Peer review and the editorial process yield frequent improvements in research abstracts of randomized clinical trial (RCT) reports, according to a research letter published online Sept. 2 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Christos P. Kotanidis, M.D., D.Phil., from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and colleagues assessed abstracts of all RCT reports submitted to the New England Journal of Medicine in 2022 to examine how the quality of abstracts changes between submission and publication.

Of the submissions to NEJM in 2022 that were matched to PubMed records, 496 were RCTs: 156 were published in the NEJM, and 340 were rejected and published in 128 other journals. The researchers found that published abstracts improved in 0.9 domains on average; 59% of abstracts improved. The most frequently modified domain was the conclusion (44.2%).

Overall, 72.1% of the 229 abstracts published in the five general medicine journals with a journal impact factor above 50 improved in at least one domain compared with 48.3% of the 267 abstracts published in other journals. This difference was consistent across domains of the abstract, with changes in the conclusion being the most different (48 versus 27%). Substantive improvements were seen in more than half of the abstracts published in non-open access journals (61.5%) compared with 39.2% of abstracts published in open access journals.

“Our results highlight the substantial revisions and improvements that occur between submission and publication, supporting the value of editorial oversight in ensuring research is communicated with accuracy and integrity,” the authors write.

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