Assessment of publication bias in dental specialty journals

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to investigate the presence of publication bias (acceptance of articles indicating statistically significant results). METHODS: The journals possessing the highest impact factor (2008 data) in each dental specialty were included in the study. The content of the 6 most recent issues of each journal was hand searched and research articles were classified into 4 type categories: cross-sectional, case-control, cohort, and interventional (nonrandomized clinical trials and randomized controlled trials). In total, 396 articles were included in the analysis. Descriptive statistics and univariate and multivariate logistic regression was used to examine the association between article-reported statistical significance (dependent variable) and journal impact factor and article study type subject area (independent variables). RESULTS: A statistically significant acceptance rate of positive result was found, ranging from 75% to 90%, whereas the value of impact factor was not related to publication bias among leading dental journals. Compared with other research designs, clinical intervention studies (randomized or nonrandomized) presented the highest percentage of nonsignificant findings (20%); RCTs represented 6% of the examined investigations. CONCLUSIONS: Compared with the Journal of Clinical Periodontology, all other subspecialty journals, except the Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, showed significantly decreased odds of publishing an RCT, which ranged from 60% to 93% (P < .05).

Nonlesions, misdiagnoses, missed diagnoses, and other interpretive challenges in fish histopathology studies: a guide for investigators, authors, reviewers, and readers.

Differentiating salient histopathologic changes from normal anatomic features or tissue artifacts can be decidedly challenging, especially for the novice fish pathologist. As a consequence, findings of questionable accuracy may be reported inadvertently, and the potential negative impacts of publishing inaccurate histopathologic interpretations are not always fully appreciated. The objectives of this article are to illustrate a number of specific morphologic findings in commonly examined fish tissues (e.g., gills, liver, kidney, and gonads) that are frequently either misdiagnosed or underdiagnosed, and to address related issues involving the interpretation of histopathologic data. To enhance the utility of this article as a guide, photomicrographs of normal and abnormal specimens are presented. General recommendations for generating and publishing results from histopathology studies are additionally provided. It is hoped that the furnished information will be a useful resource for manuscript generation, by helping authors, reviewers, and readers to critically assess fish histopathologic data.