title: Quality of publications in emergency medicine.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The objective of this study is to describe emergency medicine (EM) publications in terms of methodology, approval by institutional review board, method of consent, external validity, and setting (eg, prehospital or emergency department).
  
  
  METHODS
  The 12 top-ranked emergency journals were selected. We manually reviewed the last 30 original articles in each EM journal, to represent more than 2 months of publications for all EM journals (range, 2-6 months). Only clinical original articles on human subjects were included. To ensure accurate data transcription, each article was read at least twice by 2 different reviewers and graded by written criteria using an extraction standard chart.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Over the articles reviewed, 330 were analyzed. One hundred eighty-nine (57.3%) were prospective studies; 29 (8.8%) were randomized studies. Two hundred twenty-six studies (68.5%) mentioned an institutional review board approval or a waiver of authorization, and an informed consent was not mentioned in 227 (68.8%) of studies. Fifty-nine (17.9%) were conducted in a prehospital setting. Two hundred thirty-eight (72.1%) of these studies were at single-center institutions; the Unite States contributed 158 (47.9%) of the total publications.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  This study describes publications in the field of EM. Randomized studies represent 9% of publications, most studies are cross-sectional, and more than half have a retrospective design. We found that, in one-third of the studies, an institutional review board review was not mentioned and informed consent was not specified in two-thirds of the studies. Emergency medicine research volume, quality, and grants activity must increase in order for EM to progress within academic medicine.
authors.affiliation: Department of Emergency Medicine, SAMU 31, Purpan Hospital, Toulouse University Hospital, Toulouse, France.
authors.forename: Vincent
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Bounes
authors.forename: Emilie
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Dehours
authors.forename: Vanessa
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Houze-Cerfon
authors.forename: Baptiste
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Vallé
authors.forename: Robert
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Lipton
authors.forename: Jean-Louis
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Ducassé
mesh_terms: D015706:Bibliometrics; D004635:Emergency Medicine; D016021:Epidemiologic Studies; D026724:Ethical Review; D028744:Ethics Committees, Research / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D005069:Evaluation Studies as Topic; D006801:Humans; D007258:Informed Consent / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D010506:Periodicals as Topic / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D036301:Qualitative Research; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic / Q000941:ethics / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D012107:Research Design / Q000592:standards / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012189:Retrospective Studies