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Biomedical subjects

Fiona Godlee

Publications and source records attributed to Fiona Godlee.

15 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2005

Women in medicine.

Explore the source record for details and available documents.

Career Choice↗
PubMed2004

Effects of training on quality of peer review: randomised controlled trial.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the effects of training on the quality of peer review. DESIGN: Single blind randomised controlled trial with two intervention groups receiving different types of training plus a control group. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: Reviewers at a general medical journal. Interventions Attendance at a training workshop or reception of a self taught training package focusing on what editors want from reviewers and how to critically appraise randomised controlled trials. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Quality of reviews of three manuscripts sent to reviewers at four to six monthly intervals, evaluated using the validated review quality instrument; number of deliberate major errors identified; time taken to review the manuscripts; proportion recommending rejection of the manuscripts. RESULTS: Reviewers in the self taught group scored higher in review quality after training than did the control group (score 2.85 v 2.56; difference 0.29, 95% confidence interval 0.14 to 0.44; P = 0.001), but the difference was not of editorial significance and was not maintained in the long term. Both intervention groups identified significantly more major errors after training than did the control group (3.14 and 2.96 v 2.13; P < 0.001), and this remained significant after the reviewers' performance at baseline assessment was taken into account. The evidence for benefit of training was no longer apparent on further testing six months after the interventions. Training had no impact on the time taken to review the papers but was associated with an increased likelihood of recommending rejection (92% and 84% v 76%; P = 0.002). CONCLUSIONS: Short training packages have only a slight impact on the quality of peer review. The value of longer interventions needs to be assessed.

Education, Professional↗
PubMed2002

Making reviewers visible: openness, accountability, and credit.

Anonymity for peer reviewers remains the overwhelming norm within biomedical journals. While acknowledging that open review is not without challenges, this article presents 4 key arguments in its favor: (1) ethical superiority, (2) lack of important adverse effects, (3) feasibility in practice, and (4) potential to balance greater accountability for reviewers with credit for the work they do. Barriers to more widespread use of open review include conservatism within the research community and the fact that openness makes editors publicly responsible for their choice of reviewers and their interpretation of reviewers' comments. Forces for change include the growing use of preprint servers combined with open commentary. I look forward to a time when open commentary and review replace the current, flawed system of closed prepublication peer review and its false reassurances about the reliability of what is published.

Biomedical Research↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Can we achieve health information for all by 2015?

Universal access to information for health professionals is a prerequisite for meeting the Millennium Development Goals and achieving Health for All. However, despite the promises of the information revolution, and some successful initiatives, there is little if any evidence that the majority of health professionals in the developing world are any better informed than they were 10 years ago. Lack of access to information remains a major barrier to knowledge-based health care in developing countries. The development of reliable, relevant, usable information can be represented as a system that requires cooperation among a wide range of professionals including health-care providers, policy makers, researchers, publishers, information professionals, indexers, and systematic reviewers. The system is not working because it is poorly understood, unmanaged, and under-resourced. This Public Health article proposes that WHO takes the lead in championing the goal of "Universal access to essential health-care information by 2015" or "Health Information for All". Strategies for achieving universal access include funding for research into barriers to use of information, evaluation and replication of successful initiatives, support for interdisciplinary networks, information cycles, and communities of practice, and the formation of national policies on health information.

Access to Information↗