Rodolfo Pizarro ID
Head of Cardiology, Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires. Master in Clinical
Effectiveness.
Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Acta Gastroenterol Latinoam 2022;52(4):416-417
Received: 01/12/2022 / Accepted: 17/12/2022 / Published online 21/12/2022 / https://doi.org/10.52787/agl.v52i4.284
Assessing the quality of a scientific article has proven to be an elusive task. Bibliometrics is the value currently used for this purpose. Although the journal impact factor was not originally designed to determine the quality of research in a scientific article, it has become a surrogate for delineating the quality of a journal and even representing the quality of the individual articles in that journal.
The journal impact factor refers only to the journal in question and not to the metrics of the articles; it refers to the number of citations that the journal receives in a two-year period divided by the number of articles published in that period.
The impact factor is currently recognized as a surrogate for the impact of the articles in the journal and the individual authors who participate in it, but in essence that was not the original idea of the term.
Although there are other metrics that refer to citations, authors and journals (Eigenfactor, Citescore, Snip, Scimago, Article Influence Score, h-Index, Usemetric) they all respond to a certain quality of the scientific information.
Advances in computer technology at the beginnig of the 21st century have seen an explosive scientific publishing revolution that has included open access, online publication, and worldwide accessibility to these publications. These developments have made it evident that more sophisticated tools are required to delimit the quality of the material present in the scientific literature.
Research metrics are tools for measuring performance at the journal level and at the author level.
Today, social networks which have not yet been adequately measured (blogs, pots, Facebook, tweets and other network content) have a great impact on this advance in information.
This concept is now known as Altimetrics (alternatives to traditional metrics).
Alternate metrics provide additional insight into the usage of an article by looking at the social activity around the journal article.
The big problem with this information posted on the networks is its authenticity, but it is a reality that today the investigation runs this way, which arrives faster and is available to everyone.
Another consideration to take into account when looking for and reading scientific evidence is the research in journals of the specialty of our environment that present autochthonous epidemiological information that we cannot otherwise know and investigate.
It is of enormous importance to read the information from the magazines of our environment, since they provide research to contrast with the experience of other groups and allow us to know our reality.
Another important aspect is the language of origin of the reader of the evidence.
Although today the "best" evidence is associated with the English language to follow the advances of the specialty, it is a reality that not everyone knows how to read in English.
There is therefore room for publications that are halfway between high dissemination and state-of-the-art research that are capable of pouring into languages other than English the substance of the different advances and can provide truly substantial contributions.
In other words, the language of origin is essential to facilitate the updating of doctors who speak their language.
This is an essential function of specialized journals with high dissemination at the national level, which must guarantee the publication of works of scientific quality that, for reasons of market or strategy, do not culminate in more prestigious journals, since they have an impact on the formation of doctor's knowledge.
On the other hand, a linguistic and terminological field is created so that the advances of science are transmitted in the language of origin of the reader.
Beyond PubMed, we must prioritize the scientific information in our environment and understand that the sciences move constantly and that the impact factor of journals is not an irreversible condition of the individual quality of the articles, but rather understand that other “metrics” of the scientific evidence are useful for our daily medical activity.
Intellectual Property. The author declares that the data and tables that appear in this manuscript are original and were made in his belonging institution.
Funding. The author states that there were no external funding sources.
Conflict of interest. The author declares that he has no conflicts of interest in relation to this article.
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© 2022 Acta Gastroenterológica latinoamericana. This is an
open-access article released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license,
which allows non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction, provided the original author and source are
acknowledged.
Cite this article as: Pizarro Rodolfo. How to Search for and Read the Medical Research beyond the PubMed. New Insights Regarding the Evidence. Acta Gastroenterol Latinoam. 2022;52(4):416-417. https://doi.org/10.52787/agl.v52i4.284
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Correspondence: Rodolfo Pizarro
Email: rodolfo.pizarro@hospitalitaliano.org.ar
Acta Gastroenterol Latinoam 2022;52(4):416-417