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

The relationship between scientific publishing retractions and democracy

Can we trust articles from non-democratic countries? Research on the relationship between retracted articles and democrac

Randomized controlled trials in de-implementation research:a systematic scoping review

Abstract Background: Healthcare costs are rising, and a substantial proportion of medical care is of little value. De-implementation of low-value practices is important for improving overall health outcomes and reducing costs. We aimed to identify and synthesize randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on de-implementation interventions and to provide guidance to improve future research. Methods: MEDLINE and Scopus up to May 24, 2021, for individual and cluster RCTs comparing de-implementation interventions to usual care, another intervention, or placebo. We applied independent duplicate assessment of eligibility, study characteristics, outcomes, intervention categories, implementation theories, and risk of bias. Results: Of the 227 eligible trials, 145 (64%) were cluster randomized trials (median 24 clusters; median follow-up time 305 days), and 82 (36%) were individually randomized trials (median follow-up time 274 days). Of the trials, 118 (52%) were published after 2010, 149 (66%) were conducted in a primary care setting, 163 (72%) aimed to reduce the use of drug treatment, 194 (85%) measured the total volume of care, and 64 (28%) low-value care use as outcomes. Of the trials, 48 (21%) described a theoretical basis for the intervention, and 40 (18%) had the study tailored by context-specific factors. Of the de-implementation interventions, 193 (85%) were targeted at physicians, 115 (51%) tested educational sessions, and 152 (67%) multicomponent interventions. Missing data led to high risk of bias in 137 (60%) trials, followed by baseline imbalances in 99 (44%), and deficiencies in allocation concealment in 56 (25%). Conclusions: De-implementation trials were mainly conducted in primary care and typically aimed to reduce low-value drug treatments. Limitations of current de-implementation research may have led to unreliable effect estimates and decreased clinical applicability of studied de-implementation strategies. We identified potential research gaps, including de-implementation in secondary and tertiary care settings, and interventions targeted at other than physicians. Future trials could be improved by favoring simpler intervention designs, better control of potential confounders, larger number of clusters in cluster trials, considering context-specific factors when planning the intervention (tailoring), and using a theoretical basis in intervention design

Reporting of costs and economic impacts in randomized trials of de-implementation interventions for low-value care:a systematic scoping review

Abstract Background: De-implementation of low-value care can increase health care sustainability. We evaluated the reporting of direct costs of de-implementation and subsequent change (increase or decrease) in health care costs in randomized trials of de-implementation research. Methods: We searched MEDLINE and Scopus databases without any language restrictions up to May 2021. We conducted study screening and data extraction independently and in duplicate. We extracted information related to study characteristics, types and characteristics of interventions, de-implementation costs, and impacts on health care costs. We assessed risk of bias using a modified Cochrane risk-of-bias tool. Results: We screened 10,733 articles, with 227 studies meeting the inclusion criteria, of which 50 included information on direct cost of de-implementation or impact of de-implementation on health care costs. Studies were mostly conducted in North America (36%) or Europe (32%) and in the primary care context (70%). The most common practice of interest was reduction in the use of antibiotics or other medications (74%). Most studies used education strategies (meetings, materials) (64%). Studies used either a single strategy (52%) or were multifaceted (48%). Of the 227 eligible studies, 18 (8%) reported on direct costs of the used de-implementation strategy; of which, 13 reported total costs, and 12 reported per unit costs (7 reported both). The costs of de-implementation strategies varied considerably. Of the 227 eligible studies, 43 (19%) reported on impact of de-implementation on health care costs. Health care costs decreased in 27 studies (63%), increased in 2 (5%), and were unchanged in 14 (33%). Conclusion: De-implementation randomized controlled trials typically did not report direct costs of the de-implementation strategies (92%) or the impacts of de-implementation on health care costs (81%). Lack of cost information may limit the value of de-implementation trials to decision-makers. Trial registration: OSF (Open Science Framework): https://osf.io/ueq32