Abstract
Successful publishing of an article depends on several factors, including the structure of the main text, the so-called introduction, methods, results and discussion structure (IMRAD). The first objective of our work is to provide recent results on the number of paragraphs (pars.) per section used in articles published in major medical journals. Our second objective is the investigation of other structural elements, i.e., number of tables, figures and references and the availability of supplementary material. We analyzed data from randomly selected original articles published in years 2005, 2010 and 2015 from the journals The BMJ, The Journal of the American Medical Association, The Lancet, The New England Journal of Medicine and PLOS Medicine. Per journal and year 30 articles were investigated. Random effect meta-analyses were performed to provide pooled estimates. The effect of time was analyzed by linear mixed models. All articles followed the IMRAD structure. The number of pars. per section increased for all journals over time with 1.08 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.70-1.46) pars. per every two years. The largest increase was observed for the methods section (0.29 pars. per year; 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.19-0.39). PLOS Medicine had the highest number of pars. The number of tables did not change, but number of figures and references increased slightly. Not only the standard IMRAD structure should be used to increase the likelihood for publication of an article but also the general layout of the target journal. Supplementary material has become standard. If no journal-specific information is available, authors should use 3/10/9/8 pars. for the introduction/methods/results/discussion sections.
Highlights
ObjectivesThe first objective of our work is to provide recent results on the number of paragraphs per section used in articles published in major medical journals
Publish and prosper is one of the sayings scientists often encounter
In original articles published in the English language medical journals BMJ, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Lancet, New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) and PLOS in the years 2005, 2010 and 2015, we investigated the number of paragraphs per section
Summary
The first objective of our work is to provide recent results on the number of paragraphs per section used in articles published in major medical journals. The first aim of our article is to provide recent results on characteristics of the structure of original articles published in major medical journals. The second aim of our work is to expand the statistics to other structural elements, i.e., the number of tables, figures and references as well as the availability of supplementary material
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