Trends in the quality of abstracts of articles describing randomized controlled cancer trials (RCTs) from 1975–2004
Bibliographic record
Abstract
6541 Background: Busy oncologists may rely on abstracts to obtain most of their information from published reports. Here we evaluate the quality of abstracts in articles reporting RCTs, and whether quality of reporting has changed over time. Methods: Reports of RCTs evaluating systemic therapy for breast, colorectal and non-small cell lung cancer published 1975–2004 in 6 major journals were identified. The quality of abstracts was evaluated using a scale which awards 1 point for full and 1/2 point for partial reporting of each of 6 items: study rationale, statement of primary endpoint, description of intervention, treatment effect size, P-values or confidence intervals (CI), and toxicity. The scale was a modification of one previously developed to assess quality of reporting of conference abstracts. Trends in the reporting of individual items and composite scores were evaluated over three 10-year periods (1975–84, 1985–94, 1995–2004) using descriptive statistics. Results: Of 326 eligible articles, 319 had an abstract. Unstructured abstracts were common before 1994 ( Table ). The minimum and maximum quality scores assigned were 0.5 and 6/6. Median quality scores improved significantly with time (from 2.5 to 4.5/6, P < .001), as did inclusion of each of the individual items (P < .001). In the most recent 10-year period, three variables were adequately reported in less than half of abstracts (primary endpoint 38.0%, rationale 38.6%, toxicity 40.4%). Since the publication of the revised CONSORT statement in 2001, reporting of these items has improved (58.2%, 47.8%, 44.8% for 2002–2004). Conclusions: Quality of abstracts for published RCTs has improved over time, but deficiencies still exist. Items requiring improved reporting include identification of the primary endpoint, description of rationale, and a summary of toxicity. No significant financial relationships to disclose. [Table: see text]
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.281 | 0.698 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.005 | 0.007 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.080 | 0.070 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.015 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; the direct Gemma label and the distilled Codex classifier agree on what is shown here.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".