Abstract
BackgroundOpen access (OA) journals are becoming a publication standard for health research, but it is not clear how they differ from traditional subscription journals in the quality of research reporting. We assessed the completeness of results reporting in abstracts of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) published in these journals.MethodsWe used the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials Checklist for s (CONSORT-A) to assess the completeness of reporting in abstracts of parallel-design RCTs published in subscription journals (n = 149; New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of the American Medical Association, Annals of Internal Medicine, and Lancet) and OA journals (n = 119; BioMedCentral series, PLoS journals) in 2016 and 2017.Resultss in subscription journals completely reported 79% (95% confidence interval [CI], 77–81%) of 16 CONSORT-A items, compared with 65% (95% CI, 63–67%) of these items in abstracts from OA journals (P < 0.001, chi-square test). The median number of completely reported CONSORT-A items was 13 (95% CI, 12–13) in subscription journal articles and 11 (95% CI, 10–11) in OA journal articles. Subscription journal articles had significantly more complete reporting than OA journal articles for nine CONSORT-A items and did not differ in reporting for items trial design, outcome, randomization, blinding (masking), recruitment, and conclusions. OA journals were better than subscription journals in reporting randomized study design in the title.Conclusions of randomized controlled trials published in subscription medical journals have greater completeness of reporting than abstracts published in OA journals. OA journals should take appropriate measures to ensure that published articles contain adequate detail to facilitate understanding and quality appraisal of research reports about RCTs.
Highlights
Open access (OA) journals are becoming a publication standard for health research, but it is not clear how they differ from traditional subscription journals in the quality of research reporting
The aim of this study was to assess the completeness of results reporting in abstracts of Randomized controlled trial (RCT) published in traditional subscription journals and in OA journals
149 abstracts published in the subscription journals (63 [42%] in New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), 44 [30%] in Lancet, 36 [24%] in Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), 6 [4%] in Annals of Internal Medicine (AIM)) and 119 abstracts published in the OA journals (56 [47%] in BMC series journals and 63 [53%] in Public Library of Science (PLoS) journals) remained for analysis (Fig. 1)
Summary
Open access (OA) journals are becoming a publication standard for health research, but it is not clear how they differ from traditional subscription journals in the quality of research reporting. We assessed the completeness of results reporting in abstracts of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) published in these journals. It was claimed that the advent of OA journals would lead to the erosion of scientific quality control This opinion was based on the assumption that the OA publishers would take over an increasing part of the publishing industry and would not provide the same level of rigorous peer review as traditional subscription publishers, which would result in a decline in the quality of scholarly publishing [9]. The aim of this study was to assess the completeness of results reporting in abstracts of RCTs published in traditional subscription journals (members of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors [ICMJE] [12]) and in OA journals (two oldest journal consortia: Public Library of Science [PLoS] journals and BioMedCentral [BMC] series journals)
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