The value of publishing negative studies: Introducing IJS Short Reports

Abstract

© 2016 International Journal of Surgery Short Reports | Published by Wolters Kluwer Medknow in the correct direction, aid collaboration, and prevent duplication and wasted resources. Other issues our community grapples with are underpowered studies, poor statistical methods, poor reproducibility and external validity, and poor methodology and reporting of studies. Publishing negative results bring the focus away from the results themselves to the research questions, the hypothesis and the robustness of the methodology used to investigate it. Such studies are all too often rejected by journals due to the direction of their results, rather than the quality of the methodology and the data and the contextual significance of the research questions they answer.