2013 has been a year of relative stability at the Annals. After two years of rapid changes in staff and implementation of our electronic manuscript handling, this year we had time and people to consolidate. Authors in particular will have noticed the hard work of Kim Lewry, our Editorial Assistant, who has tracked down papers that were stuck in the system and has made a substantial contribution...

background & aim: a meta-analysis refers to the statistical synthesis of results from a series of studies and has been used to estimate pooled prevalence of human diseases. in this study, we review some statistical issues regarding the meta-analysis of the prevalence of human diseases such as statistical software and programs, transformations of prevalence rate, assessment of heterogeneity, and...

The purpose of this study was to examine trends in duplicate publication in Korean medical articles indexed in the KoreaMed database from 2004 to 2009, before and after a campaign against scientific misconduct launched by the Korean Association of Medical Journal Editors in 2006. The study covered period from 2007 to 2012; and 5% of the articles indexed in KoreaMed were retrieved by random samp...

Debates over the pros and cons of a "publish or perish" philosophy have inflamed academia for at least half a century. Growing concerns, in particular, are expressed for policies that reward "quantity" at the expense of "quality," because these might prompt scientists to unduly multiply their publications by fractioning ("salami slicing"), duplicating, rushing, simplifying, or even fabricating ...