Threaded Publications: one step closer by Daniel Shanahan.
From the post:
“It is difficult to make informed decisions if publication bias and selective reporting are present” World Health Organization
For years, researchers have drawn attention to this, highlighting discrepancies between protocols submitted to research ethics committees and those reported in the results papers, issues concerning statistical power, and the difficulty in identifying unpublished studies. Indeed, it was concerns like these that lead to most major medical journals making registration of clinical trials a prerequisite for publication.
However, even for those clinical trials that have been registered, it can be difficult to track down related content. Not all journals publish the trial ID in the body of the article; therefore, although a results article may cite a published protocol, there is nothing to connect that article to subsequent publications. And nothing to link from the protocol to the results article.
In 1999, Altman and Chalmers envisioned a solution to this. In their article in The Lancet they wrote: “Electronic publication of a protocol could be simply the first element in a sequence of ‘threaded’ electronic publications, which continues with reports of the resulting research (published in sufficient detail to meet some of the criticisms of less detailed reports published in print journals), followed by deposition of the complete data set.” This was the first description of ‘Threaded Publications’.
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The usual consequences of expecting disorderly people to act in an orderly manner. 😉
Seriously, I don’t doubt for a moment that every author, every journal and every reader, would support consistent citation practices across medical literature.
Unfortunately, being “disorderly” as I said, people need information solutions that can tolerate our disorder.
Since topic maps don’t require (but can be improved by) general agreement and use of single identifiers, categories, or types, everyone can “tag” their articles and content without waiting for mass agreement.
If and when we all agree on terms, we need not replace the old terms but simply add the new terms. Which insures anyone who was accustomed to the “old style” will find the new information, even when using dated references.