Quality of report of the clinical quantitative research by area of investigation on the Revista Médica de Chile between years 2017-2021

Article type
Authors
Briceño F1, Flores N1, Villagran S1, Grandi D1, Riva N1, Morales D1, Cruzat B1, Cabrera C1, Weinborn S2, Loyola G2, Quezada M2, Álvarez F2, Bernal F2, Meza N3, Bracchiglione J4, Garnham R5, Madrid E5
1School of Medicine Universidad de Valparaíso Chile
2School of Medicine Universidad de Valparaíso
3Interdisciplinary Centre for Health Studies (CIESAL), Universidad de Valparaíso, Viña del Mar
4IIB SANT PAU, CIBERESP, Barcelona
5Interdisciplinary Centre for Health Studies Universidad de Valparaíso - Cochrane Chile
Abstract
Background: Revista Médica de Chile (RevMedChile) is the oldest monthly journal of Chilean health science which is responsible for publishing original articles related to internal medicine and its derived subspecialties. It is the Chilean journal of health science with the highest indexes h5 (26) and m5 (40) in the year 2021 according to SCImago Journal Rank (SJR).

These indexes have been criticized for being quantitative tools by relying on the number of citations, therefore, it does not assure the quality of the published articles. Because of this it is important to evaluate the quality of the report of articles presented in journals in addition to considering the values of their bibliometric indexes.

Objectives: To asses the quality of report of the articles published on the Revista Médica de Chile using the EQUATOR network guidelines and the SANRA guideline for narrative reviews and associate the research area and the reporting quality.

Methods: We searched all the articles published in the RevMedChile between the years 2017 and 2021, performed a full text revision and classified them by research area and methodology. Only clinical and preclinical articles were considered. We applied the respective report guidelines according to the EQUATOR network decision tree for each methodology and the SANRA guideline for narrative reviews, seeking to determinate the overall reporting quality by a completeness ratio and correlate the quality of the report with the investigation

Results: We found 1056 articles of which 728 were included. The mean reporting quality ratio was 0.77 (0.14). 41 research areas were found and the largest were pathology of the nervous system with 72 (9,8%), mental health with 60 (8,2 %) and internal medicine with 60 (8,2 %). The ANOVA analysis shown no significative differences between the means of the groups.

Conclusions: The authors of Revista Médica de Chile did not fully report their findings according to the respective guidelines, on average only 75 % of the aspects were accomplished. No association was found between the reporting quality and the research area.

Patient, public and/or healthcare consumer involvement: Patients, the public and/or healthcare consumers were not involved in this study.