Biomarkers for Early Cancer Diagnosis: Prospects for Success through the Lens of Tumor Genetics.

Thousands of candidate cancer biomarkers have been proposed, but so far, few are used in cancer screening. Failure to implement these biomarkers is attributed to technical and design flaws in the discovery and validation phases, but a major obstacle stems from cancer biology itself. Oncogenomics has revealed broad genetic heterogeneity among tumors of the same histology and same tissue (or organ) from different patients, while tumors of different tissue origins also share common genetic mutations. Moreover, there is wide intratumor genetic heterogeneity among cells within any single neoplasm. These findings seriously limit the prospects of finding a single biomarker with high specificity for early cancer detection. Current research focuses on developing biomarker panels, with data assessment by machine-learning algorithms. Whether such approaches will overcome the inherent limitations posed by tumor biology and lead to tests with true clinical value remains to be seen.

Improving the biomedical research literature: insights from authors' editors can help journal editors define and refine their core competencies.

A team of stakeholders in biomedical publishing recently proposed a set of core competencies for journal editors, as a resource that can inform training programs for editors and ultimately improve the quality of the biomedical research literature. This initiative, still in its early stages, would benefit from additional sources of expert information. Based on our experiences as authors' editors, we offer two suggestions on how to strengthen these competencies so that they better respond to the needs of readers and authors - the main users of and contributors to research journals. First, journal editors should be able to ensure that authors are given useful feedback on the language and writing in submitted manuscripts, beyond a (possibly incorrect) blanket judgement of whether the English is "acceptable" or not. Second, journal editors should be able to deal effectively with inappropriate text re-use and plagiarism. These additional competencies would, we believe, be valued by other stakeholders in biomedical research publication as markers of editorial quality.

Introductory course on getting to know journals and on "browsing" a research paper: first steps to proficiency in scientific communication.

AIM: To evaluate the effectiveness and appropriateness of a course that promotes familiarity with biomedical periodicals and teaches efficient reading skills. METHODS: A 16-hour course was designed to help inexperienced readers gain confidence navigating the contents of a research paper (instead of reading only abstracts), and make the first steps to critical appraisal. The course consisted of short lessons and small group work in which research papers were read and presented to the class. Participants learned a method called "browsing" that guides the first, superficial reading of a research paper and substitutes abstract reading. The course was administered to 15 hospital physicians and 40 graduate students of molecular medicine, in 4 separate sessions. RESULTS: At course entry, 45 of 55 participants normally read the abstract before consulting the body of a research paper. An end-of-course questionnaire, completed by 47 participants, revealed that only 3 would still read the abstract first, while 33 would perform browsing, 7 would scan figures and tables, and 4 would consult another section of a paper outside of their research interests; similar responses were given for a research paper within their fields. For 43 participants, the course was effective in developing reading skills. On a final comprehension test, participants had a median score of 69% correct responses (interquartile range, 56%-80%). CONCLUSION: This introductory course on reading scientific articles is effective in overcoming abstract-only reading and in developing confidence with the research literature. Considering participants' subjective evaluation and test scores, the course contents are appropriate for both physicians and young researchers.

Emerging concepts in high-impact publishing: insights from the First Brazilian Colloquium on High Impact Research and Publishing.

Reports of scientific research are published by selective journals only when they meet stringent criteria, first and foremost of which are the quality and importance of the research. Even when the research is excellent, other elements come into play to determine if the manuscript will be accepted for publication. Many of these factors are under direct control of the researcher-author, but not all authors are aware of the elements of high-impact scientific writing. At the First Brazilian Colloquium on High Impact Research and Publishing, editors of leading biomedical journals provided insight on the aspects of scientific reporting that favor acceptance (or immediate rejection). This commentary summarizes the editors' advice and uses the debate that followed as the basis for analyzing emerging concepts in high-impact publishing. Lessons learned from this meeting are relevant to researcher-authors in other non-anglophone countries as well as to their educators and administrators who wish to improve the impact of the research that they support and finance.

Relationship between quality and editorial leadership of biomedical research journals: a comparative study of Italian and UK journals.

BACKGROUND: The quality of biomedical reporting is guided by statements of several organizations. Although not all journals adhere to these guidelines, those that do demonstrate "editorial leadership" in their author community. To investigate a possible relationship between editorial leadership and journal quality, research journals from two European countries, one Anglophone and one non-Anglophone, were studied and compared. Quality was measured on a panel of bibliometric parameters while editorial leadership was evaluated from journals' instructions to authors. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: The study considered all 76 Italian journals indexed in Medline and 76 randomly chosen UK journals; only journals both edited and published in these countries were studied. Compared to UK journals, Italian journals published fewer papers (median, 60 vs. 93; p = 0.006), less often had online archives (43 vs. 74; p<0.001) and had lower median values of impact factor (1.2 vs. 2.7, p<0.001) and SCImago journal rank (0.09 vs. 0.25, p<0.001). Regarding editorial leadership, Italian journals less frequently required manuscripts to specify competing interests (p<0.001), authors' contributions (p = 0.005), funding (p<0.001), informed consent (p<0.001), ethics committee review (p<0.001). No Italian journal adhered to COPE or the CONSORT and QUOROM statements nor required clinical trial registration, while these characteristics were observed in 15%-43% of UK journals (p<0.001). At multiple regression, editorial leadership predicted 37.1%-49.9% of the variance in journal quality defined by citation statistics (p<0.0001); confounding variables inherent to a cross-cultural comparison had a relatively small contribution, explaining an additional 6.2%-13.8% of the variance. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Journals from Italy scored worse for quality and editorial leadership than did their UK counterparts. Editorial leadership predicted quality for the entire set of journals. Greater appreciation of international initiatives to improve biomedical reporting may help low-quality journals achieve higher status.