Department of Public Health and Community Medicine, Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America.
Department of Epidemiology, Boston University School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2022 Jul 29;17(7):e0271159. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0271159. eCollection 2022.
To inform training program development and curricular initiatives, quantitative descriptions of the disciplinary training of research teams publishing in top-tier clinical and epidemiological journals are needed. Our objective was to assess whether interdisciplinary academic training and teamwork of authors publishing original research in 15 top-tier journals varied by year of publication (2000/2010/2020), type of journal (epidemiological/general clinical/specialty clinical), corresponding author gender, and time since the corresponding author completed formal training relative to the article publication date (<5/≥5 years).
We invited corresponding authors of original research articles to participate in an online survey (n = 103; response rate = 8.3% of 1240 invited authors). In bivariate analyses, year of publication, type of journal, gender, and recency of training were not significantly associated with interdisciplinary team composition, whether a co-author with epidemiological or biostatistical training was involved in any research stage (design/analysis/interpretation/reporting), or with participants' confidence in their own or their co-authors epidemiological or biostatistical expertise (p > 0.05 for each comparison). Exceptions were participants with more recent epidemiological training all had co-author(s) with epidemiological training contribute to study design and interpretation, and participants who published in 2020 were more likely to report being extremely confident in their epidemiological abilities.
This study was the first to quantify interdisciplinary training among research teams publishing in epidemiological and clinical journals. Our quantitative results show research published in top-tier journals generally represents interdisciplinary teamwork and that interdisciplinary training may provide publication type options. Our qualitative results show researchers view interdisciplinary training favorably.
为了为培训计划的制定和课程改革提供参考，需要对发表在顶级临床和流行病学期刊上的研究团队的学科培训进行量化描述。我们的目的是评估在发表于 15 种顶级期刊的原创研究中，作者的跨学科学术培训和团队合作是否因发表年份（2000 年/2010 年/2020 年）、期刊类型（流行病学/一般临床/专科临床）、通讯作者性别以及通讯作者相对于文章发表日期完成正规培训的时间（<5 年/≥5 年）而有所不同。
我们邀请了原创研究文章的通讯作者参与在线调查（n=103；回应率为 1240 名受邀作者的 8.3%）。在单变量分析中，发表年份、期刊类型、性别和培训的及时性与跨学科团队组成、是否有具有流行病学或生物统计学培训的合著者参与任何研究阶段（设计/分析/解释/报告）、或参与者对自己或合著者的流行病学或生物统计学专业知识的信心无关（每个比较的 p>0.05）。例外情况是最近接受过流行病学培训的参与者都有具有流行病学培训的合著者参与研究设计和解释，以及 2020 年发表的参与者更有可能报告对自己的流行病学能力非常有信心。
本研究首次对发表在流行病学和临床期刊上的研究团队的跨学科培训进行了量化。我们的定量结果表明，发表在顶级期刊上的研究通常代表了跨学科的团队合作，并且跨学科培训可能为发表类型提供了选择。我们的定性结果表明，研究人员对跨学科培训持积极态度。
