Co-creation of a step-by-step guide for specifying the test-management pathway to formulate focused guideline questions about healthcare related tests.

Background: Guideline development on testing is known to be difficult for guideline developers. It requires consideration of various aspects, such as accuracy, purpose of testing, and consequences on management and people-important outcomes. This can be outlined in a test-management pathway.

Scoping review and evidence mapping of interventions aimed at improving reproducible and replicable science: Protocol.

Background: Many interventions, especially those linked to open science, have been proposed to improve reproducibility in science. To what extent these propositions are based on scientific evidence from empirical evaluations is not clear.

Aims: The primary objective is to identify Open Science interventions that have been formally investigated regarding their influence on reproducibility and replicability.

Aligning the principles and practice of research integrity and research fairness in global health: a mixed-methods study.

Introduction: In the past decade, global health research has seen a growing emphasis on research integrity and fairness. The concept of research integrity emerged in response to the reproducibility crisis in science during the late 2000s. Research fairness initiatives aim to enhance ownership and inclusivity in research involving partners with varying powers, decision-making roles and resource capacities, ultimately prioritising local health research needs.

Prevalence of responsible research practices among academics in The Netherlands.

Traditionally, research integrity studies have focused on research misbehaviors and their explanations. Over time, attention has shifted towards preventing questionable research practices and promoting responsible ones. However, data on the prevalence of responsible research practices, especially open methods, open codes and open data and their underlying associative factors, remains scarce.

Promoting trust in research and researchers: How open science and research integrity are intertwined.

Proponents of open science often refer to issues pertaining to research integrity and vice versa. In this commentary, we argue that concepts such as responsible research practices, transparency, and open science are connected to one another, but that they each have a different focus. We argue that responsible research practices focus more on the rigorous conduct of research, transparency focuses predominantly on the complete reporting of research, and open science's core focus is mostly about dissemination of research.

Prevalence of questionable research practices, research misconduct and their potential explanatory factors: A survey among academic researchers in The Netherlands.

Prevalence of research misconduct, questionable research practices (QRPs) and their associations with a range of explanatory factors has not been studied sufficiently among academic researchers. The National Survey on Research Integrity targeted all disciplinary fields and academic ranks in the Netherlands. It included questions about engagement in fabrication, falsification and 11 QRPs over the previous three years, and 12 explanatory factor scales.

Targeted test evaluation: a framework for designing diagnostic accuracy studies with clear study hypotheses.

Most randomized controlled trials evaluating medical interventions have a pre-specified hypothesis, which is statistically tested against the null hypothesis of no effect. In diagnostic accuracy studies, study hypotheses are rarely pre-defined and sample size calculations are usually not performed, which may jeopardize scientific rigor and can lead to over-interpretation or "spin" of study findings. In this paper, we propose a strategy for defining meaningful hypotheses in diagnostic accuracy studies.

Guidance was developed on how to write a plain language summary for diagnostic test accuracy reviews.

Objective: To develop guidance for authors of diagnostic test accuracy (DTA) reviews to help them write a plain language summary of the results of their review.

Study Design And Setting: We used a combination of focus groups, user testing, and a web-based survey. Participants included patient representatives, media representatives, and health professionals.

Erratum to: Methods for evaluating medical tests and biomarkers.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1186/s41512-016-0001-y.].

Barriers to making recommendations about medical tests: a qualitative study of European guideline developers.

Objectives: Development of medical test guidelines differs from intervention guideline development. These differences can pose unique challenges in building evidence-based recommendations to guide clinical practice. The aim of our study was to better understand these challenges, explore reasons behind them and identify possible solutions.

Circulating antigen tests and urine reagent strips for diagnosis of active schistosomiasis in endemic areas.

Background: Point-of-care (POC) tests for diagnosing schistosomiasis include tests based on circulating antigen detection and urine reagent strip tests. If they had sufficient diagnostic accuracy they could replace conventional microscopy as they provide a quicker answer and are easier to use.

Objectives: To summarise the diagnostic accuracy of: a) urine reagent strip tests in detecting active Schistosoma haematobium infection, with microscopy as the reference standard; and b) circulating antigen tests for detecting active Schistosoma infection in geographical regions endemic for Schistosoma mansoni or S.

Applying Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) to diagnostic tests was challenging but doable.

Objectives: The Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) Working Group developed an approach to assess the quality of evidence of diagnostic tests. Its use in Cochrane diagnostic test accuracy reviews is new. We applied this approach to three Cochrane reviews with the aim of better understanding the application of the GRADE criteria to such reviews.

Guidelines for guideline developers: a systematic review of grading systems for medical tests.

Background: A variety of systems have been developed to grade evidence and develop recommendations based on the available evidence. However, development of guidelines for medical tests is especially challenging given the typical indirectness of the evidence; direct evidence of the effects of testing on patient important outcomes is usually absent. We compared grading systems for medical tests on how they use evidence in guideline development.

The role of Chlamydia pneumoniae in acute respiratory tract infections in young children in The Gambia, West Africa.

Background: Little is known about the role of Chlamydia pneumoniae in the aetiology of acute respiratory tract infections (ARI) in children in developing countries.

Aims: To obtain better information, we studied the presence of C. pneumoniae and its association with clinical signs and symptoms of ARI in children under 5 years of age in The Gambia.

SARS transmission and hospital containment.

An outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) was detected in Singapore at the beginning of March 2003. The outbreak, initiated by a traveler to Hong Kong in late February 2003, led to sequential spread of SARS to three major acute care hospitals in Singapore. The critical factor in containing this outbreak was early detection and complete assessment of movements and follow-up of patients, healthcare workers, and visitors who were contacts.

Transmission dynamics and control of severe acute respiratory syndrome.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a recently described illness of humans that has spread widely over the past 6 months. With the use of detailed epidemiologic data from Singapore and epidemic curves from other settings, we estimated the reproductive number for SARS in the absence of interventions and in the presence of control efforts. We estimate that a single infectious case of SARS will infect about three secondary cases in a population that has not yet instituted control measures.