Editorial quality of the doctoral thesis at the Faculty of Medicine of Sousse (Tunisia).

OBJECTIVE

To assess the writing quality of the theses defended at the Faculty of Medicine of Sousse (FMSo).

METHODS

This is a bibliometric, transversal and exhaustive study done on all theses defended at the FMSo between 2001 and 2005. The writing quality of the thesis was assessed, via double reading, by a grid applied to its abstract. This grid was composed of 20 items detailing the principles of scientific writing. A thesis was considered "satisfactory" when the writing score was ≥15 / 20.

RESULTS

During this five-year period, 670 theses was defended at the FMSo (an average of 134 theses per year), which in 93% of cases were research ones. All these theses were written in French except for one. On a 20-point scale, the average thesis editorial score was 14.1 ± 2.2. The writing quality was judged satisfactory in 47% of the theses. The objective of the thesis, research design and study population were mentioned, respectively, in 81%, 77% and 91% of theses abstracts. However, the descriptors chosen were MeSH words in only 42% of the time; Data sources and standard deviation were mentioned in only 25% and 9.6% of the abstracts, respectively.

CONCLUSION

The writing quality of the thesis at the FMSo suffered mainly from documentary, methodological and statistical insufficiencies. The introduction of a scientific medical writing module in the curriculum of the FMSo would be essential for the optimization of the medical thesis.