Research transparency in dental research : A programmatic analysis

Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Authors. European Journal of Oral Sciences published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Scandinavian Division of the International Association for Dental Research.We assessed adherence to five transparency practices-data sharing, code sharing, conflict of interest disclosure, funding disclosure, and protocol registration-in articles in dental journals. We searched and exported the full text of all research articles from PubMed-indexed dental journals available in the Europe PubMed Central database until the end of 2021. We programmatically assessed their adherence to the five transparency practices using a validated and automated tool. Journal- and article-related information was retrieved from ScimagoJR and Journal Citation Reports. Of all 329,784 articles published in PubMed-indexed dental journals, 10,659 (3.2%) were available to download. Of those, 77% included a conflict of interest disclosure, and 62% included a funding disclosure. Seven percent of the articles had a registered protocol. Data sharing (2.0%) and code sharing (0.1%) were rarer. Sixteen percent of articles did not adhere to any of the five transparency practices, 29% adhered to one, 48% adhered to two, 7.0% adhered to three, 0.3% adhered to four, and no article adhered to all five practices. Adherence to transparency practices increased over time; however, data and code sharing especially remained rare. Coordinated efforts involving all stakeholders are needed to change current transparency practices in dental research.publishersversionPeer reviewe

Transparency of COVID-19-related research : A meta-research study

Funding Information: The computational analyses were performed on servers provided by UEF Bioinformatics Center, University of Eastern Finland, Finland. Uribe was supported by European Union’s Horizon 2020 grant 857287 for the Baltic Biomaterials Centre of Excellence, Headquarters at Riga Technical University, Riga, Latvia and the Uzn¸ēmuma MikroTik līgumam Nr. UL8, 2021 RSU (toward implementing the RSU data repository and the FAIR data management principles). Raittio was supported by the Finnish Dental Society Apollonia and the Aarhus University Research Foundation (#AUFF-E 2019-7-3). Publisher Copyright: © 2023 Sofi-Mahmudi et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.BACKGROUND: We aimed to assess the adherence to five transparency practices (data availability, code availability, protocol registration and conflicts of interest (COI), and funding disclosures) from open access Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) related articles. METHODS: We searched and exported all open access COVID-19-related articles from PubMed-indexed journals in the Europe PubMed Central database published from January 2020 to June 9, 2022. With a validated and automated tool, we detected transparent practices of three paper types: research articles, randomized controlled trials (RCTs), and reviews. Basic journal- and article-related information were retrieved from the database. We used R for the descriptive analyses. RESULTS: The total number of articles was 258,678, of which we were able to retrieve full texts of 186,157 (72%) articles from the database Over half of the papers (55.7%, n = 103,732) were research articles, 10.9% (n = 20,229) were review articles, and less than one percent (n = 1,202) were RCTs. Approximately nine-tenths of articles (in all three paper types) had a statement to disclose COI. Funding disclosure (83.9%, confidence interval (CI): 81.7-85.8 95%) and protocol registration (53.5%, 95% CI: 50.7-56.3) were more frequent in RCTs than in reviews or research articles. Reviews shared data (2.5%, 95% CI: 2.3-2.8) and code (0.4%, 95% CI: 0.4-0.5) less frequently than RCTs or research articles. Articles published in 2022 had the highest adherence to all five transparency practices. Most of the reviews (62%) and research articles (58%) adhered to two transparency practices, whereas almost half of the RCTs (47%) adhered to three practices. There were journal- and publisher-related differences in all five practices, and articles that did not adhere to transparency practices were more likely published in lowest impact journals and were less likely cited. CONCLUSION: While most articles were freely available and had a COI disclosure, adherence to other transparent practices was far from acceptable. A much stronger commitment to open science practices, particularly to protocol registration, data and code sharing, is needed from all stakeholders.publishersversionPeer reviewe

Dental Research Data Availability and Quality According to the FAIR Principles

Funding Information: The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research was funded by MikroTik-RSU to S.E. Uribe (toward implementing the RSU data repository and the FAIR data management principles). S.E. Uribe also acknowledges financial support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme (grant 857287). Publisher Copyright: © International Association for Dental Research and American Association for Dental, Oral, and Craniofacial Research 2022.According to the FAIR principles, data produced by scientific research should be findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable—for instance, to be used in machine learning algorithms. However, to date, there is no estimate of the quantity or quality of dental research data evaluated via the FAIR principles. We aimed to determine the availability of open data in dental research and to assess compliance with the FAIR principles (or FAIRness) of shared dental research data. We downloaded all available articles published in PubMed-indexed dental journals from 2016 to 2021 as open access from Europe PubMed Central. In addition, we took a random sample of 500 dental articles that were not open access through Europe PubMed Central. We assessed data sharing in the articles and compliance of shared data to the FAIR principles programmatically. Results showed that of 7,509 investigated articles, 112 (1.5%) shared data. The average (SD) level of compliance with the FAIR metrics was 32.6% (31.9%). The average for each metric was as follows: findability, 3.4 (2.7) of 7; accessibility, 1.0 (1.0) of 3; interoperability, 1.1 (1.2) of 4; and reusability, 2.4 (2.6) of 10. No considerable changes in data sharing or quality of shared data occurred over the years. Our findings indicated that dental researchers rarely shared data, and when they did share, the FAIR quality was suboptimal. Machine learning algorithms could understand 1% of available dental research data. These undermine the reproducibility of dental research and hinder gaining the knowledge that can be gleaned from machine learning algorithms and applications.publishersversionPeer reviewe

Adult Finns’ perceptions about communication with the dentist during their latest visit

Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate adult Finns’ perceptions about communication with the dentist during their latest visit in three aspects: receiving adequate information about health status and care, being listened to and shown interest by the dentist, and being able to influence the treatment decisions.Methods: Data were taken from the Health 2011 Survey (BRIH8901). A representative sample (n = 5806) of adult Finns aged over 29 years old was interviewed or alternatively filled in a questionnaire. Basic descriptive tabulations, Rao‐Scott chi‐square tests and logistic regression analyses were used to study how socioeconomic status, perceived oral health and oral Health care variables are associated with the three aspects of communication with the dentist.Results: Most (85%‐90%) adult Finns felt that, during their latest visit to a dentist, they had received adequate information, were listened to and shown interest by their dentist, and that they had been able to influence the treatment decisions. Those who perceived poor oral health, felt visiting dentist somewhat frightening, were in a difficult economic situation, visited a public dentist, or tended to visit oral Health care services irregularly, felt more often that there was a deficit in communication with the dentist.Conclusions: In 2011, most adult Finns did not report any deficit in communication with the dentist during their latest visit. Oral Health care professionals should focus more on communicating with patients who have economic problems, poor oral health, dental fear or a problem‐oriented visiting pattern.</p

Is the technical quality of root fillings associated with socioeconomic status?

Abstract Background Socioeconomically better-off tend to receive better care, and to benefit more from care they receive, than the less well-off. The technical quality of root fillings can be assessed radiographically. Our aim was to investigate differences in the technical quality of root fillings according to socioeconomic status not studied before. Methods In the Finnish Health 2000 Survey, a sample of 8 028 over 29-year-old adults was selected by a stratified two-staged cluster sampling. Of these, 6 115 (76%) underwent panoramic radiography. A total of 7 986 endodontically treated teeth were detected among 3 905 participants. The criterion for a technically inadequate root filling was a distance from the root filling to the root apex of over 3 mm or material over the apex. Education, employment status and household income were used as measures of socioeconomic status. Differences in the quality of root fillings according to socioeconomic status were investigated using the Multiple Additive Regression Tree mediation analysis, taking into account age, gender and tooth type of the root filled tooth. Results Almost half (47%) of the root fillings were inadequate. Root filling quality was associated particularly with age of the participant and type of tooth. Mediation analysis showed that among the over 64-year-olds, higher education or income were associated with a slightly higher probability of inadequate root filling quality (ORs 1.15-1.20, p &amp;lt; 0.05). Among the under 65-year-olds, age of the participant and type of tooth explained the observed variations in root filling quality according to socieconomic status, and socioeconomic status had no influence (ORs 0.99-1.02, p &amp;gt; 0.05). Conclusions Those in a lower socioeconomic status had not received poorer endodontic treatment quality. It seems that those in a lower socioeconomic status are not prone to receive poorer quality care in endodontic setting, that they tend to receive in longer and more socially complex treatments. Key messages Variations in the technical quality of root fillings by socioeconomic status has not been studied. Lower socioeconomic status was not associated with poorer technical quality of root fillings. </jats:sec

The relationship between scientific publishing retractions and democracy: Protocol for an ecological study

To determine the relationship between the number of retracted papers and the level of democracy and affecting factors

Transparency of COVID-19-related research in medical journals

Our objective is to evaluate the transparency indicators (data sharing, code, declaration of interest, funding, availability of research protocol) from open access full-text COVID-19-related articles published in medical journals available from the Europe PMC. We map transparency across publication years, publishers and journals

FAIRness of COVID-19-related research data

We aim to determine the availability of open data in dental research and to assess compliance with the FAIR principles (or FAIRness) of shared COVID-19-related research data