The Rigor and Transparency Index Quality Metric for Assessing Biological and Medical Science Methods

IScience
Joe MenkeAnita E Bandrowski

Abstract

The reproducibility crisis is a multifaceted problem involving ingrained practices within the scientific community. Fortunately, some causes are addressed by the author's adherence to rigor and reproducibility criteria, implemented via checklists at various journals. We developed an automated tool (SciScore) that evaluates research articles based on their adherence to key rigor criteria, including NIH criteria and RRIDs, at an unprecedented scale. We show that despite steady improvements, less than half of the scoring criteria, such as blinding or power analysis, are routinely addressed by authors; digging deeper, we examined the influence of specific checklists on average scores. The average score for a journal in a given year was named the Rigor and Transparency Index (RTI), a new journal quality metric. We compared the RTI with the Journal Impact Factor and found there was no correlation. The RTI can potentially serve as a proxy for methodological quality.

References

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Citations

Mar 2, 2021·PLoS Biology·Stylianos SerghiouJohn P A Ioannidis
Apr 25, 2021·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Malcolm MacleodValda Vinson
Oct 29, 2021·Research Synthesis Methods·Qianying WangMalcolm Macleod

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Methods Mentioned

BETA
flow cytometry
transgenics
transgenic

Key Resources (RRID) Mentioned

BDSC_51324
SCR_004166

Software Mentioned

ARRIVE
ImageJ
TOP
PloS
STAR
One
Google Sheets
PMC
NEURON
SciScore

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