Variations and trends in major research topics across leading general medical journals, 1966–2022.
Attention to publication diversity calls for broader topic inclusion by journals. Although general medical journals have distinct editorial policies, cross-journal differences remain underexplored. To compare trends of major research topics of clinical trials among leading general medical journals i...
| Publicado en: | Critical Public Health Vol. 35; no. 1; pp. 1 - 13 |
|---|---|
| Autores principales: | , , , |
| Formato: | research tables/charts Journal Article |
| Publicado: |
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Dec2025
|
| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ccm&AN=189915679&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ccm uiTerm: 189915679 longDbName: CINAHL Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: dissinfo: jinfo: jid: 09581596 35U jtl: Critical Public Health issn: 09581596 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Dec2025 vid: 35 iid: 1 pid: 377 pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd place: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania artinfo: ui: 189915679 189915679 189915679 10.1080/09581596.2025.2594711 189915679 ppf: 1 ppct: 12 formats: tig: atl: Variations and trends in major research topics across leading general medical journals, 1966–2022. aug: au: Hsu, Nin-Chieh Hsu, Chia-Hao Liao, Charles Tokuda, Yasuharu affil: Division of Hospital Medicine, National Taiwan University Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan sug: subj: Research, Medical Trends Clinical Trials Evaluation Serial Publications Subject Headings Evaluation Human Meta-Research Drugs Classification Disease Classification Publishing Trends Funding Source Publishing Classification Journal Impact Factor Cross Sectional Studies Chi Square Test Pearson's Correlation Coefficient Data Analysis Software Descriptive Statistics ab: Attention to publication diversity calls for broader topic inclusion by journals. Although general medical journals have distinct editorial policies, cross-journal differences remain underexplored. To compare trends of major research topics of clinical trials among leading general medical journals indexed in PubMed. A meta-research study was conducted for clinical trials in Lancet, NEJM, JAMA and BMJ from 1966 to 2022. Clinical trial numbers and their associated MeSH major topic categories were compared among journals, analyzing annual trends. We employed the Cochran-Armitage test for trend analysis. We discovered a total of 18925, 13899, 8630, and 5429 MeSH major topic categories from 7377, 5302, 2785, and 1853 published clinical trials in Lancet, NEJM, JAMA, and BMJ, respectively. Notable variations in topics were observed in 14 out of 19 MeSH major topic categories. Lancet and NEJM published approximately 30% of their clinical trials in the Chemicals and Drugs category and Disease category, surpassing JAMA's percentages of 22.5% and 27.7%, and BMJ's 14.0 and 25.4%, respectively (p < 0.0001). In contrast, NEJM published 3.1% of its clinical trials in the Health Care category, which was lower than Lancet's 4.5%, JAMA's 6.8%, and BMJ's 12.9% (p < 0.0001). There were distinct publication trends between NEJM and Lancet in seven MeSH major topic categories (p for trend < 0.0001). The topic mix of clinical trials differs systematically across four leading general medical journals from 1966 to 2022. These differences likely shape what evidence readers encounter in education. KEY MESSAGES: The NEJM published 34.7% of its clinical trials in the Disease category and 29.2% in the Chemicals and Drugs category, followed by Lancet, JAMA, and BMJ, which published 25.4% and 14.0% of their clinical trials in the same categories, respectively NEJM published only 3.1% of its clinical trials within the Health Care category, which was lower than 4.5% of Lancet, 6.8% for JAMA, and 12.9% for BMJ. When comparing all clinical trials in the PubMed database, NEJM demonstrated a higher-than-average proportion and an increasing trend of published trials in the Disease and Chemicals and Drugs categories, while BMJ exceeded the average publication in the Health Care category. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: research tables/charts Journal Article ougenre: Article language: English refInfo: holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
|---|