Magnitude of effects in clinical trials published in high-impact general medical journals is a research paper published in International Journal of Epidemiology (2011). On theSindex it has a DataRank of 1.9. It has been cited 40 times, with 29 citing works in its 1-hop citation network.
BackgroundPrestigious journals select for publication studies that are considered most important and informative. We aimed to examine whether high-impact general (HIG) medical journals systematically demonstrate more favourable results for experimental interventions compared with the rest of the literature.MethodsWe scrutinized systematic reviews of the Cochrane Database (Issue 4, 2009) and meta-analyses published in four general journals (2008-09). Eligible articles included ≥1 binary outcome meta-analysis(es) pertaining to effectiveness with ≥1 clinical trial(s) published in NEJM, JAMA or Lancet. Effect sizes in trials from NEJM, JAMA or Lancet were compared with those from other trials in the same meta-analyses by deriving summary relative odds ratios (sRORs). Additional analyses examined separately early- and late-published trials in HIG journals and journal-specific effects.ResultsA total of 79 meta-analyses including 1043 clinical trials were analysed. Trials in HIG journals had similar effects to trials in other journals, when there was large-scale evidence, but showed more favourable results for experimental interventions when they were small. When HIG trials had less than 40 events, the sROR was 1.64 [95% confidence interval (95% CI): 1.23-2.18). The difference was most prominent when small early trials published in HIG journals were compared with subsequent trials [sROR 2.68 (95% CI: 1.33-5.38)]. Late-published HIG trials showed no consistent inflation of effects. The patterns did not differ beyond chance between NEJM, JAMA or Lancet.ConclusionsSmall trials published in the most prestigious journals show more favourable effects for experimental interventions, and this is most prominent for early-published trials in such journals. No effect inflation is seen for large trials.
FAIR checklist signals are shown for context only and do not affect DataRank scoring.
Base Score Contribution
0.557
From this paper's citation signal
Citation Network Contribution
1.3
From 18 citing papers with measurable signal
Ranked by citation count — the same ordering the engine uses when summing log1p(Cq) over citers.
DataRank blends this paper's own citation count with the influence of the papers that cite it. Here, roughly 30% comes from its base citations and 70% from the citation network (18 citing papers contributed measurable signal).
Citers are pulled from OpenAlex sorted by cited_by_count:descand capped per paper, so when the cap binds we keep the highest-signal references and the score is reproducible across reruns.
Click a node to highlight its connections. Use scroll to zoom. Drag to pan.