1. Chinese Submissions to
Osteoarthritis and Cartilage
and
How to Get Your Paper Published
Jonas Ranstam PhD
Deputy editor of Osteoarthritis and Cartilage
Dept of Orthopedics, Skane University Hospital, Lund, Sweden.
2. Osteoarthritis and Cartilage
Impact Factor and Rank
Year Impact factor Rank in Orthopaedics
2010 3.953 1/61
2009 3.888 1/56
2008 4.082 1/49
2007 3.793 1/48
2006 4.017 1/43
2005 4.215 1/41
2004 3.573 1/42
Source- Thompson ISI
11. The whole story
1. Why did you perform the study?
2. How did you design and plan it?
3. What patients, animals, cells, etc. did you examine?
4. How did you examine the samples?
5. What did you find?
6. How do you interpret your observations?
7. How uncertain is your interpretation?
12. The whole story
When a well-done trial or experiment or
observational study is fairly, honestly, and
thoroughly reported, it will have so many warts,
footnotes, and exceptions that it may be hard for
the uninitiated to believe that the work was of
high quality.
Frederick Mosteller, PhD
13. All scientific findings are uncertain
No one expects you to present findings without
uncertainty.
What is expected of you is that you reduce the
uncertainty as much as possible and quantify and
report what remains of the uncertainty.
14. Reporting guidelines will help you
ICMJE's (icmje.org)
Report specific checklists (equator-network.org)
- CONSORT randomized trials
- TREND non-randomized trials
- STROBE observational studies
- STARD diagnostic accuracy studies
- ARRIVE in vitro studies
- PRISMA systematic reviews
- Et cetera
16. OAC Recommendations
1. Ranstam J. Sampling uncertainty in medical
research. Osteoarthritis Cartilage 2009;17:1416-9.
2. Ranstam J. Reporting laboratory experiments.
Osteoarthritis Cartilage 2010;18:3-4.
3. Ranstam J, Lohmander LS. What's in a number or
in a picture? Osteoarthritis Cartilage 2010;18:1003-5.
4. Ranstam J, Lohmander LS. Ten recommendations for
OAC manuscript preparation, common for all types of
studies. Osteoarthritis Cartilage 2011;19:1079-80.
http://ees.elsevier.com/oac
17. Recommendation 1.
State the research question and the purpose of the
study. Is the ambition to describe an observation,
to generate hypotheses or to test a pre-specified
hypothesis?
18. Recommendation 2.
Describe the source of study participants, patients,
cadavers, animals, tissues, cell lines, etc., and
how many units that have been included in the
study.
To what population do you wish to generalize the
findings of your study? If all observations have
been sampled from one subject, animal or cell line,
direct generalization cannot be made beyond this.
19. Recommendation 3.
When observations can be presented individually,
either numerically or graphically, this should be
preferred.
When fewer than four observations are presented,
they should as a rule be described individually, not
as an aggregate.
20. Recommendation 4.
When presenting data in aggregated form, always
provide the number of included observations (n) as
well as measures of central tendency (mean,
median, etc.) and dispersion (standard deviation,
range, etc.).
If repeated measurements or replicates are used,
present both the number of independent samples
and the number of repeated observations per
independent sample.
21. Recommendation 5.
Describe all statistical methods in the statistical
methods section, using well recognized terms such
as Student's, Welch's or Satterthwaite's t-test.
Always identify the statistical software and version
used.
22. Recommendation 6.
The validity of results from statistical tests relies on
certain assumptions being fulfilled.
Describe how you have examined this and what
the results were.
When departures are detected, alternative
methods may be required.
23. Recommendation 7.
Generalizations from observed data are often made
with the help of hypothesis tests. It should be
recognized that:
1. Tested hypotheses relate to the generalization of
an observation, never to the observation itself.
2. A statistically significant finding is not necessarily
practically, biologically or clinically important.
3. A statistically insignificant test does not
necessarily indicate similarity.
24. Recommendation 8.
Confidence intervals provide more information on
inferential uncertainty than is included in P-values.
Both SEMs and 95% confidence intervals describe
uncertainty.
95% confidence intervals are preferred.
25. Recommendation 9.
If one-sided statistical tests, one-sided confidence
intervals, Bonferroni corrections, simultaneous
confidence intervals, or other departures from the
conventional 5% significance and 95% confidence
level are used, explain and motivate the reasons
for this.
26. Recommendation 10.
The level of statistical rigor (and remaining
inferential uncertainty in the results) should be in
parity with the purpose of the study and the
author's conclusions.
27. Collaborate
Statistics is a rapidly developing science.
Statistical methods are becoming increasingly
powerful and complex.
If you are not familiar with the statistical methods
needed for your study, consult a biostatistician.
28. Thank you for your attention!
And best of luck with your OAC
submissions!
