Most Published Papers on Clinical Epilepsy Lack Enduring Value

In the articles in press issue of the journal Epilepsy and Behavior, Drs. Gregoris and Shorvon from the United Kingdom published a compelling analysis assessing the importance of published research studies in clinical epilepsy.

The investigators created a method to assess the enduring value or importance of papers published in the field of epilepsy and established the method’s validity.

They studied 300 research papers published in 1981, 1991, and 2001(100 papers each year) and assessed their value in how often they were cited throughout the past year, in the past 10 years, and in standard epilepsy textbooks accompanied. The papers were also assessed by an experienced epileptologist. The researchers found the following:

• Of 300 papers studied, 71% were categorized as having no enduring value and only 11 or 4% were immediately identified as having high enduring value.

• The common characteristics of a publication with no enduring value were those that reported research that was inherently unimportant (55%), not novel (38%), or had significant flaws to its methodology (22%).

The authors concluded, although there are other reasons for publishing a paper, the fact that the great majority of published papers lack enduring value for advancing epilepsy knowledge should be a concern to the medical and scientific community.