Article
Public, Environmental & Occupational Health
Emilien Schultz, Julien Mancini, Jeremy K. Ward
Summary: Conflicts of interests in health and medicine have been a topic of public debate for a long time. While there has been analysis of policies regulating the relationships between medical researchers and private corporations, little attention has been given to how the public defines and uses the label of conflict of interest. This article explores the French public's perception of conflict of interest for medical researchers through a questionnaire survey, and identifies three main groups with different conceptions of what constitutes a conflict of interest.
SOCIAL SCIENCE & MEDICINE
(2023)
Article
Medicine, General & Internal
Jonathan Hinton, Thomas Reeves, Benoy N. Shah
Summary: The study assessed the frequency and nature of financial conflicts of interest among ESC guideline committee authors and research studies authors, revealing that a majority of guideline authors had financial conflicts of interest and industry sponsorship of studies was common.
Article
Medicine, General & Internal
Margaret McCartney, Raphaella Bergeron Hartman, Harriet Feldman, Ronald MacDonald, Frank Sullivan, C. Heneghan, Calum McCutcheon
Summary: This study investigates the arrangements for healthcare organisations' declarations of staff interest in Scotland and England. The findings indicate that the current system of declarations often lacks the ability to obtain complete and meaningful declarations of interests from healthcare professionals.
Article
Public, Environmental & Occupational Health
Amy McDonald, Kahlia McCausland, Laura Thomas, Mike Daube, Jonine Jancey
Summary: This research examined the satisfaction level of international tobacco control experts with conflict of interest declaration processes and the transparency of COI declarations in the academic literature on tobacco, e-cigarettes, and related novel products. The study found that 61% of COI and funding declarations in the authors' publications were accessible, 33% were partially accessible, and 6% were inaccessible. Overall, 33% of authors provided complete COI declarations, 51% provided incomplete declarations, and 16% provided no declaration.
AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH
(2023)
Article
Information Science & Library Science
Lili Yang, Siyun Xu, Jufang Shao, Panzhi Wang, Xianjun Wang, Qi Qi, Rongwang Yang
Summary: The study revealed that most Chinese journals have COI policies in place, but the level of compliance and awareness among Chinese researchers is low compared to international standards. While only 0.6% of Chinese articles published in 2018 included a COI statement, the number was significantly higher at 15.6% for international journals. This highlights a knowledge and policy gap in China that needs to be addressed to align with international best practices.
LEARNED PUBLISHING
(2022)
Article
Oncology
Jan Borysowski, Anna C. F. Lewis, Andrzej Gorski
Summary: The study assessed self-reported conflicts of interest in oncology expanded access studies and found that most authors disclosed financial conflicts, while nonfinancial conflicts were reported less. Financial conflicts were more likely to occur in studies with at least one center in the United States, while studies without industry funding were less likely to have positive conclusions about the treatments studied.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CANCER
(2021)
Article
Development Studies
Singumbe Muyeba
Summary: This paper examines the impact of formal housing delivery receipts and political pronouncements on perception of tenure security and housing investments in Angola. The study focuses on Zango 1 residents who received social housing and delivery receipts in 2005 after being evicted from Boa Vista in 2001. The findings suggest that both Zango 1 and Paraiso households have high tenure security and significant investments, indicating that political pronouncements and the use of durable materials play a significant role in shaping the perception of tenure security and influencing housing decisions even in the presence of weak institutions.
HABITAT INTERNATIONAL
(2023)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Balazs Aczel, Marton Kovacs, Tanja van der Lippe, Barnabas Szaszi
Summary: The recent pandemic has brought into focus the pros and cons of working from home for academics, with varying efficiency levels reported among researchers. While some find themselves more efficient at home, others prefer the office environment for certain tasks. An increasing number of researchers express a desire to work more from home in the future for better work-life balance.
Article
Engineering, Environmental
Andreas Schaeffer, Ksenia J. Groh, Gabriel Sigmund, David Azoulay, Thomas Backhaus, Michael G. Bertram, Bethanie Carney Almroth, Ian T. Cousins, Alex T. Ford, Joan O. Grimalt, Yago Guida, Maria C. Hansson, Yunsun Jeong, Rainer Lohmann, David Michaels, Leonie Mueller, Jane Muncke, Gunilla Oberg, Marcos A. Orellana, Edmond Sanganyado, Ralf Bernhard Schaefer, Ishmail Sheriff, Ryan C. Sullivan, Noriyuki Suzuki, Laura N. Vandenberg, Marta Venier, Penny Vlahos, Martin Wagner, Fang Wang, Mengjiao Wang, Anna Soehl, Marlene Agerstrand, Miriam L. Diamond, Martin Scheringer
Summary: Pollution caused by chemicals and waste, along with climate change and biodiversity loss, poses a triple planetary crisis. In response, countries have established an intergovernmental science-policy panel to address chemicals, waste, and pollution prevention. Protecting this panel from conflicts of interest is crucial for its success.
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
(2023)
Article
Education & Educational Research
Igor Chirikov
Summary: Global university rankings have a significant influence on students and higher education policies. This study examines the impact of contracting with rankers on university rankings and finds that universities with frequent contracts with a ranking agency tend to achieve higher positions and improved faculty-student ratio scores.
Article
Green & Sustainable Science & Technology
Fabrizio Aimar, Francesca Cavagnino, Marco Devecchi
Summary: The adoption of the European Landscape Convention highlights the significance of raising awareness and promoting citizen participation in transforming the European landscape. The Landscape Observatory for Montferrat and Astigiano aims to increase local community awareness and establish a participatory model to support special protection measures in the province of Asti and the Piedmont region in Italy.
Article
Chemistry, Analytical
Zongming Dai, Kai Hu, Jie Xie, Shengyu Shen, Jie Zheng, Huayi Wu, Ya Guo
Summary: Researchers attempt to answer the question of which sensors can be used for what kind of applications by establishing a knowledge network called BNOI that considers researcher interest. They use classification models to find possible entities of interest and employ various feature extraction methods and fusion strategies. Experimental results demonstrate that BNOI, based on classification results, provides more accurate answers to researcher questions of interest compared to traditional co-word network methods.
Article
Health Care Sciences & Services
Elie A. Akl, Maram Hakoum, Assem Khamis, Joanne Khabsa, Matt Vassar, Gordon Guyatt
Summary: This study proposes an operational definition and categorization framework for conflicts of interest (COI) which can enhance transparency in health research.
JOURNAL OF CLINICAL EPIDEMIOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Gaofeng Wang, Yetong Gan, Haodong Yang
Summary: This study explores the relationship between knowledge diversity of collaborating team members and research performance. It finds that the relationship between interdisciplinary collaboration diversity and societal impact follows an inverted U-shaped pattern, rather than a simple linear one. Additionally, as the number of collaborative disciplines increases, the negative influences start to outweigh the benefits, indicating that diversity does not always lead to positive impacts.
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
(2022)
Article
Surgery
Basheer Elsolh, Amanpreet Brar, Bishal Gyawali, Sunil V. Patel
Summary: The study assessed the prevalence and amount of industry funding in the editorial boards of high-impact surgery journals, revealing that 65.7% of individual physicians in the USA received industry payments in 2018, totaling $21,916,503. It was found that editorial board members' COI disclosures were scarce, highlighting the need for disclosure mechanisms to provide full transparency to readers.
Article
Public, Environmental & Occupational Health
Emily A. Hennessy, Rebecca L. Acabchuk, Pieter A. Arnold, Adam G. Dunn, Yong Zhi Foo, Blair T. Johnson, Sonya R. Geange, Neal R. Haddaway, Shinichi Nakagawa, Witness Mapanga, Kerrie Mengersen, Matthew J. Page, Alfredo Sanchez-Tojar, Vivian Welch, Luke A. McGuinness
Summary: It is crucial to robustly synthesize available evidence to inform and improve prevention efforts and policy, yet barriers such as inaccurate terminology and unclear reporting hinder comprehensive evidence synthesis. Practical guidelines and tools are provided to assist prevention scientists in preparing synthesis-ready research, with step-by-step guidance and software suggestions for standardizing data design and public archiving to facilitate synthesis-ready research. Using a recent mindfulness trial as an example, ways to ensure discoverability of primary studies and the presence of necessary data are demonstrated.
PREVENTION SCIENCE
(2022)
Review
Public, Environmental & Occupational Health
Tze Chang Ng, Chin Hai Teo, Jia Yong Toh, Adam G. Dunn, Chirk Jenn Ng, Tan Fong Ang, Adina Abdullah, Ayeshah Syed, Hooi Min Lim, Kathleen Yin, Chee Sun Liew
Summary: This systematic review identified 18 factors influencing healthcare seeking behavior of dengue patients, categorized into individual, interpersonal, organizational, and community domains. The most commonly reported factors were knowledge of dengue, access to healthcare, quality of health service, and resource availability. There were more barriers than facilitators to dengue healthcare seeking, and factors like history of dengue infection and knowledge of dengue were found to be ambiguous in their effects. Contrary to common belief, women were less likely to seek help for dengue than men.
TROPICAL MEDICINE & INTERNATIONAL HEALTH
(2022)
Article
Mathematical & Computational Biology
Shifeng Liu, Florence T. Bourgeois, Adam G. Dunn
Summary: A substantial proportion of trial registrations are not linked to corresponding published articles, which limits analysis and tools. In this study, researchers developed a method using a classifier with distance metrics to identify missing links between trial registrations and articles. The proposed method outperformed the baseline method in identifying the correct article or registration, improving the feasibility of identifying missing links. This method has important implications for improving the coupling of PubMed and automating systematic review and evidence synthesis processes.
RESEARCH SYNTHESIS METHODS
(2022)
Article
Substance Abuse
Samia Amin, Liliana Laranjo, Adam G. Dunn
Summary: The study findings suggest that higher social acceptability of e-cigarettes in workplaces or educational settings is associated with increased likelihood of use or intention to use among individuals.
JOURNAL OF ADDICTIVE DISEASES
(2022)
Article
Medicine, Research & Experimental
Rabia Bashir, Adam G. Dunn
Summary: This study aims to investigate the characteristics of clinical trials associated with earlier results reporting on ClinicalTrials.gov. The results show that non-industry, non-drug, and earlier phase trials report results on ClinicalTrials.gov more slowly. The findings suggest that incentives and tools targeting these types of trials are also needed to improve trial reporting.
CONTEMPORARY CLINICAL TRIALS
(2022)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Joyce Siette, Laura Dodds, Didi Surian, Mirela Prgomet, Adam Dunn, Johanna Westbrook
Summary: This study examined the frequency and duration of social interactions among residents in aged care facilities and their association with quality of life. The results showed a positive correlation between time spent with other residents and quality of life, while time spent with facility staff was negatively correlated with quality of life.
Review
Computer Science, Interdisciplinary Applications
Farhana Pethani, Adam G. Dunn
Summary: The objective of this study was to review the applications of natural language processing (NLP) for information extraction and retrieval from clinical notes in dentistry. A search strategy was implemented in EMBASE, CINAHL, and Medline to identify relevant studies. A total of 17 studies were included, demonstrating heterogeneity in study design and reporting quality. The findings suggest a need for standardization in reporting and improved connections between NLP methods and applied NLP in dentistry.
JOURNAL OF BIOMEDICAL INFORMATICS
(2023)
Editorial Material
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Isabelle Boisvert, Adam G. Dunn, Erik Lundmark, Jennifer Smith-Merry, Wendy Lipworth, Amber Willink, Sarah E. Hughes, Michele Nealon, Melanie Calvert
Article
Health Care Sciences & Services
Divya Ramjee, Catherine C. Pollack, Marie-Laure Charpignon, Shagun Gupta, Jessica Malaty Rivera, Ghinwa El Hayek, Adam G. Dunn, Angel N. Desai, Maimuna S. Majumder
Summary: During the COVID-19 pandemic, there were fluctuating policies on face mask use by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Analyzing sentiment on masks surrounding guideline changes can inform future communication strategies and improve widespread and sustained adoption.
JOURNAL OF MEDICAL INTERNET RESEARCH
(2023)
Article
Health Care Sciences & Services
Julie Ayre, Carissa Bonner, Danielle M. Muscat, Adam G. Dunn, Eliza Harrison, Jason Dalmazzo, Dana Mouwad, Parisa Aslani, Heather L. Shepherd, Kirsten J. McCaffery
Summary: The SHeLL Health Literacy Editor is an automated tool that provides objective and specific guidance for producing easy-to-read health information. It improves the quality and safety of written health information by offering immediate feedback on various aspects, such as readability and person-centered language. It can be used as a scalable intervention to promote the adoption of health literacy guidelines by health services and information providers.
JMIR FORMATIVE RESEARCH
(2023)
Article
Mathematical & Computational Biology
Shifeng Liu, Florence T. Bourgeois, Claire Narang, Adam G. Dunn
Summary: This study compared different methods for finding relevant trial registrations using a PROSPERO entry, without prior screening. The results showed that term-based representations and MetaMap outperformed PICO extraction in ranking trial registrations. When ranking trial articles, term-based representations were the best performing approach. These findings suggest that automated methods can reduce workload in systematic reviews, but additional processes are still needed to efficiently identify relevant trial registrations or trial articles.
RESEARCH SYNTHESIS METHODS
(2023)
Article
Computer Science, Cybernetics
Usman Naseem, Matloob Khushi, Jinman Kim, Adam G. Dunn
Summary: People on social media using disease and symptom words to discuss their health can introduce biases in data-driven public health applications. This study presents a new dataset called RHMD, which consists of 10,015 manually annotated Reddit posts. The dataset is labeled with four categories and provides a comprehensive performance analysis of baseline methods. The release of this dataset is expected to facilitate the development of new methods for detecting health mentions in user-generated text.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMPUTATIONAL SOCIAL SYSTEMS
(2023)
Article
Primary Health Care
Hooi Min Lim, Chirk Jenn Ng, Adam G. Dunn, Adina Abdullah
Summary: This study explores the views and experiences of patients with high cardiovascular risk on online health information-seeking about statins, and how this information influences their decisions. The results suggest that patients need different types of online health information throughout their disease trajectory, and unintentional passive exposure to online health information has an influence on patients' adherence to statins. The quality of patient-doctor communication in relation to online health information-seeking behavior remains critical for patient decision-making.
Article
Computer Science, Information Systems
Zubair Shah, Adam G. Dunn
Summary: This research proposes a new approach to event localization and ranking by modeling the use of language in tweets. It detects unexpected changes in language usage and identifies anomalies across cities, countries, and time periods.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BIG DATA
(2022)
Article
Computer Science, Cybernetics
Usman Naseem, Matloob Khushi, Jinman Kim, Adam G. Dunn
Summary: The article introduces a hybrid text representation method for explaining suicide risk identification on social media. The method achieves excellent results on a public suicide dataset and demonstrates advantages in clinical and public health practice.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMPUTATIONAL SOCIAL SYSTEMS
(2022)
