Promotional language in radiology publications: increasing use of "excellent", "favorable", "promising", "robust", and "unique".

Purpose:  To investigate if radiology researchers are increasingly promoting their scientific findings by more frequently using positive words in their publications.

Materials and methods:  This study included all articles that were published in 14 general radiology journals between 2003 and 2022. The title and abstract of each article were assessed for the presence of positive, negative, neutral, and random words, according to predefined sets of words for each category. Usage of positive, negative, neutral, and random words was calculated for each year and corrected for the total number of articles in each year. Temporal trends between 2002 and 2023 and the relationship between positive word usage and journal impact factor (IF) were assessed.

Results:  Positive word usage (Mann-Kendall tau of 0.895, P< 0.001) and neutral word usage (Mann-Kendall tau of 0.463, P = 0.005) showed significant upward temporal trends. Negative word usage and random word usage did not show any significant temporal trends. Five positive words showed significantly increased usage over time and were present in more than 1 % of titles/abstracts in at least one year: "excellent" (Mann-Kendall tau of 0.800, P< 0.001), "favorable" (Mann-Kendall tau of 0.547, P< 0.001), "promising" (Mann-Kendall tau of 0.607, P< 0.001), "robust" (Mann-Kendall tau of 0.737, P< 0.001), and "unique" (Mann-Kendall tau of 0.747, P< 0.001). There was no significant association between positive word usage and journal IF.

Conclusion:  Radiology researchers appear to increasingly promote their scientific findings by more frequently using positive words in their publications over the past two decades.

Key points:   · Positive word usage in titles/abstracts has strongly increased between 2003-2022. · "Excellent", "favorable", "promising", "robust", and "unique" were most often used. · This trend occurred in all general radiology journals, regardless of impact factor.

Citation format: · Kwee T, Kwee R. Promotional language in radiology publications: increasing use of "excellent", "favorable", "promising", "robust", and "unique". Fortschr Röntgenstr 2024; 196: 945 - 955.