Department of Kidney Medicine, Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH, USA.
Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA.
J Gen Intern Med. 2023 May;38(6):1393-1401. doi: 10.1007/s11606-022-07802-z. Epub 2022 Sep 26.
Community members may provide useful perspectives on manuscripts submitted to medical journals.
To determine the impact of community members reviewing medical journal manuscripts.
Randomized controlled trial involving 578 original research manuscripts submitted to two medical journals from June 2018 to November 2021.
Twenty-eight community members who were trained, supervised, and compensated.
A total of 289 randomly selected control manuscripts were reviewed by scientific reviewers only. And 289 randomly selected intervention manuscripts were reviewed by scientific reviewers and one community member. Journal editorial teams used all reviews to make decisions about acceptance, revision, or rejection of manuscripts.
Usefulness of reviews to editors, content of community reviews, and changes made to published articles in response to community reviewer comments.
Editor ratings of community and scientific reviews averaged 3.1 and 3.3, respectively (difference 0.2, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.1 to 0.3), on a 5-point scale where a higher score indicates a more useful review. Qualitative analysis of the content of community reviews identified two taxonomies of themes: study attributes and viewpoints. Study attributes are the sections, topics, and components of manuscripts commented on by reviewers. Viewpoints are reviewer perceptions and perspectives on the research described in manuscripts and consisted of four major themes: (1) diversity of study participants, (2) relevance to patients and communities, (3) cultural considerations and social context, and (4) implementation of research by patients and communities. A total of 186 community reviewer comments were integrated into 64 published intervention group articles. Viewpoint themes were present more often in 66 published intervention articles compared to 54 published control articles (2.8 vs. 1.7 themes/article, difference 1.1, 95% CI 0.4 to 1.8).
With training, supervision, and compensation, community members are able to review manuscripts submitted to medical journals. Their comments are useful to editors, address topics relevant to patients and communities, and are reflected in published articles.
ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03432143.
社区成员可能会对提交给医学期刊的稿件提供有用的观点。
确定社区成员评审医学期刊稿件的影响。
一项随机对照试验，涉及 2018 年 6 月至 2021 年 11 月期间向两家医学期刊提交的 578 篇原始研究手稿。
28 名接受过培训、监督和补偿的社区成员。
总共随机选择 289 篇对照手稿仅由科学审稿人评审。另外 289 篇随机选择的干预手稿由科学审稿人和一位社区成员评审。期刊编辑团队使用所有评论来决定稿件的接受、修改或拒绝。
评论对编辑的有用性、社区评论的内容以及根据社区评论员的意见对已发表文章所做的修改。
编辑对社区和科学评论的平均评分分别为 3.1 和 3.3（差值 0.2，95%置信区间[CI]为 0.1 至 0.3），评分越高表示评论越有用。对社区评论内容的定性分析确定了两个主题分类：研究属性和观点。研究属性是审稿人评论的手稿的部分、主题和组成部分。观点是审稿人对稿件中描述的研究的看法和观点，包括四个主要主题：（1）研究参与者的多样性，（2）与患者和社区的相关性，（3）文化考虑因素和社会背景，以及（4）患者和社区实施研究。共有 186 条社区评论员的意见被纳入 64 篇发表的干预组文章中。与发表的对照组文章（每篇文章 54 篇，有 1.7 个主题）相比，66 篇发表的干预文章中出现观点主题的频率更高（2.8 个主题/篇，差异 1.1，95%CI 为 0.4 至 1.8）。
经过培训、监督和补偿，社区成员能够评审提交给医学期刊的稿件。他们的评论对编辑有用，涉及到与患者和社区相关的主题，并反映在已发表的文章中。
ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03432143。
