Keywords
Academic, degree, impact factor, journals, publication, high-impact
This article is included in the Research on Research, Policy & Culture gateway.
Academic, degree, impact factor, journals, publication, high-impact
First, to the Methods section, we have added that the 100 highest impact medical journals constituted 4% of the total medical journals identified in the Journal Citation Reports.
Second, we added that information was collected on fellowship designations and job titles to the Methods section. Moreover, these results are presented in the Results section.
Third, we added additional perspectives on avenues for future research to the Discussion section. These include research on trends in reporting academic degrees and trends in academic degree characteristics. Relevant references were added.
See the authors' detailed response to the review by Christopher C. Winchester
See the authors' detailed response to the review by Saif Aldeen Alryalat
See the authors' detailed response to the review by Ana Marusic
During submission of research papers to medical journals, authors are often asked to include academic degrees and/or affiliations. However, journals differ in how they present this information to readers. While some journals include academic degrees following author names, others choose not to list this information on the title page. To our knowledge, no evidence is available on how many journals choose to include academic degrees and whether this is more common in certain types of journals. Among the most influential medical journals, we examined journal factors associated with the inclusion of academic degrees on the title page.
We identified the 100 highest impact medical journals based on impact factor reported in the Journal Citation Reports1 published in 2018. These journals constituted 4% of the total number of medical journals identified in Journal Citation Reports. Characteristics of each journal in regard to specialty, impact factor, primary journal focus, continent, and open access policy were obtained. Journals were categorized as “general” or “specific” based on subject area designation in Scopus2, i.e. whether content was primarily related to one specialty (e.g. cardiology) or multiple specialties. Data were collected on the presence of academic degrees following author names in the title page by assessment of multiple original research articles from each journal. The presence of academic degrees was defined as the inclusion of academic degree abbreviations following author names (e.g. MD, PhD, RN, MPH etc.). Similarly, we collected data on fellowship designations and job titles following author names. Multiple articles published throughout July 2018 and August 2019 were assessed for each journal. No discrepancy of reporting academic degrees throughout the time period was identified. If there was any discrepancy between the print and the online version, the print version was used. Open access was identified based on open access designation in Scopus. Scopus registers open access as follows: “In Scopus, journals are registered as being OA journals only if they are registered as Gold OA or Subsidized OA at one or both of the following sources: Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and the Directory of Open Access Scholarly Resources (ROAD)”3.
Descriptive statistics were used to characterize the journals. Categorical data were compared with the Fisher’s Exact Test and continuous data were compared with the Wilcoxon Rank-Sum Test. The association between journal characteristics and the reporting of academic degrees were estimated using multivariable logistic regression.
Statistical analyses were performed in SAS (version 9.4). A two-tailed p < 0.05 was considered significant.
Of the 100 highest impact medical journals, 24 journals reported academic degrees on the title page (Table 1). We found that 52% of journals were published in Europe and 48% were published in North America. Only 8% of European journals reported academic degrees while 42% of North American journals reported academic degrees. The median impact factor of journals reporting and not reporting academic degrees was 12 (IQR 10 – 19) and 15 (IQR 11 – 20), respectfully. Moreover, six journals reported fellowship designations and one journal reported job titles (online only), all of which included academic degrees.
Presence of academic degree | Multivariable model | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Yes (n = 24) | No (n = 76) | OR | 95%CI | ||
Primary journal focus | Clinical | 17 (71%) | 26 (34%) | Ref. | - |
Basic science and/or experimental | 0 (0%) | 21 (28%) | NAa | NAa | |
Combined | 7 (29%) | 28 (37%) | 0.19 | 0.05 - 0.80 | |
Specialty | General | 4 (17%) | 9 (12%) | Ref. | - |
Specific | 20 (83%) | 67 (88%) | 1.77 | 0.27 - 11.54 | |
Open access | Yes | 1 (4%) | 6 (8%) | Ref. | - |
No | 23 (96%) | 70 (92%) | 4.94 | 0.41 - 59.36 | |
Continent | Europe | 4 (17%) | 48 (63%) | Ref. | - |
North America | 20 (83%) | 28 (37%) | 19.95 | 4.71 - 84.44 | |
Journal impact | Impact factorb | 12 (10 – 19) | 15 (11 – 20) | 1.00 | 1.00 - 1.00 |
bMedian with quartiles
Multivariable analysis showed that North America and a clinical journal focus was associated with increased odds of reporting academic degrees (Table 1). No association was found for the other journal characteristics.
Among the 100 highest impact medical journals, only 24 journals reported academic degrees following author names on the title page. Reporting of academic degrees was substantially more common in journals based in North America compared with Europe.
Listing author academic degrees is an editorial policy decision but there is little guidance from the International Committee of Medical Journals Editors (ICMJE) or the American Medical Association (AMA) Manual of Style. Specifically, the ICMJE states “Each author's highest academic degrees should be listed, although some journals do not publish these4.” and the AMA Manual of Style writes “Journals should establish their own policies on the inclusion of authors' degrees.”5. Neither provides a rationale for providing academic degrees and it remains unclear why some journals do and others do not. The marked difference between journals published in North America compared with Europe cannot be explained by the current study but may be a reflection of cultural differences in attitude towards degrees and titles. To our knowledge, no studies exist on the impact of reporting academic degrees in medical journals. Further research is needed to explore 1) trends in reporting academic degrees, 2) the implications of listing academic degrees on the readers’ attitude towards research quality, and 3) trends in academic degree characteristics considering that specific journals have seen an increase in authors with bachelor’s and multiple academic degrees6–8.
Limitations of the current study include that we only evaluated high-impact medical journals. Furthermore, we only assessed some journal characteristics. We evaluated only recent issues of these journals and are therefore unable to comment on trends in the use of author academic degrees.
In conclusion, we found that academic degrees are reported in about one fourth of medical journals and that this practice is more common in North America.
Harvard Dataverse: Replication Data for: Reporting of academic degrees in high-impact medical journals, https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/KTWS6C9
This project contains the following underlying data:
Data are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Zero "No rights reserved" data waiver (CC0 1.0 Public domain dedication).
The Journal Citation Report from Clarivate Analytics can only be accessed through an individual or institutional account.
1https://jcr.clarivate.com/JCRLandingPageAction.action Accessed September 7th 2019
2https://www.scopus.com/sources.uri Accessed Dec. 5th 2019
3https://blog.scopus.com/posts/scopus-to-launch-open-access-indicator-for-journals-on-july-29 Assessed December 5th 2019
4http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/manuscript-preparation/preparing-for-submission.html#a Accessed September 7th 2019
5https://www.amamanualofstyle.com/view/10.1093/jama/9780195176339.001.0001/med-9780195176339-div2-10 Accessed September 7th 2019
6Haws BE, Khechen B, Movassaghi K, et al. Authorship Trends in Spine Publications From 2000 to 2015. Spine (Phila Pa 1976). 2018;43(17):1225–1230
7Schrock JB, Kraeutler MJ, McCarty EC. Trends in Authorship Characteristics in The American Journal of Sports Medicine, 1994 to 2014. Am J Sports Med. 2016;44(7):1857–1860
8Gu A, Almeida N, Cohen JS, Peck KM, Merrell GA. Progression of Authorship of Scientific Articles in The Journal of Hand Surgery, 1985–2015. J Hand Surg Am. 2017;42(4):291 e291–291 e296.
9Stankovic, Nikola, 2019, "Replication Data for: Reporting of academic degrees in high-impact medical journals", https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/KTWS6C, Harvard Dataverse, V1
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Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed.
Reviewer Expertise: Journal and peer review research
Is the work clearly and accurately presented and does it cite the current literature?
Yes
Is the study design appropriate and is the work technically sound?
Yes
Are sufficient details of methods and analysis provided to allow replication by others?
Yes
If applicable, is the statistical analysis and its interpretation appropriate?
Yes
Are all the source data underlying the results available to ensure full reproducibility?
Partly
Are the conclusions drawn adequately supported by the results?
Yes
References
1. Stephens R, Staniszewska S: One small step….Res Involv Engagem. 2015; 1: 1 PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full TextCompeting Interests: I am an employee of Oxford PharmaGenesis Ltd, a Director of Oxford PharmaGenesis Ltd, Oxford PharmaGenesis AG, Oxford PharmaGenesis Inc., Oxford PharmaGenesis Pty Ltd and Oxford PharmaGenesis Holdings Ltd, and a shareholder in Oxford PharmaGenesis Holdings Ltd. I am also a Director of Oxford Health Policy Forum CIC. He is immediate past Chair of the International Society for Medical Publication Professionals, a member of the European Medical Writers Association and a co-Founder of Open Pharma.
Reviewer Expertise: Research reporting
References
1. Haws B, Khechen B, Movassaghi K, Yom K, et al.: Authorship Trends in Spine Publications From 2000 to 2015. SPINE. 2018; 43 (17): 1225-1230 Publisher Full TextCompeting Interests: No competing interests were disclosed.
Reviewer Expertise: Journal and peer review research
Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed.
Reviewer Expertise: Medicine, bibliometrics, ophthalmology.
Is the work clearly and accurately presented and does it cite the current literature?
Partly
Is the study design appropriate and is the work technically sound?
Partly
Are sufficient details of methods and analysis provided to allow replication by others?
Partly
If applicable, is the statistical analysis and its interpretation appropriate?
Yes
Are all the source data underlying the results available to ensure full reproducibility?
Yes
Are the conclusions drawn adequately supported by the results?
Yes
Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed.
Reviewer Expertise: Journal and peer review research
Is the work clearly and accurately presented and does it cite the current literature?
Partly
Is the study design appropriate and is the work technically sound?
Yes
Are sufficient details of methods and analysis provided to allow replication by others?
Partly
If applicable, is the statistical analysis and its interpretation appropriate?
Yes
Are all the source data underlying the results available to ensure full reproducibility?
Yes
Are the conclusions drawn adequately supported by the results?
Yes
Competing Interests: No competing interests were disclosed.
Reviewer Expertise: Medicine, bibliometrics, ophthalmology.
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