Editorial: Keep It Simple: Study Design Nomenclature in Research Article Abstracts

Abstract

improved the consistency of the information contained in the abstracts of submitted articles, one area that has remained an enigma to authors is what to put in the ‘‘Design’’ section of the abstract. Some authors write a short phrase describing the type of clinical study design that aligns with widely used level-of-evidence taxonomies, such as those of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine2 or the Strength of Recommendation Taxonomy,3 whereas others describe the factorial design of their study, and a few submit a creative hybrid of these 2 formats. After thorough discussion of this issue, the NATA Journal Committee has endorsed the use of the clinical-study–design nomenclature advocated by the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine.2 We have revised the JAT Authors’ Guidelines to provide a finite list of acceptable nomenclature to use when describing study designs in the abstract. This simple format will have several advantages, including (1) offering consistency across manuscripts submitted to and published in JAT, (2) allowing readers of the abstracts in computer search engines to quickly align a study’s results with its level of evidence, and (3) aligning the JAT guidelines with those of other leading sports medicine journals in this respect. In particular, we owe a sincere thank you to the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine and the American Journal of Sports Medicine; both entities have granted us permission to borrow extensively from their descriptions of study designs. Now when authors submit to JAT, they are required to select one of the study designs in the list below for their