Khatter Amandeep, Naughton Michael, Dambha-Miller Hajira, Redmond Patrick
School of Population Health and Environmental Sciences King's College London London UK.
School of Primary Care Population Sciences and Medical Education (PPM) University of Southampton UK.
Learn Publ. 2021 Oct;34(4):568-577. doi: 10.1002/leap.1403. Epub 2021 Jun 1.
The impact of COVID-19 has underlined the need for reliable information to guide clinical practice and policy. This urgency has to be balanced against disruption to journal handling capacity and the continued need to ensure scientific rigour. We examined the reporting quality of highly disseminated COVID-19 research papers using a bibliometric analysis examining reporting quality and risk of bias (RoB) amongst 250 top scoring Altmetric Attention Score (AAS) COVID-19 research papers between January and April 2020. Method-specific RoB tools were used to assess quality. After exclusions, 84 studies from 44 journals were included. Forty-three (51%) were case series/studies, and only one was an randomized controlled trial. Most authors were from institutions based in China ( = 44, 52%). The median AAS and impact factor was 2015 (interquartile range [IQR] 1,105-4,051.5) and 12.8 (IQR 5-44.2) respectively. Nine studies (11%) utilized a formal reporting framework, 62 (74%) included a funding statement, and 41 (49%) were at high RoB. This review of the most widely disseminated COVID-19 studies highlights a preponderance of low-quality case series with few research papers adhering to good standards of reporting. It emphasizes the need for cautious interpretation of research and the increasingly vital responsibility that journals have in ensuring high-quality publications.
新型冠状病毒肺炎（COVID-19）的影响凸显了获取可靠信息以指导临床实践和政策制定的必要性。这种紧迫性必须与期刊处理能力受到的干扰以及确保科学严谨性的持续需求相平衡。我们使用文献计量分析方法，对2020年1月至4月间250篇Altmetric关注度得分（AAS）最高的COVID-19研究论文的报告质量和偏倚风险（RoB）进行了研究，以检验高传播度COVID-19研究论文的报告质量。使用特定方法的RoB工具来评估质量。排除相关论文后，纳入了来自44种期刊的84项研究。其中43项（51%）为病例系列/研究，只有1项为随机对照试验。大多数作者来自中国的机构（n = 44，52%）。AAS中位数和影响因子分别为2015（四分位间距[IQR] 1,105 - 4,051.5）和12.8（IQR 5 - 44.2）。9项研究（11%）采用了正式的报告框架，62项（74%）包含了资金声明，41项（49%）存在高RoB。对传播最广泛的COVID-19研究的综述强调了低质量病例系列占主导，很少有研究论文遵循良好的报告标准。这强调了对研究进行谨慎解读的必要性，以及期刊在确保高质量出版物方面日益重要的责任。
