Common Fallacies in Designing a Research Project: Guidance Principles

摘要

The manuscript acceptance rate for biomedical journals varies across publications and specialties. Most journals accept 20 to 30 percent of manuscript submissions.1 The acceptance rate for high-quality biomedical journals such as the Journal of the American Medical Association for research papers is as low as 4 percent, and the rate for the New England Journal of Medicine is 5 percent.2,3 The lower acceptance rates of the Journal of the American Medical Association and the New England Journal of Medicine are attributed to the journals’ stringent review process, accepting only manuscripts with the most scientific or clinical merit. In addition, these journals receive thousands of submissions annually, as more and more investigators are striving to publish in journals with high impact factors. In recent years, Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery has been receiving an increasing number of manuscripts across study modalities, including survey studies, systematic reviews, meta-analyses, large database research, and education and training studies. The reasons for instant rejection are divided into five categories: information (neither new nor innovative), size (too small), article type (case reports or historical article), goal (lack of clearly defined purpose), and commonality (similar well-executed study published recently in the Journal). A few investigators have reported on the rates of manuscript rejection either instant or following peer review. For example, a recently published study analyzed the number of total submissions to the journal Headache over 3 years and revealed that 336 (42.9 percent) of the manuscripts were instantly rejected and that the overall rejection rate was 62.6 percent.1 Hesterman et al. determined that the number one fatal flaw leading to rejection was poor methodology and study design.1Figure 1 illustrates the most common reasons for manuscript rejection before the peer-review process and after the peer-review process. In a step-by-step guide to preparing a manuscript, Balch et al. delineated reasons for rejection of manuscripts that have also been described in other articles (Table 1).4–6 Table 1. - Common Reasons for Rejection of Manuscripts Category Reasons General Not of sufficient interest to readership, manuscript does not conform to journal requirements, subject not appropriate for journal readership Methods Retrospective design, case study, small sample size, follow-up too short, invalid statistics, or control (inadequate or lack of control group) Results Nothing new, data previously presented elsewhere, data not supportive of conclusions, or outcomes worse than those with the current standard of care Discussion Poorly written (grammar/content), conclusions vague or not supported by the data, found in another article from same author, or references incomplete Fig. 1.: Common reasons for manuscript rejection before and after peer review.Similar to conducting surgical procedures, the design and execution of quality research projects require skills that can be trained through repetition and experience. Articles that are published often originate from a select group of investigators who have mastered this skill set.7 In this article, we discuss common flaws seen in manuscripts submitted to Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, including survey studies, systematic reviews and meta-analyses, large database research, and education and training studies. We hope to help investigators gain insight into the review process, develop the necessary skills to succeed, and improve the quality of their research. COMMON FLAWS AND DISCUSSION Survey Studies Survey studies are commonly used research tools capable of answering questions about large populations that are unobtainable through other research methods. In hand surgery, survey research has been used to determine residents’ attitudes toward a career in hand surgery, incidence of postoperative complications, and disease incidence and prevalence.8–11 The major li