Typical errors of authors of manuscripts of medical scientific journals of Kharkiv National Medical University: analysis of editorial practice 2025

Abstract

In press

Background. The editorial office of the scientific journals of Kharkiv National Medical University has described its procedures for handling manuscripts, the design requirements, and the ethical standards for reviewers. It remained unknown which shortcomings authors make most often and how they are distributed across manuscript sections.

Aim. To classify typical shortcomings of manuscripts based on the editorial practice of three university journals in 2025 and to assess the prevalence of each category.

Materials and Methods. The general population comprised 144 articles published in 12 issues of the three university journals in 2025. Of these, 116 manuscripts, or 80.6% of the annual output, were analysed. The data source was the comments of editors and reviewers recorded in working files. The indicator was the proportion of manuscripts with at least one comment of a given category. Proportions were calculated in Excel 2019 (Microsoft, USA). The investigation was a private initiative of the authors, without grant funding, and the topic was not registered in the state register of scientific topics.

Research Ethics. The study involved neither patients nor laboratory animals; therefore, ethics committee approval was not required. The material comprised published articles and working files with personal data of authors and reviewers, so the confidentiality requirements for peer review were observed: reports are not disclosed and observations are given without author names or article titles.

Results. The most common were shortcomings of the abstract (65%), abbreviations (58%), and keywords (56%), followed by reference formatting and presentation of tables and figures (48% each), incompleteness of "Materials and Methods" and information about the authors (43% each), microtypography (41%), the aim (30%), and research ethics (28%). The second layer comprises shortcomings of content: material in the wrong section (27%), unsupported conclusions (21%), incorrect statistics (20%), design flaws (19%). All manuscripts required language editing.

Conclusions. The aim of the study was achieved. A classification of five groups was constructed and the prevalence of each category assessed. Seven of the ten most common shortcomings can be eliminated by the author unaided, without altering any scientific statement. The frequencies are minimum estimates. Shortcomings of content are recorded predominantly by reviewers rather than editors, which makes peer review an independent rather than a duplicating stage of manuscript preparation.

Keywords: publication ethics, double-blind peer review, academic integrity, article formatting, editorial practice, scientific periodicals.