DOCSLIB.ORG

Review Criteria

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Review Criteria C HAPTER 2 Review Criteria ABSTRACT Following the common IMRaD format for scienti®c re- when the data analysis was planned. Further, the author search reports, the authors present review criteria and dis- discusses the presentation of the body of evidence col- cuss background information and issues related to the re- lected within the study, offering information for reviewers view criteria for each section of a research report. on evaluating the selection and organization of data, the Introduction. The authors discuss the criteria reviewers balance between descriptive and inferential statistics, nar- should be aware of for establishing the context for the rative presentation, contextualization of qualitative data, research study: prior literature to introduce and describe and the use of tables and ®gures. the problem statement, the conceptual framework (the- Discussion. The authors provide information to enable ory) underlying the problem, the relevance of the re- reviewers to evaluate whether the interpretation of the search questions, and the justi®cation of their research evidence is adequately discussed and appears reliable, design and methods. valid, and trustworthy. Further, they discuss how review- Method. The authors discuss a variety of methods used ers can weigh interpretations, given the strengths and to advance knowledge and practice in the health profes- limitations of the study, and can judge the generalizability sions, including quantitative research on educational in- and practical signi®cance of conclusions drawn by inves- terventions, qualitative observational studies, test and tigators. measurement development projects, case reports, exposi- Title, authors, and abstract. The author discusses a re- tory essays, and quantitative and qualitative research syn- viewer's responsibility in judging the title, authors, and thesis. As background information for reviewers, the au- abstract of a manuscript submitted for publication. While thors discuss how investigators use these and other this triad orients the reader at the beginning of the review methods in concert with data-collection instruments, process, only after the manuscript is analyzed thoroughly samples of research participants, and data-analysis pro- can these elements be effectively evaluated. cedures to address educational, policy, and clinical ques- Other. The authors discuss the reviewer's role in eval- tions. The authors explain the key role that research uating the clarity and effectiveness of a study's written methods play in scholarship and the role of the reviewer presentation and issues of scienti®c conduct (plagiarism, in judging their quality, details, and richness. proper attribution of ideas and materials, prior publica- Results. The author describes issues related to reporting tion, con¯ict of interest, and institutional review board statistical analyses in the results, particularly data that do approval). not have many of the properties that were anticipated Acad. Med. 2001;76:922±951. 922 A CADEMIC M EDICINE,VOL.76,NO . 9/SEPTEMBER 2001 MANUSCRIPT INTRODUCTION Problem Statement, Conceptual Framework, and Research Question William C. McGaghie, Georges Bordage, and Judy A. Shea* REVIEW CRITERIA Ⅲ The introduction builds a logical case and context for the problem statement. Ⅲ The problem statement is clear and well articulated. Ⅲ The conceptual (theoretical) framework is explicit and justi®ed. Ⅲ The research question (research hypothesis where applicable) is clear, concise, and complete. Ⅲ The variables being investigated are clearly identi®ed and presented. ISSUES AND EXAMPLES RELATED TO THE CRITERIA statements are: ``With the national trend toward more pa- tient care in outpatient settings, the numbers of patients on Introduction inpatient wards have declined in many hospitals, contrib- uting to the inadequacy of inpatient wards as the primary A scholarly manuscript starts with an Introduction that tells setting for teaching students,'' 2 and ``The process of profes- a story. The Introduction orients the reader to the topic of sional socialization, regardless of the philosophical approach the report, moving from broad concepts to more speci®c of the educational program, can be stressful . few studies ideas.1 The Introduction should convince the reader, and all have explored the unique stressors associated with PBL in the more the reviewer, that the author has thought the topic professional education.'' 3 These statements help readers an- through and has developed a tight, ``researchable'' problem. ticipate the goals of each study. In the case of the second The Introduction should move logically from the known to example, the Introduction ended with the following state- the unknown. The actual components of an Introduction ment: ``The purpose of this qualitative study was to identify (including its length, complexity, and organization) will vary stressors perceived by physiotherapy students during their in- with the type of study being reported, the traditions of the itial unit of study in a problem-based program.'' In laying research community or discipline in which it is based, and out the issues and context, the Introduction should not con- the style and tradition of the journal receiving the manu- tain broad generalizations or sweeping claims that will not script. It is helpful for the reviewer to evaluate the Intro- be backed up in the paper's literature review. (See the next duction by thinking about its overall purpose and its indi- article.) vidual components: problem statement, conceptual framework, and research question. Two related articles, ``Ref- Conceptual Framework erence to the Literature'' and ``Relevance,'' follow the pres- ent article. Most research reports cast the problem statement within the 4 Problem Statement context of a conceptual or theoretical framework. A descrip- tion of this framework contributes to a research report in at The Introduction to a research manuscript articulates a prob- least two ways because it (1) identi®es research variables, lem statement. This essential element conveys the issues and and (2) clari®es relationships among the variables. Linked context that gave rise to the study. Two examples of problem to the problem statement, the conceptual framework ``sets the stage'' for presentation of the speci®c research question that drives the investigation being reported. For example, the conceptual framework and research question would be *Lloyd Lewis, PhD, emeritus professor of the Medical College of Georgia, participated in early meetings of the Task Force and contributed to the different for a formative evaluation study than for a sum- earliest draft of this section. mative study, even though their variables might be similar. A CADEMIC M EDICINE,VOL.76,NO . 9/SEPTEMBER 2001 923 Scholars argue that a conceptual or theoretical framework For some journals, the main study variables (e.g., medical always underlies a research study, even if the framework is competence) will be de®ned in the Introduction. Other jour- not articulated.5 This may seem incongruous, because many nals will place this in the Methods section. Whether speci®c research problems originate from practical educational or hypotheses or more general research questions are stated, the clinical activities. Questions often arise such as ``I wonder reviewer (reader) should be able to anticipate what will be why such an event did not [or did] happen?'' For example, revealed in the Methods. why didn't the residents' test-interpretation skills improve after they were given feedback? There are also occasions SUMMARY when a study is undertaken simply to report or describe an event, e.g., pass rates for women versus men on high-stakes The purpose of the Introduction is to construct a logical examinations such as the United States Medical Licensing ``story'' that will educate the reader about the study that Examination (USMLE) Step 1. Nevertheless, it is usually follows. The order of the components may vary, with the possible to construct at least a brief theoretical rationale for problem statement sometimes coming after the conceptual the study. The rationale in the USMLE example may be, for framework, while in other reports the problem statement instance, about gender equity and bias and why these are may appear in the ®rst paragraph to orient the reader about important issues. Frameworks are usually more elaborate and what to expect. However, in all cases the Introduction will detailed when the topics that are being studied have long engage, educate, and encourage the reader to ®nish the man- scholarly histories (e.g., cognition, psychometrics) where ac- uscript. tive researchers traditionally embed their empirical work in well-established theories. REFERENCES Research Question 1. Zeiger M. Essentials of Writing Biomedical Research Papers. 2nd Ed. London, U.K.: McGraw±Hill, 1999. A more precise and detailed expression of the problem state- 2. Fincher RME, Case SM, Ripkey DR, Swanson DB. Comparison of am- ment cast as a speci®c research question is usually stated at bulatory knowledge of third-year students who learned in ambulatory the end of the Introduction. To illustrate, a recent research settings with that of students who learned in inpatient settings. Acad Med. 1997;72(10 suppl):S130±S132. report states, ``The research addressed three questions. First, 3. Soloman P, Finch E. A qualitative study identifying stressors associated do students' pulmonary physiology concept structures change with adapting to problem-based learning. Teach
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Publication Guidelines for Quality Improvement in Health Care
    Supplement Qual Saf Health Care: first published as 10.1136/qshc.2008.029066 on 3 October 2008. Downloaded from Publication guidelines for quality improvement in health care: evolution of the SQUIRE project F Davidoff,1 P Batalden,2 D Stevens,2 G Ogrinc,2 S Mooney for the SQUIRE development group 1 Institute for Healthcare ABSTRACT published original reports of quality improvement Improvement, New Hampshire, 2 In 2005, draft guidelines were published for reporting projects provided full information on the indivi- USA; Dartmouth Institute for studies of quality improvement interventions as the initial dual guideline items we had identified,1 while Health Policy and Clinical Practice, Center for Leadership step in a consensus process for development of a more individual guideline items were not addressed at and Improvement, Dartmouth definitive version. This article contains the full revised all in 4–44% of those reports (Mooney S, Ogrinc G, College, Hanover, New version of the guidelines, which the authors refer to as unpublished). Hampshire, USA SQUIRE (Standards for QUality Improvement Reporting Our initial draft guidelines were, of course, not a Correspondence to: Excellence). This paper also describes the consensus tested approach to judging the quality of the Dr F Davidoff, 143 Garden process, which included informal feedback from authors, improvement literature, since that draft was based Street, Wethersfield, CT 06109, editors and peer reviewers who used the guidelines; largely on the authors’ personal experience with USA; [email protected] formal written commentaries; input from a group of improvement work, and was intended only as an initial step towards an established standard.
    [Show full text]
  • The New Challenges in Mining Scientific Papers
    BIR 2019 Workshop on Bibliometric-enhanced Information Retrieval Beyond Metadata: the New Challenges in Mining Scientific Papers Iana Atanassova[0000−0003−3571−4006] CRIT, Universit´ede Bourgogne Franche-Comt´e,France [email protected] Abstract. Scientific articles make use of complex argumentative struc- tures whose exploitation from a computational point of view is an im- portant challenge. The exploration of scientific corpora involves methods and techniques from Natural Language Processing in order to develop applications in the field of Information Retrieval, Automatic Synthesis, citation analyses or ontological population. Among the problems that remain to be addressed in this domain is the developing fine-grained analyses of the text content of articles to identify specific semantic cat- egories such as the expression of uncertainty and controversy that are an integral part of the scientific process. The well-known IMRaD struc- ture (Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion) is often used as a standard template that governs the structure of articles in experimental sciences and provides clearly identifiable text units. We study the inter- nal structure of articles from several different perspectives and report on the processing of a large sample extracted from the PLOS corpus. On the one hand, we analyse citation contexts with respect to their positions, verbs used and similarities across the different sections, and on the other hand, we study other phenomena such as the expression of uncertainty. The production of standard datasets dedicated to such tasks is now nec- essary and would provide favourable environment for the development of new approaches, e.g. using neural networks, that require large amounts of labelled data.
    [Show full text]
  • Research Manual for Residents
    RESEARCH MANUAL FOR RESIDENTS A guide to the path less traveled Joy L. Palmer, D.O. With contributions from Cynthia Norton, M.S., OMS IV Judith Viola, OMS III UNECOM 2008 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction Acknowledgement I. Why conduct clinical research? 3 II. Types of clinical research 5 III. Nitty-gritty terminology 8 IV. Timeline 11 a. PGY-1 b. PGY-2 c. PGY-3 V. Designing your project 16 a. And the correct question is… b. How and what to measure c. Subject participation – who, where, how long? d. Data analysis VI. Institutional Review Board (IRB) 20 VII. Funding your project 22 a. Where to look b. Networking c. Grant writing VIII. Manuscript Writing and Publication 26 IX. Resources – people, places, publications 28 X. Lessons learned 32 a. Mentor selection b. Proposal review, and review, and review c. Recruiting d. Size does matter Appendix A – Annotated bibliography of recommended readings Appendix B – Table format of recommended timeline Appendix C – Poster template Appendix D - Hard Copy of Biosketch INTRODUCTION Good day, Colleagues: By no means am I an expert on designing, performing and/or publishing clinical research. In fact, before residency, I had never even participated in any research activity outside of being a subject in psychology studies as an undergrad! I have however, lived through, that’s right, I have survived the experience of designing and implementing a clinical research project as a resident at the University of New England and want to pass on the lessons I’ve learned. At times it has felt like I was in a foreign country without an interpreter, without any knowledge of how to speak the language, AND without any money to bribe or shall we say compensate someone to provide me with directions.
    [Show full text]
  • Agenda & Supporting Documents
    Cochrane Scientific Committee AGENDA 28th February 2018 8pm-10pm UK GMT Cochrane Scientific Committee Agenda 28th February 2017 OPEN ACCESS 2 Philippe Ravaud (PR) Professor of Epidemiology, Faculty of Medicine, Head of the Clinical Epidemiology Centre, Hôtel-Dieu Hospital, Paris Descartes University, France AGENDA and Director of Cochrane France. Johannes Reistma (JR) Associate Professor at the Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care, University Medical Center Utrecht, The Netherlands and a member of both the DT – David Tovey, Editor in Chief, JC – Jackie Chandler, Methods Co-ordinator Cochrane Diagnostic Test Accuracy Working Group and the Screening and Committee members: Diagnostic Tests Methods Group. Corinna Dressler (CD) Rebecca Ryan (RR) Research Associate at the Division of Evidence-Based Medicine (dEBM) at the Research Fellow at the School of Psychology and Public Health, La Trobe Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany University, Australia and Deputy Co-ordinating Editor of the Cochrane Donna Gilles (DG) Consumers and Communication Group. Senior Researcher, Clinical Performance Mental Health Network, Western Christopher Schmid (CS) Sydney, Australia and editor for both the Cochrane Developmental, Psychosocial Professor of Biostatistics, founding member and Co-Director of the Center for and Learning Problems Group and Diagnostic Test Accuracy Review Group. Evidence Synthesis in Health, Brown School of Public Health, US, Fellow of the Julian Higgins (JH) American Statistical Association (ASA) and Founding Co-Editor of Research Professor of Evidence Synthesis at the School of Social and Community Synthesis Methods. Medicine, at the University of Bristol, Bristol, UK, and current Senior Scientific Nicole Skoetz (NS) Editor of the Cochrane Handbook of Systematic Reviews for Interventions.
    [Show full text]
  • Instructions to Authors and Guidelines for Manuscript Submission
    Instructions to Authors and Guidelines for Manuscript Submission 1 GENERAL INFORMATION 1.1 Objectives and readership 1.2 Contents 1.2.1 Original research articles 1.2.2 Reviews 1.2.3 Special reports 1.2.4 Opinion and analysis 1.2.5 Brief communications 1.2.6 Current topics 1.2.7 Letters to the editor 1.3 Language 1.4 Guidelines and research protocols 1.5 Ethics 1.6 Conflict of interests 1.7 Copyright 1.8 Peer review process 1.9 Dissemination 2 GUIDELINES FOR MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSION 2.1 General criteria for manuscript acceptance 2.2 Manuscript specifications 2.3 Formatting requirements 2.4 Title 2.5 Authorship 2.6 Abstract and keywords page 2.7 Body of the article 2.8 Tables and figures 2.9 Submitting the manuscript 2.10 Editing the manuscript 1 GENERAL INFORMATION 1.1 Objectives and readership The Revista Panamericana de Salud Pública/Pan American Journal of Public Health (RPSP/PAJPH) is a free-access, peer-reviewed, monthly journal, published as the flagship scientific and technical publication of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States of America. Its mission is to serve as an important vehicle for disseminating scientific public health information of international significance, mainly in areas related to PAHO's essential mission to strengthen national and local health systems and improve the health of the peoples of the Americas. To this end, the RPSP/PAJPH publishes materials that reflect PAHO's main strategic objectives and programmatic areas: health and human development, health promotion and protection, prevention and control of communicable and chronic diseases, maternal and child health, gender and women's health, mental health, violence, nutrition, environmental health, disaster management, development of health systems and services, social determinants of health, and health equity.
    [Show full text]
  • Teaching and Supporting Researchers to Develop Better Research Questions
    Teaching and supporting researchers to develop better research questions EBHC preconference workshop Sicily, October 2017 Trish Groves Director of academic outreach BMJ Editor-in-chief BMJ Open [email protected] twitter @trished Competing interests I’m editor in chief of BMJ Open and Director of academic outreach at BMJ Publishing Group, owned by the British Medical Association (BMA) Part of the revenue for BMJ comes from drug & device manufacturers through advertising, reprint sales, & sponsorship. The BMJ (British Medical Journal) and BMJ Open are open access journals that charge article publishing fees for research. I’m editorial lead for the BMJ Research to Publication eLearning programme (by subscription). My annual bonus scheme is based partly on the overall financial performance of both BMJ and BMJ Research to Publication 85% research is wasted, costing >$100bn/yr Chalmers I, Glasziou P. Avoidable waste in the production and reporting of research evidence. Lancet 2014; 374: 86-9. REWARD Alliance http://researchwaste.net/about/ Why do editors reject research? What are the main reasons for journal editors to reject a research paper, even if well written and presented? • the research question isn’t sufficiently new, interesting, or important • the question is answered with suboptimal design • investigators often lack training on developing good research questions, choosing study designs, and reporting research effectively What exactly is a research question? An article reporting a study should state a specific question A research question is more than an objective or aim. It focuses the hypothesis and suggests how to find an answer Broad questions may be split to yield several testable hypotheses.
    [Show full text]
  • Writing Narrative Style Literature Reviews
    Writing narrative style literature reviews Correspondence to: Rossella Ferrari Rossella Ferrari Milan, Italy Freelance medical writer, Milan Italy [email protected] Abstract Reviews provide a synthesis of published literature summarizing what has been previously published, on a topic and describe its current state-of-art. avoiding duplications, and seeking new study Reviews in clinical research are thus useful when areas not yet addressed.3,5,6 While PRISMA designing studies or developing practice guidelines. (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews The two standard types of reviews are (a) systematic and Meta-Analyses) provides reporting guidelines and (b) non-systematic or narrative review. Unlike for SRs, no acknowledged guidelines are available systematic reviews that benefit from guidelines for NR writing. The task of review writing is fre- such as PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for quently assigned to medical writers, for example, Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) statement, on new or completed research projects, synthesis there are no acknowledged guidelines for narrative for editorial projects. However, training opportu- reviews. I have attempted to define the best practice nities on writing literature reviews in the biomedical recommendations for the preparation of a narrative field are few. The objective of the present study is to review in clinical research. The quality of a narrative identify practice guidelines to improve NR writing review may be improved by borrowing from the sys- on topics related to clinical research. tematic review methodologies that are aimed at reducing bias in the selection of articles for review Comparison of narrative and and employing an effective bibliographic research systematic styles of literature reviews strategy.
    [Show full text]
  • How to Write a Paper?
    How to write a paper? Bernard Pochet, PhD (ULiège Library) 2021 (cc-by) Bernard Pochet, PhD (ULiège Library) How to write a paper? 2021 (cc-by) 1 / 50 [recall] In science, research and literature are linked Bernard Pochet, PhD (ULiège Library) How to write a paper? 2021 (cc-by) 2 / 50 Don’t forget the processes Bernard Pochet, PhD (ULiège Library) How to write a paper? 2021 (cc-by) 3 / 50 Especially the editorial process Bernard Pochet, PhD (ULiège Library) How to write a paper? 2021 (cc-by) 4 / 50 Write to be read … barriers? The title: short, attractive, representative of the text/research Keywords: thesaurus? Abstract: abstract structure? Authors, their affiliation Language: do you speak/write/read English? The text: The quality of the scientific approach The structure of the text: IMRaD,… The quality of the writing: readability clarity precision style Bernard Pochet, PhD (ULiège Library) How to write a paper? 2021 (cc-by) 5 / 50 Although not what was planned at the beginning of the research… A paper: Is : A problem and a solution; A new and original answer (compared to what we already know); Only one message. Bernard Pochet, PhD (ULiège Library) How to write a paper? 2021 (cc-by) 6 / 50 A paper: Is : A problem and a solution; A new and original answer (compared to what we already know); Only one message. Although not what was planned at the beginning of the research… Bernard Pochet, PhD (ULiège Library) How to write a paper? 2021 (cc-by) 6 / 50 Anatomy of a research paper Bernard Pochet, PhD (ULiège Library) How to write a paper?
    [Show full text]
  • Organization of a Research Paper: the IMRAD Format
    Chapter 2 Organization of a Research Paper: The IMRAD Format Abstract Most scientific papers are prepared according to a format called IMRAD. The term represents the first letters of the words Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, And, Discussion. It indicates a pattern or format rather than a complete list of headings or components of research papers; the missing parts of a paper are: Title, Authors, Keywords, Abstract, Conclusions, and References. Additionally, some papers include Acknowledgments and Appendices. The Introduction explains the scope and objective of the study in the light of current knowledge on the subject; the Materials and Methods describes how the study was conducted; the Results section reports what was found in the study; and the Dis- cussion section explains meaning and significance of the results and provides suggestions for future directions of research. The manuscript must be prepared according to the Journal’s instructions to authors. An important point to keep in mind is that there is no standard or uniform style that is followed by all journals. Each journal has its own style; but they all have their own Instructions to Authors (or other word combinations to mean the same thing). Once you select a journal to which you wish to submit your manuscript, please FOLLOW THE JOURNAL’S INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS, which can usually be found in each volume of the journal (note that a volume may contain several numbers, and there could be multiple volumes in a year), or easily accessed from the journal’s webpage. Some authors may not be fully convinced about the logic of some of these instructions, but it is a futile effort to argue with the journal or complain about its instructions.
    [Show full text]
  • Organising a Manuscript Reporting Quality Improvement Or Patient Safety Research
    Downloaded from qualitysafety.bmj.com on January 31, 2014 - Published by group.bmj.com BMJ Quality & Safety Online First, published on RESEARCH14 May 2013 AND as REPORTING10.1136/bmjqs-2012-001603 METHODOLOGY Organising a manuscript reporting quality improvement or patient safety research Christine G Holzmueller,1,2 Peter J Pronovost1,3,4,5 1Armstrong Institute for Patient ABSTRACT While a useful manual, it does not discuss Safety and Quality, Johns Background Peer-reviewed publication plays the nuances of reporting quality improve- Hopkins Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA important roles in disseminating research ment and patient safety research. 2Department of Anesthesiology findings, developing generalisable knowledge Published guidelines are available to & Critical Care Medicine, The and garnering recognition for authors and improve the reporting of quality improve- Johns Hopkins University School institutions. Nonetheless, many bemoan the ment and other health services–related of Medicine, Baltimore, 5 Maryland, USA whole manuscript writing process, intimidated by research. The Standards for QUality 3Departments of Anesthesiology the arbitrary and somewhat opaque conventions. Improvement Reporting Excellence & Critical Care Medicine, and Methods This paper offers practical advice about (SQUIRE) guidelines offer an informative Surgery, Johns Hopkins organising and writing a manuscript reporting University School of Medicine, checklist when describing quality improve- Baltimore, Maryland, USA quality improvement or patient safety
    [Show full text]
  • IMRAD, Agriculture Economics, Scientific Paper Structure, Paper Writing
    International Journal of Information Science 2020, 10(1): 9-14 DOI: 10.5923/j.ijis.20201001.02 Scientific Paper Structure for Agricultural Economists Jacqueline Baidoo Department of Agriculture Economics and Agribusiness, School of Basic and Applied Sciences, University for Ghana, Legon, Accra, Ghana Abstract The introduction; materials and methods; results and discussion (IMRAD) structure makes it easy for one to present his research findings. Is this structure applicable for agriculture economics and agribusiness scientists? This question was answered using 5 journals from SCOPUS. IMRAD structure is good since it helps the reader to follow the sequence of a paper. The IMRAD structure should be IMRADC to include the conclusion since conclusion summarizes the findings and discussions and also make recommendations. Agricultural economics journals should stick to the IMRADC structure. Keywords IMRAD, Agriculture economics, Scientific paper structure, Paper writing reviewing papers in recent issues of journals published. 1. Introduction This study on the IMRAD structure would help agricultural economist scientist follow a set of pattern for writing The introduction; materials and methods; results and papers. discussion (IMRAD) structure was adapted in 1970 and from 1972, it was a requirement by editors [1]. This structure since then is widely accepted in scientific writing. 2. Methods The IMRAD structure provides a skeleton for structuring a The research question was answered by finding out from research paper [2]. This structure makes it easy for one to agriculture economics and agribusiness colleagues at the present his research findings [2]. There has however, been University of Ghana the journals they publish in. Fifteen challenges with the IMRAD structure regarding which journals were identified.
    [Show full text]
  • The Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion (IMRAD) Structure: a fifty-Year Survey
    The introduction, methods, results, and discussion (IMRAD) structure: a ®fty-year survey By Luciana B. Sollaci, MS [email protected] Library Director William Enneking Library Sarah Network of Hospitals Brasilia, Federal District 70335-901 Brazil Mauricio G. Pereira, MD, DrPH [email protected] Professor of Epidemiology University of Brasilia Department of Health Sciences Brasilia, Federal District 70919-900 Brazil Catholic University of Brasilia Faculty of Medicine Brasilia, Federal District 71966-700 Brazil Background: The scienti®c article in the health sciences evolved from the letter form and purely descriptive style in the seventeenth century to a very standardized structure in the twentieth century known as introduction, methods, results, and discussion (IMRAD). The pace in which this structure began to be used and when it became the most used standard of today's scienti®c discourse in the health sciences is not well established. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to point out the period in time during which the IMRAD structure was de®nitively and widely adopted in medical scienti®c writing. Methods: In a cross-sectional study, the frequency of articles written under the IMRAD structure was measured from 1935 to 1985 in a randomly selected sample of articles published in four leading journals in internal medicine: the British Medical Journal, JAMA, The Lancet, and the New England Journal of Medicine. Results: The IMRAD structure, in those journals, began to be used in the 1940s. In the 1970s, it reached 80% and, in the 1980s, was the only pattern adopted in original papers. Conclusions: Although recommended since the beginning of the twentieth century, the IMRAD structure was adopted as a majority only in the 1970s.
    [Show full text]