Policies, practices, and attitudes of North American medical journal editors

OBJECTIVE: To describe U.S. and Canadian medical journals, their editors, and policies that affect the dissemination of medical information. DESIGN: Mailed survey. PARTICIPANTS: Senior editors of all 269 leading medical journals published at least quarterly in the United States and Canada, of whom 221 (82%) responded. MAIN MEASURES: The questionnaire asked about characteristics of journal editors and their journals and about journals' policies toward peer review, conflicts of interest, prepublication discussions with the press, and pharmaceutical advertisements. RESULTS: The editors were overwhelmingly men (96%), middle-aged (mean age 61 years), and trained as physicians (82%). Although 98% claimed that their journals were "peer-reviewed," the editors differed in how they defined a "peer" and in the number of peers they deemed optimal for review. Sixty-three percent thought journals should check on reviewers' potential conflicts of interest, but only a minority supported masking authors' names and affiliations (46%), checking reviewers' financial conflicts of interest (40%), or revealing reviewers' names to authors (8%). The respondents advocated discussion of scientific findings with the press (84%), but only in accord with the Ingelfinger rule, i.e., after publication of the article (77%). Fifty-seven percent of the editors agreed that journals have a responsibility to ensure the truthfulness of pharmaceutical advertisements, and 40% favored subjecting advertisements to the same rigorous peer review as scientific articles. CONCLUSIONS: The responding editors were relatively homogeneous demographically and professionally, and they tended to support the editorial status quo. There was little sentiment in favor of tampering with the current peer-review system (however defined) or the Ingelfinger rule, but a surprisingly large percentage of the respondents favored more stringent review of drug advertisements.     

An offering to Goldiamond.

Comments on I. Goldiamond's (1977) article on peer review of articles submitted to psychology journals. Illustrated with biblical references, the author asks whether American psychology has developed a religious orthodoxy in which form and popularity supercede substance and truth. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Why review articles on the health effects of passive smoking reach different conclusions

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether the conclusions of review articles on the health effects of passive smoking are associated with article quality, the affiliations of their authors, or other article characteristics. DATA SOURCES: Review articles published from 1980 to 1995 were identified through electronic searches of MEDLINE and EMBASE and from a database of symposium proceedings on passive smoking. ARTICLE SELECTION: An article was included if its stated or implied purpose was to review the scientific evidence that passive smoking is associated with 1 or more health outcomes. Articles were excluded if they did not focus specifically on the health effects of passive smoking or if they were not written in English. DATA EXTRACTION: Review article quality was evaluated by 2 independent assessors who were trained, followed a written protocol, had no disclosed conflicts of interest, and were blinded to all study hypotheses and identifying characteristics of articles. Article conclusions were categorized by the 2 assessors and by one of the authors. Author affiliation was classified as either tobacco industry affiliated or not, based on whether the authors were known to have received funding from or participated in activities sponsored by the tobacco industry. Other article characteristics were classified by one of the authors using predefined criteria. DATA SYNTHESIS: A total of 106 reviews were identified. Overall, 37% (39/106) of reviews concluded that passive smoking is not harmful to health; 74% (29/39) of these were written by authors with tobacco industry affiliations. In multiple logistic regression analyses controlling for article quality, peer review status, article topic, and year of publication, the only factor associated with concluding that passive smoking is not harmful was whether an author was affiliated with the tobacco industry (odds ratio, 88.4; 95% confidence interval, 16.4-476.5; P<.001). CONCLUSIONS: The conclusions of review articles are strongly associated with the affiliations of their authors. Authors of review articles should disclose potential financial conflicts of interest, and readers of review articles should consider authors' affiliations when deciding how to judge an article's conclusions.     

Article publications, journal outlets, and article themes for current faculty in APA-Accredited school psychology programs: 1995-1999.

The study addressed three major questions regarding the 1995-1999 journal publications of faculty at school psychology programs accredited by the American Psychological Association (APA) as of Sept. 1, 2000: (a) Which program faculties had the strongest records of article publications for 1995-1999? (b) What were the major school psychology and nonschool psychology journals in which program faculties published their work from 1995-1999? and (c) What were the principal article themes of the most prolific programs for 1995-1999? The PsycINFO listing of articles published between 1995 and 1999 provided the database for answering the research questions. Themes for the publications of the most productive programs were determined from article titles and available abstracts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Assessing the scholarly impact of health psychology: A citation analysis of articles published from 1993 to 2003.

Objective: We conducted a citation analysis to explore the impact of articles published in Health Psychology and determine whether the journal is fulfilling its stated mission. Design: Six years of articles (N = 408) representing three editorial tenures from 1993–2003 were selected for analysis. Main Outcome Measures: Articles were coded for several dimensions enabling examination of the relationship of article features to subsequent citations rates. Journals citing articles published in Health Psychology were classified into four categories: (1) psychology, (2) medicine, (3) public health and health policy, and (4) other journals. Results: The majority of citations of Health Psychology articles were in psychology journals, followed closely by medical journals. Studies reporting data collected from college students, and discussing the theoretical implications of findings, were more likely to be cited in psychology journals, whereas studies reporting data from clinical populations, and discussing the practice implications of findings, were more likely to be cited in medical journals. Time since publication and page length were both associated with increased citation counts, and review articles were cited more frequently than observational studies. Conclusion: Articles published in Health Psychology have a wide reach, informing psychology, medicine, public health and health policy. Certain characteristics of articles affect their subsequent pattern of citation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Productivity ratings of psychology programs based on publications in clinical journals.

Sought to identify the relative standing of clinical psychology programs by evaluating their frequency of publication in the major clinical journals. In addition, the relative contribution of university programs, hospital programs, medical centers, and other institutions to the clinical literature was investigated. It was found that although American Psychological Association (APA)-approved university clinical programs are responsible for the largest number of articles in the sample examined, (14 journals for the years 1975, 1976, and 1977), 6 of every 10 articles were published either by non-APA-approved academic programs or by individuals in other institutional settings. The general reputation of universities did not reflect their productivity in the clinical journals. The article includes an analysis of the major sources of publication in the clinical literature and an evaluation of the meaning of these findings for clinical psychology. (3 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Scientific journals and their authors' financial interests: a pilot study

BACKGROUND: The credibility of modern science is grounded on the perception of the objectivity of its scientists, but that credibility can be undermined by financial conflicts of interest. The US Public Health Service and the National Science Foundation issued regulations effective October 1, 1995, regarding the disclosure of financial interests in the submission of grant proposals. Several scientific journals have also established pertinent policies for authors and editors. The objectives of this study were: (1) to select a set of published articles and observe the degree to which a sample of authors hold a financial interest in areas related to their research that are reportable under current standards, and (2) to examine the hypothesis that significant numbers of authors of articles in life science and biomedical journals have verifiable financial interests that might be important for journal editors and readers to know. This paper measures the frequency of selected financial interests held among lead authors of certain types of scientific publications and assesses disclosure practices of authors and journals. METHOD: These objectives were applied to a pilot study of Massachusetts academic scientists who were cited as first or last author in at least one article published in 1992 in 14 leading journals of cell or molecular biology and medicine. We created a database of every original article published in 1992 by 14 leading life science and biomedical journals, supplemented by data sets consisting of (1) Massachusetts biotechnology firms, including their officers and scientific advisory boards, and (2) scientists listed as inventors on patents or patent applications registered with the World Intellectual Property Organization. RESULTS: We examined 1,105 university authors (first and last cited) from Massachusetts institutions whose 789 articles, published in 1992, appeared in 14 scientific and medical journals. Authors are said to 'possess a financial interest' if they are listed as inventors in a patent or patent application closely related to their published work; serve on a scientific advisory board of a biotechnology company; or are officers, directors, or major shareholders (beneficial owner of 10% or more of stock issued) in a firm that has commercial interests related to their research. Applying the criteria to the reference population of journals and Massachusetts academic authors, we measured the following frequencies for lead authors: 0.20 for serving on a scientific advisory board; 0.07 for being an officer, director, or major shareholder in a biotechnology firm, and 0.22 for being listed as an inventor in a related patent or patent application. The joint frequency of articles in the journals reviewed with a lead author that meets one of the three conditions is 0.34. CONCLUSIONS: One of every three articles in our sample has at least one Massachusetts-based author with a financial interest, and 15% of the authors in our sample have a financial interest relevant to one of their publications. For the year 1992, the rate of published voluntary disclosures of financial interest (as defined in our study) is virtually zero, but relatively few scientific and biomedical journals at that time required any such disclosure to journal editors and reviewers. Further research is needed to determine the effectiveness of mandatory disclosure requirements by some journals.     

The quality of citations in major international obstetrics and gynecology journals

OBJECTIVE: Our goal was to determine the error rate in references in articles published in three major international journals in obstetrics and gynecology. STUDY DESIGN: All issues (excluding supplements) for the year 1995 of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, and the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology were examined. References were numbered sequentially, and 50 randomly selected references from each journal were checked against the original for accuracy. RESULTS: Errors were found in the majority of references. The lowest error rate was 55.6% from the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, and the highest was 66.7% from the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. The difference between journals was not statistically significant. The most frequent types of error were in the title of the article or in the authors' names. CONCLUSIONS: Error rates in major international journals in obstetrics and gynecology are high, and care must be taken by authors and journal staff to improve the quality of published articles.     

Peer Review: An Overview.

In the context of professional psychology, peer review refers to an organized system of assessing quality of services and requires analysis and judgment of professional practice by other practitioners within the profession. This special issue on peer review and quality assurance represents a report on the status of developments in quality assurance within the mental health professions and emphasizes the major role of groups within the American Psychological Association (APA). The first set of articles discusses general issues in quality assessment. The next set of articles is specifically relevant to the progress and development of the Defense Department's Civilian Health and Medical Program of the Uniformed Services (CHAMPUS) Project. The third section comprises a series of articles that describe the application of quality assurance methodology to a variety of service delivery settings. Other approaches to quality assessment and quality assurance are described in the final section. The editors hope that the articles in this special issue can assist the profession in achieving greater and more consistent effectiveness with the public it serves. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Race and the workforce: Occupational status, aspirations, and stereotyping among African American children.

This study examined whether African American children's perceptions of occupational status and their own vocational interests are affected by racial segregation of the workforce. Children (N = 92) rated familiar occupations with respect to status, desirability, and stereotyping. Children also rated novel jobs that had been depicted with African Americans, European Americans, or both African and European Americans. As predicted, for familiar jobs, children's judgments were linked to their knowledge of racial segregation of these jobs. In addition, novel occupations that had been depicted with African Americans were judged as lower in status than the identical occupations that had been depicted with European Americans, demonstrating a causal influence of workers' race on children's judgments. Children's age and socioeconomic background moderated their occupational judgments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Number of authors per manuscript in APA and EPF journals: 2000–2010.

The PsycINFO metadata records for American Psychological Association (APA) journal articles with publication years 2000 through 2010 were analyzed to obtain a count of authors for each article. The counts were accumulated for each year into categories of one through 25, with one additional category for articles with more than 25 authors. The criteria for journals to be included were that they carried the APA or Educational Publishing Foundation (EPF) imprint and that APA had significant involvement in the editorial process. There were 60 journals involved in the counts. (The number of journals varied over this period, ranging from 27 APA journals and 10 EPF journals in 2000 to 29 APA journals and 31 EPF journals in 2010.) For the years 2000 through 2010, this yielded 30,326 articles and 89,060 incidents of authorship. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comments on Shweder's "Illusory correlation and the MMPI controversy."

R. A. Shweder's (see record 1978-20145-001) 1st principal-component factor loadings are substantially correlated with the proportion of items keyed for true and socially desirable responses in the MMPI scales that he investigated, and it is suggested that the judgments of similarity and dissimilarity that he obtained were based on social desirability considerations. It is also shown that although there is a preexisting conceptual scheme that is widely shared regarding what is desirable and undesirable in the way of personality characteristics, differences in the degree to which individuals agree with the cultural norms of social desirability have little relationship to individual differences in social desirability responding to MMPI items. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A comparison of the mediational properties of four adolescent smoking expectancy measures.

This prospective study compared the ability of 4 smoking expectancy measures to mediate the influence of peer, parent, and current smoking on adolescents' cigarette use 3 months later. No evidence for mediation was found when expectancies were operationalized as unidimensional subjective expected utility (SEU). multidimensional SEU, or unidimensional SEU decomposed into probability and desirability main effects and their interaction. Evidence for partial mediation was found for the decomposed multidimensional SEU measure. The results suggest that (a) peer and current cigarette use may influence future smoking indirectly through adolescents' probability estimates that smoking will control negative emotions and (b) the relationship between current and future smoking also may be mediated by adolescents' beliefs about the desirability of weight control. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Contrast effects and judgments of physical attractiveness: When beauty becomes a social problem.

Conducted 3 studies to test the hypothesis that judgments of average females' attractiveness or dating desirability will be adversely affected by exposing judges to extremely attractive prior stimuli (i.e., judgments will show a "contrast effect"). Study 1 was a field study in which 81 male dormitory residents watching a popular TV show, whose main characters were 3 strikingly attractive females, were asked to rate a photo of an average female (described as a potential blind date for another dorm resident). These Ss rated the target female as significantly less attractive than did a comparable control group. Two other studies with 146 undergraduates demonstrated analogous effects in a more controlled laboratory setting. In addition, the 3rd study indicated a direct effect of informational social influence on physical attractiveness judgments. Implications are discussed with particular attention to mass media impact. (40 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An evaluation of 80 psychology journals based on the Science Citation Index..

Ranked 80 psychology journals and those from closely related fields in terms of their impact factors (average citations per article) where the numerator for the impact factor was based on the total number of citations accruing to 1972–1973 articles in that journal in the 1974 Science Citation Index. The top 3 journals were Psychological Review, Cognitive Psychology, and Psychological Bulletin. Comparisons are made with a ranking study conducted by M. J. White and K. G. White (1977). For related article, see PA, Vol 56:4649. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Editorial.

Psychology, Public Policy, and Law focuses on the links between psychology as a science, relevant information derived from related disciplines as sciences, and public policy and law. It will publish articles that (1) critically evaluate the actual and potential contributions of psychology to public policy and legal issues, (2) assess the desirability of different public policy and legal alternatives in light of the scientific knowledge base in psychology, (3) articulate research needs that address public policy and legal issues for which there is currently insufficient theoretical and empirical knowledge, and (4) examine public policy and legal issues relating to the conduct of psychology and of related disciplines where relevant to psychology. The goals for the journal are to (1) provide a multidisciplinary forum for scholarship and interchange relevant to the mission of the journal, (2) provide a forum for the publications of comprehensive, scholarly articles that critically consider theoretical, conceptual, and doctrinal issues or that critically review the literature on topics relevant to the mission of the journal, and (3) provide a forum for the publication of comprehensive, scholarly articles that report the results of programs of research or large-scale empirical studies relevant to the mission of the journal. This issue, like most law reviews and social science journals, presents articles that were unsolicited and are unrelated. The first article, using the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Foucha v. Louisiana as the vehicle, critically explores how mental illness should be defined for various legal purposes and argues the need for the application of a new constitutional principle to limit state power to involuntary hospitalize—therapeutic appropriateness. The second article then considers the U.S. Supreme Court's social science analyses in two juvenile death penalty cases, demonstrates that the Court's approach is in error, and presents an alternate analysis that the author asserts the Court should be using. The issue concludes with an article that focuses on the potential harmfulness that may result to society from censorship of sexually explicit material. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Assessing the need for a new group journal.

The need for a new journal dealing with group psychology and group psychotherapy was documented for the Publications & Communications Board of the American Psychological Association. The authors examined the output characteristics of existing journals that published articles about groups and group work between 1980 and 1995. Although articles about groups were published in 1,042 journals, 35% of the group articles were published in 23 journals. Although the 23 journals seemed to provide thorough coverage of general and specific aspects of group dynamics and group interventions, including psychodrama, few journals attempted to integrate diverse topics in group dynamics and group intervention. Trends in the number and kinds of topics published were also examined across the 16-year interval. The main implications of this survey were that (a) the study of groups, as reflected by the rate and number of publications, is a central concern in various fields in psychology and mental health; (b) researchers' and practitioners' publications dealing with group-level topics are distributed widely across many diverse journals, which makes it difficult for group psychologists to keep abreast of the literature; and (c) a single journal is needed to provide a focal point for basic and applied studies of groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)