Mediocrity of clinical publications & research

• Author Details:   
• Abhijit Trailokya
• Nikita Pandit
• Sunil Chaudhry ^*

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Mediocrity of publications refers to the quality of a publication being average or below average. This is basically due to naïve writers, new graduates, and those seeking publications for appearing in postgraduate examinations or those seeking promotion within academic institutes, without having real interest in publications (Forceful publication or publication under pressure).  These writers are forced to write and publish, thus their work is often below average. A low-quality study is one where the findings are uninterpretable. Poor interpretability may also be due to imprecise results, demonstrated by wide confidence intervals around effect estimates, means, or proportions. Errors occur when researchers make mistakes in data analysis or presentation. Types of bias in research are design bias, participant bias, analysis, and data collection bias. According to recent estimates, there are currently over 15,000 predatory journals worldwide These often publish low-quality data. It has been observed that a significant proportion of contributions to predatory journals come from academicians affiliated with state universities, with government college professionals being the next most common contributors. Although these journals often present themselves as being based in Western countries like the United States or the United Kingdom, many are actually operated from nations in South Asia, the Middle East, and parts of Africa. The consequences for researchers publishing in predatory journals are damage to their reputation and credibility issues and they cause menace.  More than half of the journals that appear to be predatory are in the areas of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Health & Medical Science.

Keywords: Predatory journals, Poor writing, Inadequate Literature review, Forced writing, Unindexed journals