The mystery of the disappearing authors

Can an article be simultaneously out of scope, and limited in scope?

Keith S. Taber

Not only had two paragraphs from the abstract gone missing, along with the figures, but the journal article had also lost two-thirds of its authors.

I have been reading some papers in a journal that I believed, on the basis of its misleading title and website details, was an example of a poor-quality 'predatory journal'. That is, a journal which encourages submissions simply to be able to charge a publication fee (currently $1519, according to the website), without doing the proper job of editorial scrutiny. I wanted to test this initial evaluation by looking at the quality of some of the work published.

Although the journal is called the Journal of Chemistry: Education Research and Practice (not to be confused, even if the publishers would like it to be, with the well-established journal Chemistry Education Research and Practice) only a few of the papers published are actually education studies.

One of the articles that IS on an educational topic is called 'An overview of the first year Undergraduate Medical Students [sic] Feedback on the Point of Care Ultrasound Curriculum' (Mohialdin, 2018a), by Vian Mohialdin, an
Associate Professor of Pathology and Molecular Medicine at McMaster University in Ontario.

Review articles

Research journals tend to distinguish between different types of articles, and most commonly:

• papers that report empirical studies,
• articles which set out theoretical perspectives/positions, and
• articles that offer reviews of the existing literature on a topic.

'An overview of the first year Undergraduate Medical Students Feedback on the Point of Care Ultrasound Curriculum' is classified as a review article.

Typically, review articles cite a good deal of previous literature. Prof. Mohialdin cites a modest number of previous publications – just 10. Now one might suspect that perhaps the topic of point-of-care ultrasound in undergraduate medical education is a fairly specialist topic, and perhaps even a novel topic, in which case there may not be much literature to review. But a review of ultrasound in undergraduate medical education published a year earlier (Feilchenfeld, Dornan, Whitehead & Kuper, 2017) cited over a hundred works.

Actually a quick inspection of Mohialdin's paper reveals it is not a review article at all, as it reports a single empirical study. Either the journal has misclassified the article, or the author submitted it as a review article and the journal did not query this. To be fair, the journal website does note that classification into article types "is subjective to some degree". ¹

So, is it a good study?

Not a full paper

Well, that is not easy to evaluate as the article is less than two pages in length whereas most research studies in education are much more substantial. Even the abstract of the article seems lacking (see the table below, left hand column). An abstract of a research paper is usually expected to very briefly report something about the research sample/population (who participated in the study?); the research design/methodology (is it an experiment, a survey…), and the results (what did the researchers find out?) The abstract of Prof. Mohialdin's paper misses all these points and so tells readers nothing about the research.

The main text also lacks some key information. The study is a type of research report that is sometimes called a 'practice paper' – the article reports some teaching innovation carried out by practitioners in their own teaching context. The text does give some details of what the practice was – but simply writing about practice is not usually considered sufficient for a research paper. At the least, there needs to be some evaluation of the innovation.

Here there has been some evaluation, but the report is very sketchy, and so might seem inadequate for a research report. Under a rather odd section heading, the reader is informed,

"A questionnaire was handed to the first year undergraduate medical students at the end of session four, to evaluate their hands on ultrasound session experience."

Mohialdin, 2018a, p.1

That one sentence comprises the account of data collection.

The questionnaire is not reproduced for readers. Nor is it described (how many questions, what kinds of questions?) Nor is its development reported. There is not any indication of how many of the 150 students in the population completed the questionnaire, whether ethical procedures were followed ², where the students completed the questionnaire (for example, was this undertaken in a class setting where participants were being observed by the teaching staff, or did they take it away with them "at the end of session four" to complete in private?) or whether they were able to respond anonymously (rather than have their teachers be able to identify who made which responses).

Perhaps there are perfectly appropriate responses to these questions – but as the journal peer reviewers and editor do not seem to have asked, the reader is left in the dark.

Invisible analytical techniques

Similarly, details of the analysis undertaken are, again, sketchy. A reader is told:

"Answers were collected and data was [sic] analyzed into multiple graphs (as illustrated on this poster)."

Mohialdin, 2018a, p.1

Now that sounds promising, except either the author forgot to submit the graphs with the text, or the journal somehow managed to lose them in production. 3 (And as I've found out, even the most prestigious and well established publishers can lose work they have accepted for publication!)

So, readers are left with no idea what questions were asked, nor what responses were offered, that led to the graphs – that are not provided.

There were also comments – presumably [sic – it would be good to be told] in response to open-ended items on the questionnaire.

"The comments that we [sic, not I] got from this survey were mainly positive; here are a few of the constructive comments that we [sic] received:…

We [sic] also received some comments about recommendations and
ways to improve the sessions (listed below):…"

Mohialdin, 2018a, 1-2.

A reader might ask who decided which comments should be counted as positive (e.g., was it a rater independent of the team who implemented the innovation?), and what does 'mainly' mean here (e.g., 90 of 100 responses? 6 of 11?).

So, in summary, there is no indication of what was asked, who exactly responded, or how the analysis was carried out. As the Journal of Chemistry: Education Research and Practice claims to be a peer reviewed journal one might expect reviewers to have recommended at least that such information (along with the missing graphs) should be included before publication might be considered.

There is also another matter that one would expect peer reviewers, and especially the editor, to have noticed.

Not in scope

Research journals usually have a scope – a range of topics they publish articles on. This is normally made clear in the information on journal websites. Despite its name, the Journal of Chemistry: Education Research and Practice does not restrict itself to chemistry education, but invites work on all aspects of the chemical sciences, and indeed most of its articles are not educational.

But 'An overview of the first year Undergraduate Medical Students Feedback on the Point of Care Ultrasound Curriculum' is not about chemistry education or chemistry in a wider sense. Ultrasound diagnostic technology falls under medical physics, not a branch of chemistry. And, more pointedly, teaching medical students to use ultrasound to diagnose medical conditions falls under medical education – as the reference to 'Medical Students' in the article title rather gives away. So, it is odd that this article was published where it was, as it should have been rejected from this particular journal as being out of scope.

Despite the claims of Journal of Chemistry: Education Research and Practice to be a peer reviewed journal (that means that all submissions are supposedly sent out to, and scrutinised and critiqued by, qualified experts on the topic who make recommendations about whether something is sufficient quality for publication, and, if so, whether changes should be made first – like perhaps including graphs that are referred to, but missing), the editor managed to decide the submission should be published just seven days after it was submitted for consideration.

The journal article as a truncated conference poster?

The reference to "multiple graphs (as illustrated on this poster)" (my emphasis) suggested that the article was actually the text (if not the figures) of a poster presented at a conference, and a quick search revealed that Mohialdin, Wainman and Shali had presented on 'An overview of the first year Undergraduate Medical Students Feedback on the Point of Care Ultrasound Curriculum' at an experimental biology (sic, not chemistry) conference.

A poster at a conference is not considered a formal publication, so there is nothing inherently wrong with publishing the same material in a journal – although often posters report either quite provisional or relatively inconsequential work so it is unusual for the text of a poster to be considered sufficiently rigorous and novel to justify appearing in a research journal in its original form. It is notable that despite being described by Prof. Mohialdin as a 'preliminary' study, the journal decided it was of publishable quality.

Although norms vary between fields, it is generally the case that a conference poster is seen as something quite different from a journal article. There is a limited amount of text and other material that can be included on a poster if it is to be readable. Conferences often have poster sessions where authors are invited to stand by their poster and engage with readers – so anyone interested can ask follow-up questions to supplement the often limited information given on the poster itself.

By contrast, a journal article has to stand on its own terms (as the authors cannot be expected to pop round for a conversation when you decide to read it). It is meant to present an argument for some new knowledge claim(s): an argument that depends on the details of the research conceptualisation, design, and data analysis. So what may seem as perfectly adequate in a poster may well not be sufficient to satisfy journal peer review.

The abstract of the conference poster was published in a journal (Mohialdin, Wainman & Shali, 2018) and I have reproduced that abstract in the table below, in the right hand column.

Mohialdin, 2018a (Journal paper)	Mohialdin, Wainman & Shali, 2018 (Conference poster)
With the technological progress of different types of portable Ultrasound machines, there is a growing demand by all health care providers to perform bedside Ultrasonography, also known as Point of Care Ultrasound (POCUS). This technique is becoming extremely useful as part of the Clinical Skills/Anatomy teaching in the undergraduate Medical School Curriculum.	With the technological progress of different types of portable Ultrasound machines, there is a growing demand by all health care providers to perform bedside Ultrasonography, also known as Point of Care Ultrasound (POCUS). This technique is becoming extremely useful as part of the Clinical Skills/Anatomy teaching in the undergraduate Medical School Curriculum.
Teaching/training health care providers how to use these portable Ultrasound machines can complement their physical examination findings and help in a more accurate diagnosis, which leads to a faster and better improvement in patient outcomes. In addition, using portable Ultrasound machines can add more safety measurements to every therapeutic/diagnostic procedure when it is done under an Ultrasound guide. It is also considered as an extra tool in teaching Clinical Anatomy to Medical students. Using an Ultrasound is one of the different imaging modalities that health care providers depend on to reach their diagnosis, while also being the least invasive method.	Teaching/training health care providers how to use these portable Ultrasound machines can complement their physical examination findings and help in a more accurate diagnosis, which leads to a faster and better improvement in patient outcomes. In addition, using portable Ultrasound machines can add more safety measurements to every therapeutic/diagnostic procedure when it is done under an Ultrasound guide. It is also considered as an extra tool in teaching Clinical Anatomy to Medical students. Using an Ultrasound is one of the different imaging modalities that health care providers depend on to reach their diagnosis, while also being the least invasive method.
We thought investing in training the undergraduate Medical students on the basic Ultrasound scanning skills as part of their first year curriculum will help build up the foundation for their future career.	We thought investing in training the undergraduate Medical students on the basic Ultrasound scanning skills as part of their first year curriculum will help build up the foundation for their future career.
	The research we report in this manuscript is a preliminary qualitative study. And provides the template for future model for teaching a hand on Ultrasound for all health care providers in different learning institutions.
	A questionnaire was handed to the first year medical students to evaluate their hands on ultrasound session experience. Answers were collected and data was [sic] analyzed into multiple graphs.

The abstract includes some very brief information about what the researchers did (which is strangely missing from the journal article's abstract). Journals usually put limits on the word count for abstracts. Surely the poster's abstract was not considered too long for the journal, so someone (the author? the editor?) simply dropped the final two paragraphs – that is, arguably the two most relevant paragraphs for readers?

The lost authors?

Not only had two paragraphs from the abstract gone missing, along with the figures, but the journal article had also lost two-thirds of its authors.

Now in the academic world authorship of research reports is not an arbitrary matter (Taber, 2018). An author is someone who has made a substantial intellectual contribution to the work (regardless of how much of the writing-up they undertake, or whether they are present when work is presented at a conference). That is a simple principle, which unfortunately may lead to disputes as it needs to be interpreted when applied; but, in most academic fields, there are conventions regarding what kind of contribution is judged significant and substantive enough for authorship

It may well be that Prof. Mohialdin was the principal investigator on this study and that the contributions of Prof. Wainman and Prof. Shali were more marginal, and so it was not obvious whether or not they should be considered authors when reporting the study. But it is less easy to see how they qualified for authorship on the poster but not on the journal article with the same title which seems (?) to be the text of the poster (i.e., describes itself as being the poster). [It is even more difficult to see how they could be authors of the poster when it was presented at one conference, but not when it was presented somewhere else. ⁴]

Of course, one trivial suggestion might be to suggest that Wainman and Shali contributed the final two paragraphs of the abstract, and the graphs, and that without these the – thus reduced – version in the journal only deserved one author according to the normal academic authorship conventions. That is clearly not an acceptable rationale as academic studies have to be understood more holistically than that!

Perhaps Wainman and Shali asked to have their names left off the paper as they did not want to be published in a journal of chemistry that would publish a provisional and incomplete account of a medical education practice study classified as a review article. Maybe they suspected that this would hardly enhance their scholarly reputations?

Work cited:

• Feilchenfeld, Z., Dornan, T., Whitehead, C., & Kuper, A. (2017). Ultrasound in undergraduate medical education: a systematic and critical review. Medical Education. 51: 366-378. doi: 10.1111/medu.13211
• Mohialdin, V. (2018a) An overview of the first year Undergraduate Medical Students Feedback on the Point of Care Ultrasound Curriculum. Journal of Chemistry: Education Research and Practice, 2 (2), 1-2.
• Mohialdin, V. (2018b). An overview of the first year undergraduate medical students feedback on the point of care ultrasound curriculum. Journal of Health Education Research & Development, 6, 30.
• Mohialdin, V., Wainman, B. & Shali, A. (2018) An overview of the first year Undergraduate Medical Students Feedback on the Point of Care Ultrasound Curriculum. The FASIB Journal. 32 (S1: Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting Abstracts), 636.4
• Taber, K. S. (2013). Classroom-based Research and Evidence-based Practice: An introduction (2nd ed.). London: Sage.
• Taber, K. S. (2018). Assigning Credit and Ensuring Accountability. In P. A. Mabrouk & J. N. Currano (Eds.), Credit Where Credit Is Due: Respecting Authorship and Intellectual Property (Vol. 1291, pp. 3-33). Washington, D.C.: American Chemical Society. [The publisher appears to have made this open access]

Footnotes:

¹ The following section appears as part of the instructions for authors:

"Article Types

Journal of Chemistry: Education Research and Practice accepts Original Articles, Review, Mini Review, Case Reports, Editorial, and Letter to the Editor, Commentary, Rapid Communications and Perspectives, Case in Images, Clinical Images, and Conference Proceedings.

In general the Manuscripts are classified in to following [sic] groups based on the criteria noted below [I could not find these]. The author(s) are encouraged to request a particular classification upon submitting (please include this in the cover letter); however the Editor and the Associate Editor retain the right to classify the manuscript as they see fit, and it should be understood by the authors that this process is subjective to some degree. The chosen classification will appear in the printed manuscript above the manuscript title."

https://opastonline.com/journal/journal-of-chemistry-education-research-and-practice/author-guidelines

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² The ethical concerns in this kind of research are minimal, and in an area like medical education one might feel there is a moral imperative for future professionals to engage in activities to innovate and to evaluate such innovations. However, there is a general principle that all participants in research should give voluntary, informed consent.

(Read about Research Ethics here).

According to the policy statement on the author's (/authors'?) University's website (Research involving human participants, Sept. 2002) at the time of this posting (November, 2021) McMaster University "endorses the ethical principles cited in the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans (1998)".

According to Article 2.1 of that document, Research Ethics Board Review is required for any research involving "living human participants". There are some exemptions, including (Article 2.5): "Quality assurance and quality improvement studies, program evaluation activities, and performance reviews, or testing within normal educational requirements when used exclusively for assessment, management or improvement purposes" (my emphasis).

My reading then is that this work would not have been subject to requiring approval following formal ethical review if it had been exclusively used for internal purposes, but that publication of the work as research means it should have been subject to Research Ethics Board Review before being carried out. This is certainly in line with advice to teachers who invite their own students to participate in research into their teaching that may be reported later (in a thesis, at a conference, etc.) (Taber, 2013, pp.244-248).

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³ Some days ago, I wrote to the Journal of Chemistry: Education Research and Practice (in reply to an invitation to publish in the journal), with a copy of the email direct to the editor, asking where I could find the graphs referred to in this paper, but have not yet had a response. If I do get a reply I will report this in the comments below.

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