How can publication bias be prevented?

Bias can be minimized by (1) insisting on high-quality research and thorough literature reviews, (2) eliminating the double standard concerning peer review and informed consent applied to clinical research and practice, (3) publishing legitimate trials regardless of their results, (4) requiring peer reviewers to ...

How do you counter publication bias?

Publication bias may be reduced by journals by publishing high-quality studies regardless of novelty or unexciting results, and by publishing protocols or full-study data sets.

What are the methods for publication bias?

Of the methods available to researchers for the detection of publication bias, one of the simplest is the funnel plot. This is a scatterplot of the estimate of effect from each study in the meta-analysis against a measure of its precision, usually 1/SE (Figure 1A).

What is the main cause of publication bias?

Of the several reasons of this bias the important ones are rejection (by editors, reviewers), lack of interest to revise, competing interests, lack of motivation to write in spite of conducting the study.

How do you control bias in reporting?

During the study: Open science practices, such as making de-identified data and analytical code publicly available through platforms like GitHub or the Open Science Framework aids reproducibility, prevents duplication, reduces waste, accelerates innovation, identifies errors and prevents reporting biases.

Understanding Publication Bias in Research

What is an example of publication bias?

For example, a researcher may cite their own published work more often than expected because researchers tend to refer to their own work more frequently. Moreover, they often overestimate the number of times their work has been cited.

How do you avoid bias in a literature review?

What is the problem with publication bias?

In preclinical and experimental research, this bias may seriously distort the literature, drain scarce resources by undertaking research in futile quests, and lead to misguided research and teaching practices.

What is the risk of publication bias?

Specifically, the conclusions of the review may be compromised when decisions about how, when and where to report results of eligible studies are influenced by the nature and direction of the results. This is the problem of 'non-reporting bias' (also described as 'publication bias' and 'selective reporting bias').

How do you deal with publication bias in meta-analysis?

What is the best test for publication bias?

Egger's test is commonly used to assess potential publication bias in a meta-analysis via funnel plot asymmetry (Egger's test is a linear regression of the intervention effect estimates on their standard errors weighted by their inverse variance).

How is publication bias an ethical issue?

Apparently, publication bias poses serious threats to the integrity of scientific research. It prevents us from consuming objective, true, and unbiased research, and introduces much error in what we read and believe. Thus, publication bias and relevant topics should be addressed in research ethics modules and courses.

What type of bias is publication bias?

Publication bias is a type of reporting bias and closely related to dissemination bias, although dissemination bias generally applies to all forms of results dissemination, not simply journal publications.

Is publication bias intentional?

Bias may be introduced intentionally or unintentionally, consciously or unconsciously, into the process of research dissemination. 3,18 The dissemination profile of research may be influenced by investigators, study sponsors, peer reviewers, and journal editors.

Does GREY literature reduce publication bias?

Gray literature may thusly reduce publication bias, increase reviews' comprehensiveness and timeliness, and foster a balanced picture of available evidence. Gray literature's diverse formats and audiences can present a significant challenge in a systematic search for evidence.

Is reporting bias the same as publication bias?

Reporting bias (publication bias or outcome reporting bias) occurs when the decision to report depends on the direction or magnitude of the findings. In clinical research, registration of trials prior to data collection is used to prevent selective reporting ( Chan et al., 2017; Gopal et al., 2018).

How do you reduce bias in a peer review?

While increasing transparency is one way to reduce bias, another approach is double-blind peer review. A study suggests that early career researchers tend to prefer double-blind peer review as it can reduce bias against authors with less experience, female authors, or authors from minority groups.

How do you assess publication bias in a systematic review?

Another technique for assessing publication bias, known as the “fail-safe N method” or “Rosenthal analysis”⁸, involves identifying the number of additional negative studies that would be needed to increase the P-value in a meta-analysis to above 0.05.

What is language of publication bias?

Publication in other languages can sometimes be regarded as of secondary importance. Studies publishing positive results might also be more likely to publish in English. Reading and using only English language research could provide a biased assessment of a topic, and can lead to biased results in systematic reviews.

What does it mean that a publisher or author has bias?

Publication bias refers to a phenomenon in scientific reporting whereby authors are more likely to submit and journal editors are more likely to publish studies with “positive” results (i.e. results showing a significant finding) than studies with “negative” (i.e. supporting the null hypothesis) or unsupportive results ...

Is selective reporting publication bias?

While publication bias occurs when the entire study is unpublished, selective outcome reporting occurs when trials collect a number of outcomes and, post hoc, publish only selected ones. Both biases result in non-significant outcomes being omitted from meta-analyses.

What are the 3 main types of bias?

Three types of bias can be distinguished: information bias, selection bias, and confounding. These three types of bias and their potential solutions are discussed using various examples.

What is publication bias and Type 1 error?

Publication bias, otherwise known as the file drawer problem, is the idea that research papers rejecting a null hypothesis as a consequence of Type I errors are published while those that support the same null hypothesis are, instead, shoved into a file drawer where no one can access them (Rosenthal, 1979).

Does publication bias cause heterogeneity?

Our results show that the effect of publication bias on the Q test and assessment of heterogeneity is large, complex, and nonlinear. Publication bias can both dramatically decrease and increase heterogeneity in true effect size, particularly if the number of studies is large and population effect size is small.

Does publication bias affect meta-analysis?

Publication bias is a serious problem in systematic reviews and meta-analyses, which can affect the validity and generalization of conclusions. Currently, approaches to dealing with publication bias can be distinguished into two classes: selection models and funnel-plot-based methods.