assessing Narrative Review Articles

Author krishna kumar 1 Comment on SANRA: Tool for Assessing Narrative Review Articles Posted on

Introduction

SANRA is a tool for improving the quality of narrative articles. The tool was developed in 2010 and has been revised to make it simpler. The tool allows the editor to judge the quality of the manuscript and the readers to identify the relevance. It should be incorporated while authoring the narrative review articles.

Narrative Review Articles

Narrative reviews form an important part of medical literature. In medical literature, narrative reviews have the largest share of text. There are two types of literature reviews, i.e. systematic reviews and narrative or non-systematic reviews. While various guidelines have been proposed for systematic reviews, there are no standard guidelines for non-systematic or narrative reviews. The absence of these guidelines poses a question mark on the validity and authenticity of narrative reviews. However, narrative reviews are considered to be important when it comes to influencing the doctors in research as well as in clinical practice. The narrative reviews identify and summarize the already published articles in a particular research arena.

Advantages of Narrative Review Articles

There are various advantages of narrative review literature, especially in medical research. Following are some of the advantages:

Comprehensiveness: Narrative reviews provide more detailed and comprehensive information about a particular topic. They also include the debate and current lack of knowledge.

Avoid duplication: By including several primary studies, the narrative reviews avoid duplication of studies performed.

Guide future research: As they provide information about the lack of knowledge in a particular area, they act as guiding light for future researches.

New medical intervention: Through the analysis of primary studies, they sometimes propose a new medical intervention.

Assessing Narrative Review Articles: SANRA

Although narrative review articles or non-systematic reviews play an important role in the dissemination of medical information, they are generally considered as non-authentic and unreliable. This is probably the reason that the non-systematic reviews are placed lower in the hierarchy of evidence-based medicine relative to systematic reviews.

The systematic review articles are critically analyzed based on various tools. These analyses significantly improve the quality of systematic reviews. The tools for assessing systematic reviews include AMSTAR 2 which is a measurement tool for assessment. Thus, there is a need for developing a tool for assessing non-systematic review articles that helps to improve the quality of narrative reviews at all levels.

To fill this gap in the field of the review article, Christopher Baethge, Sandra Goldbeck-Wood, and Stephan Mertens developed SANRA, Scale for the Assessment of Narrative Review Articles. The main aim of developing SANRA was to help the editors to determine the quality of narrative reviews, the readers to evaluate what quality of review they are reading, and to improve the authors in writing the narrative review.

The seven-item version was quite satisfactory in testing the quality of narrative reviews. It was concluded that the seven-item version of SANRA ticked the boxes in terms of internal consistency and reliability.

The scale was then revised into a 6-item version. Each item has a score from 0 to 2, 0 being the low standard while 2 is a high standard score. 1 is considered as the intermediate score. The maximum score a narrative review can achieve can be 12. The 6 items that form the part of SANRA are:

  1. Important to readers: This item determines whether a proper justification is given to prove the importance of narrative reviews to readers. If the importance is not at all justified then a 0 score is given.
  2. Aims of the narrative reviews: If the aims of the review or questions are formulated concretely, scores are given to the article.
  3. Comprehensive literature search description: If the search strategy is not provided in the article, a 0 score is given. The maximum score, i.e. 2, is given when the author includes the inclusion criteria and search strategy along with a comprehensive description of the literature search.
  4. Referencing: If the key statements in the review are included without any appropriate references, the score given is 0, while for key statements with references, score 2 is allotted.
  5. Scientific reasoning: Scientific reasoning is an important part of the narrative review. Without reasoning, the readers may not have any interest in the article and may question reliability and authenticity. If there is no scientific evidence, the score allotted is 0, while 1 is given in case of incomplete evidence.
  6. Appropriate presentation of data: The author should present the data completely and in the most appropriate manner. It may include the confidence intervals, absolute and relative risk, and data that help in analyzing the outcome.

A field testing was carried out to determine the internal consistency, item-total correlation, feasibility, validity, and reliability. All the three developers of SANRA rated the 30 manuscripts without systematic literature searches. These manuscripts were submitted to Deutsches Ärzteblatt in 2015. These ratings were given blindly and independently of each other. The SANRA should be incorporated while authoring and reviewing the narrative reviews, which are widespread in the medical literature. It will help in improving the quality of the article.

REFERENCE

Baethge C, Goldbeck-Wood S, Mertens S. SANRA-a scale for the quality assessment of narrative review articles. Res Integr Peer Rev 2019; 4: 5

Bastian H, Glasziou P, Chalmers I. Seventy-five trials and eleven systematic reviews a day: how will we ever keep up? PLoS Med. 2010;7(9):e1000326.

Plagiarism in Scientific Writing
Categories Scientific Communication

Plagiarism in Scientific Writing: Consequences, Identification and Prevention

Author krishna kumar 0 Comments Posted on

Introduction

Plagiarism is a serious concern in the writing world. The cases of plagiarism are increasing. Plagiarism has various consequences including the destruction of career, monetary penalties, and legal repercussions. There are various ways to avoid plagiarism.

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is an act of copying someone’s work without giving any credit to the original creator. Plagiarism may be intentional or unintentional. In both ways, plagiarism brings bad name to the person who had plagiarized both on professional as well as the academic front.

Consequences of Plagiarism in Scientific Writing

Plagiarism is becoming a more common phenomenon in recent times. This increasing trend may be due to various reasons. Whatever the reason may be, plagiarism is a serious ethical and moral misconduct. In the arena of scientific writing, the readers require a continuous infusion of new, informative, and updated knowledge. Providing readers, a plagiarized material not only brings the writer in poor light but is also hamper the credibility of the editor and journal as a whole. Following are some of the consequences of plagiarism in scientific writing:

Serious dent on reputation: Writing a plagiarized content is considered as a serious offence among the intellectual fraternity. The academic reputation, professional reputation, and reputation as a student can be ruined because of writing plagiarized material. As a student, you might be suspended for the first offence and may be expelled for a subsequent offence.

Monetary consequences: There are monetary repercussions associated with plagiarism. The person who has written the plagiarized material may be directed to pay money to the original creator of the work.

Legal repercussions: There are strong laws in place to protect the rights of an original writer such as copyright law. Copyright law is strict in some countries and may attract prison sentences apart from monetary damages. So, as a writer, you should be aware of plagiarism and how to avoid them. You should not use the other writer’s work without citation and reference and within the ambit of fair use.

Failure in the examination: Some universities and colleges take the act of plagiarism too seriously and may expel the student or fail them in the class.

Thus, because of the serious consequences associated with plagiarism, the writer should identify and avoid plagiarism.

Identification of Plagiarism

As a writer, you should well-aware of various methods to identify plagiarism so that the corrective measures can be taken instantly. Following are some of the methods to identify plagiarism:

How much is too much: The writer should write the article completely in his own words. However, the writer must know how much copying of the content amounts to plagiarism and copyright infringement. Verbatim copying of a significant amount of content from an article amounts to plagiarism and copyright infringement.

Due credit not given: The writer should give due credit to the original creator of the content. If the work is copied and credit and references are not supplied, it may lead to plagiarism.

Paraphrasing: Avoiding plagiarism through paraphrasing is a grey area. Plagiarism is indicated when the writer not only uses some other’s words but also the idea, without giving credit to the original creator of the idea.

Google check: If you have to check the plagiarism for a small paragraph or few lines, this can be done with the help of Google. Just copy the paragraph or lines and paste them on the Google search. Do not forget to put a quotation mark in the starting and end of the lines to get the exact word match.

Plagiarism tools: Various free and paid plagiarism tools are available to check the plagiarism. These tools are quite powerful and also provide you with the services of rewriting the plagiarized content. Some tools also fix grammatical errors.

Avoiding Plagiarism in Scientific Writing

Avoiding plagiarism is one of the prerequisites of writing. Following tips may help you in avoiding plagiarism:

Understand Plagiarism: Before writing the article and checking for plagiarism, get a basic understanding of the acts that constitute plagiarism. This will help you to build a strategy for avoiding plagiarism.

Citation: Do not forget to cite the source from where the content is extracted. The citation should be proper and complete. The citation style should adhere to the recommendation of a particular journal.

Quotation: If you want to take the word as it is from a source, the quotation would be your best option. You can use the quotation marks at the start and end of the sentence to give a clear indication that these are not your own words. You can place a direct citation next to the quotation.

Always write in your own words: You should prefer to be a creator of original content. Use your own words in explaining a concept, idea, or disseminating any information. If you write in your language, there are very dim chances of getting into the trouble of plagiarism.

Accurate paraphrasing: Paraphrasing when done accurately may also help you in avoiding plagiarism. While doing paraphrasing, you should change the language, style, and tone of the original content.

Do not rely very much on plagiarism software: Although plagiarism software is of great help in preventing plagiarism they may also skip some content. So, try to be the original creator of the article.

Start early: Always schedule your writing in such a way to have sufficient time to research and write it in your own words. If the time is less, you may be inclined more towards copying and pasting someone’s work.

How Scientific Writing Service Providers Help you in Avoiding Plagiarism?

Scientific writing services company help you in different ways to produce a plagiarism-free content. They may advise you regarding the research and assist you in an effective and accurate paraphrasing. The service providers will also help you in correct citations and make good use of quotations. They may also run your paper on their paid plagiarism software to identify any plagiarism.

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