Editors’ Choice: July 2026

Responsible research practices are top of our minds after recently attending the 9th World Conference on Research Integrity (WCRI) in Vancouver, Canada. It is likely of no surprise that artificial int...

jclinepi.com

The DECISION Study: Protocol for the Development and Internal Validation of a Multimodal Decision-Making Capacity Framework

Decision-making capacity (DMC) is a prerequisite for valid informed consent, as well as being a key methodological requirement in clinical and epidemiological research. For individuals with neurocogni...

jclinepi.com

Externally anchored covariate completion improved target-population effect estimation in meta-analysis with incomplete aggregate data: a simulation study

To develop and evaluate Externally Anchored Covariate Completion for Meta-analysis (EACC-Meta), a framework that enables target-population treatment effect estimation from incomplete aggregate data by...

jclinepi.com

Randomized, Controlled, and Real

The growing use of the term “real-world evidence” (RWE) has introduced a classification of clinical research based on its perceived proximity to routine practice rather than its methodological charact...

jclinepi.com

AI-enabled GRADE: How the GRADE Working Group will use automation to rate the certainty of evidence of intervention effects

The Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) Working Group is developing GRADErater (GRADE Rating Automation Through Enhanced Reasoning), an official, automated tool f...

jclinepi.com

A Study Within a Review (SWAR) to characterise rationales, methodological streamlining, and reporting guidance in published rapid reviews in health [Registered Report - stage I]

Rapid reviews are widely used to produce timely evidence for health and policy decisions, yet considerable heterogeneity exists in how they are justified, conducted, and reported. This study aims to c...

jclinepi.com

Harms Reporting Was Frequently Incomplete or Discordant in Biomedical Randomized Trials Published in 2023: A Meta-epidemiological Study

To characterize harms specification, harms reporting, concordance between specified and reported harms, transparency about harms reporting criteria, and equity-related harms reporting in randomized co...

jclinepi.com

Using an Open Science Checklist in Grant Proposal Reviews to Predict Reproducibility of Funded Publications

To determine whether an open science checklist can be useful for predicting the reproducibility of publications resulting from these grant proposals when used by grant referees assessing them.

jclinepi.com

A comparison of five statistical methods used to analyse longitudinal EORTC QLQ-C30 quality of life scores in randomised controlled trials: a simulation study

Quality of life (QoL) is an important component of cancer care. The European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire Core 30 (EORTC QLQ-C30) is widely used to e...

jclinepi.com

Sample Size Determination for Decision-centered Pragmatic Trials

To develop a decision-analytic (DA) method for sample size determination in pragmatic randomized trials (RCTs) aimed at selecting the better treatment. The method is anchored to the stakeholder-define...

jclinepi.com

Many multicenter randomized controlled trials do not account for center effect: a methodological review

Multicenter randomized controlled trials are considered the gold standard for evaluating medical interventions, yet they raise important methodological challenges related to center effects. We aim 1) ...

jclinepi.com

Patient Acceptability of the Modified Zelen Approach to Randomized Trials - A Survey of the CAPS THA Cohort

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are the gold standard for evaluating interventions, but when comparing established care pathways, informed consent processes may alter usual preference-related beha...

jclinepi.com

Small numbers of clusters in cluster randomised trials: a scoping review of problems and proposed solutions

Cluster randomised trials (CRTs) are commonly used to evaluate health service interventions, quality improvement programmes or public health initiatives that are implemented at a regional or organisat...

jclinepi.com

What’s the Meta Now? More Updates on the Problems with Systematic Reviews

Systematic reviews are intended to provide trustworthy evidence synthesis, yet previous iterations of this living review have identified numerous recurring problems in their conduct and reporting. Thi...

jclinepi.com

A scoping review of guidance on sharing trial results with patients and the public finds inconsistent recommendations and limited methodological development

To identify, analyse and summarise existing guidance on sharing trial results with patients and the public and to provide recommendations for developing a high-quality reporting guideline that is user...

jclinepi.com

Patterns of social determinants of health and their associations with health indicators: A latent class analysis

Social determinants of health (SDOH) are unevenly distributed and frequently co-occur, contributing to persistent health inequities. Analyses that examine SDOH individually may overlook important hete...

jclinepi.com

The performance of latent class analysis for clustering multiple long-term conditions is robust to the impact of high prevalence conditions

Living with multiple long-term conditions (MLTC) is increasingly common, posing challenges for healthcare systems and individuals alike. Identifying clusters of co-occurring conditions has been propos...

jclinepi.com

Characterizing updated and living meta-analyses Part 1: A methodological scoping review on methods for conducting meta-analyses in updated and living systematic reviews

Systematic reviews (SRs) provide the highest level of evidence for clinical and policy decision-making but quickly become outdated as new studies emerge. Updated systematic reviews (USRs) and living s...

jclinepi.com

Cochrane Evaluation of (Semi-) Automated Review Methods (CESAR): Protocol for an adaptive platform study within reviews

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to improve the efficiency of evidence synthesis and reduce human error. However, robust methods for evaluating rapidly evolving AI tools within the pract...

jclinepi.com

Response to Holm et al., “on the importance of multiple aspects of cluster validation in multimorbidity research”

We thank Holm et al. for their thoughtful comments on our simulation study [1], and we are pleased that they share our enthusiasm for placing validation at the center of multimorbidity clustering rese...

jclinepi.com

Protocol for a SPIRIT extension for reporting Pragmatic and Explanatory trial protocols designed using the PRECIS tool. (SPIRIT-PRECIS)

The need to design randomized controlled trials (RCTs) with explicit intent, either pragmatic or explanatory, and matching design features is well recognised. There is a need for clear, standardised r...

jclinepi.com

On the importance of multiple aspects of cluster validation in multimorbidity research

We read with great interest the timely simulation study by Ba Dhafari et al [1] comparing specific measures of cluster separation, stability, and outcome association as validation metrics for multimor...

jclinepi.com

Protocol for a CONSORT extension for reporting Pragmatic and Explanatory trials designed using the PRECIS tool. (CONSORT-PRECIS)

This research protocol outlines a systematic approach to updating the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) extension for Pragmatic trials, originally published in 2008. Pragmatic trial...

jclinepi.com

Methodological innovation to support incorporation of environmental impacts in health research

We would like to thank the authors (Charlinea et al, [1]) for their commentary to our paper and welcome the discussion about next steps to support environmental considerations in health technology ass...

jclinepi.com

Integrating environmental impacts into economic evaluation of health interventions: moving beyond isolated metrics

Re: Measuring the environmental impact of health interventions in randomized controlled trials—A scoping review.

jclinepi.com

Automated evidence surveillance with AI-enabled pre-ranking with cutoff in living guideline maintenance: a simulation study

Living guidelines are an emerging approach to ensure timely synthesis of the research evidence. However, pragmatic methods for maintenance are needed to ensure sustainability. Our study aimed to simul...

jclinepi.com

Author adherence and experiences with PRISMA-P 2015: a cross-sectional study

To explore systematic review protocol authors’ adherence to and experiences with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-analysis Protocols (PRISMA-P) 2015 reporting guideline.

jclinepi.com

Rating certainty of evidence when the target threshold is a value-based threshold and the point estimate is close to that threshold

It is crucial, when using GRADE, that authors are clear about what it is in which they are rating the certainty of evidence (i.e., the target of certainty of evidence rating). This article addresses c...

jclinepi.com

Assessing the trustworthiness of health guidelines recommendations: the Transparent, Rigorous, Usable, Standardised and Trustworthy Guide (TRUSTGUIDES) tools development

Health guidelines play a central role in informing clinical practice, public health measures and health policy. But their trustworthiness may be undermined by factors such as insufficient methodologic...

jclinepi.com

Frameworks to identify research gaps, frame research needs, and derive research priorities from evidence syntheses: a scoping review

To identify and describe frameworks for systematically identifying research gaps from evidence syntheses, framing research needs, and establishing priorities, with emphasis on their use of GRADE certa...

jclinepi.com