The Study
Global mapping of randomised trials related articles published in high-impact-factor medical journals: a cross-sectional analysis
This study is like counting how many soccer games were played in different countries and who scored the most goals—it doesn't tell you which team is the best or if the games were fair. It only shows where people wrote about soccer, not whether the players were good.
Analysis score
Maximum 85 for a systematic review with meta-analysis.
Where the score came from
This study looked at all the big medical research papers published over 50 years to see who wrote them, where they came from, and which journals published them.
Where does this study sit?
Reviews of RCTs (Meta-analyses)
Max 100Randomized Trials
Max 90Reviews of Cohort Studies
Max 85Cohort Studies
Max 72Reviews of Case-Control Studies
Max 63Case-Control Studies
Max 58Cross-Sectional & Case Series
Max 50Expert Opinion
Max 529 / 100
Quality score
Systematic reviews and meta-analyses of cohort studies. They sit above a single cohort study but below a single randomized trial, because the underlying evidence is still observational.
Key takeaways
Summary
Based on the study abstract and findings.
- 1This means medical knowledge is shaped mostly by wealthy Western countries, even though most people in the world live elsewhere — so treatments may not reflect global health needs.
- 2The U.S.
- 3wrote nearly half of all major studies; the NIH funded almost 1 in 5; three journals (NEJM, The Lancet, JAMA) published 1 in 4 of all studies; the top 100 most famous studies were mostly in just three journals; and countries with most of the world’s people wrote less than 10% of the studies.
Score breakdown, methodology, conflicts of interest, evidence analysis & raw study data
Publication
Journal
Trials
Year
2019
Authors
F. Catalá-López, R. Aleixandre-Benavent, L. Caulley, B. Hutton, R. Tabarés-Seisdedos, D. Moher, A. Alonso-Arroyo
Related Content
Claims (6)
Between 1965 and 2017, countries with lower and middle incomes produced less than 10% of randomized controlled trial articles in top medical journals, even though they made up more than 80% of the world's population.
Between 1965 and 2017, three medical journals—The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, and JAMA—published 25.7% of all randomized controlled trial articles in high-impact medical journals.
From 1965 to 2017, the United States published nearly half of all randomized controlled trial articles in top medical journals, more than twice as many as the United Kingdom, and produced 56.5 such articles for every million people in its population.
From 1965 to 2017, the National Institutes of Health funded 7,422 randomized controlled trial papers in high-impact journals, more than any other single organization, and these papers made up 18.9% of all such papers in the analyzed set.
78% of the 100 most cited randomized controlled trial articles were published in a single journal, The New England Journal of Medicine, and all 100 were published in just nine journals total.
Analysis of RCT-related articles in high-impact journals from 1990 to 2017 shows that the most common keywords were 'clinical trial', 'therapy', and 'risk', indicating that research in these journals primarily focused on evaluating medical interventions and measuring health risks.
Not medical advice. For informational purposes only. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before making health decisions.