Research transparency in dental research : A programmatic analysis
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Date
2023-02
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Abstract
We assessed adherence to five transparency practices-data sharing, code sharing, conflict of interest disclosure, funding disclosure, and protocol registration-in articles in dental journals. We searched and exported the full text of all research articles from PubMed-indexed dental journals available in the Europe PubMed Central database until the end of 2021. We programmatically assessed their adherence to the five transparency practices using a validated and automated tool. Journal- and article-related information was retrieved from ScimagoJR and Journal Citation Reports. Of all 329,784 articles published in PubMed-indexed dental journals, 10,659 (3.2%) were available to download. Of those, 77% included a conflict of interest disclosure, and 62% included a funding disclosure. Seven percent of the articles had a registered protocol. Data sharing (2.0%) and code sharing (0.1%) were rarer. Sixteen percent of articles did not adhere to any of the five transparency practices, 29% adhered to one, 48% adhered to two, 7.0% adhered to three, 0.3% adhered to four, and no article adhered to all five practices. Adherence to transparency practices increased over time; however, data and code sharing especially remained rare. Coordinated efforts involving all stakeholders are needed to change current transparency practices in dental research.
Description
Funding Information: The computational analyses were performed on servers provided by UEF Bioinformatics Center, University of Eastern Finland, Finland. The authors also thank Julie Farmer and Erfan Shamsoddin for their contributions to the design and critical revision of the study protocol. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Authors. European Journal of Oral Sciences published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Scandinavian Division of the International Association for Dental Research.
Keywords
metaresearch, dental research, clinical trial protocols, conflict of interest, dentistry, information dissemination, open access publishing, 3.2 Clinical medicine, 1.1. Scientific article indexed in Web of Science and/or Scopus database
Citation
Raittio, E, Sofi-Mahmudi, A & Uribe, S E 2023, 'Research transparency in dental research : A programmatic analysis', European Journal of Oral Sciences, vol. 131, no. 1, e12908. https://doi.org/10.1111/eos.12908