Ana Marusic

University of Split · School of Medicine

Background: In the evaluation of research proposals, reviewers are often required to provide their opinions using various forms of quantitative and qualitative criteria. In 2020, the European Commission removed, for the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Innovative Training Networks (ITN) funding scheme, the numerical scores from the individual...

Aim: To evaluate the completeness of the description of nonsurgical periodontal therapy interventions in clinical trials registered in ClinicalTrials.gov and correspondence of registered information for trial participants and outcome measures with published articles. Materials & methods: We retrieved data from ClinicalTrials.gov and corresponding p...

We aimed to examine the differences in articles, peer review and editorial processes in Medical and Health Sciences vs. Social Sciences. Our data source was Open Research Central (ORC) portal, which hosts several journal platforms for post-publication peer review, allowing the analysis of articles from their submission, regardless of the publishing...

Established in 2015, the Multi-Stakeholder Engagement (MuSE) Consortium is an international network of over 120 individuals interested in stakeholder engagement in research and guidelines. The MuSE group is developing guidance for stakeholder engagement in the development of health and healthcare guideline development. The development of this guida...

Background: Global health diplomacy is the applied practice of foreign affairs to further national goals that focus on health issues requiring international cooperation and collective action. We aimed to determine how international diplomats and health policy-related professionals in the EU understand the concept of health diplomacy, which impacts...

The study aimed to examine whether the use of words related to different moral foundations can predict the perceived severity of research misconduct. We gave two groups of participants, undergraduate medical students, the same hypothetical scenarios of research misconduct cases containing words related to different aspects of morality, and asked th...

This book is about good and responsible research but you have to be also aware of research misconduct and other unacceptable research practices that may occur during the research process. This chapter offers a guide on what is considered research misconduct, and what other behaviours are considered unacceptable research practices. Moreover, the cha...

As an early career researcher, you will probably not be extensively involved in reviewing journal articles or research proposals, or editing scientific journals. However, reviewing, evaluating and editing are important aspects of research. As an early career researcher, especially after getting a doctoral degree, you may be invited by a journal to...

Background Systematic reviews (SRs) are invaluable evidence syntheses, widely used in biomedicine and other scientific areas. Tremendous resources are being spent on the production and updating of SRs. There is a continuous need to automatize the process and use the workforce and resources to make it faster and more efficient. Methods Information...

Background: Cochrane plain language summaries (PLSs) are an important format to present high-quality healthcare evidence to patients with cancer and their families. They should be written in a way everyone can understand, since they serve as a tool in decision-making and present a bridge to overcome the gap between the healthcare users and profess...

Universities and other research institutions are increasingly providing additional training in research integrity to improve the quality and reliability of research. Various training courses have been developed, with diverse learning goals and content. Despite the importance of training that focuses on moral character and professional virtues, ther...

Background: Reports of questionable or detrimental research practices (QRPs) call into question the reliability of scientific evidence and the trustworthiness of research. A critical component of the research ecosystem is the organization within which research takes place. We conducted a survey to explore the attitudes and beliefs of European and A...

Importance: Improving methodological quality is a priority in the health research community. Finding appropriate methods guidance can be challenging due to heterogeneous terminology, poor indexing in medical databases, and variation in formats. The Library of Guidance for Health Scientists (LIGHTS) is a new searchable database for methods guidance...

Organizational climate and culture are important for research organizations because they foster research integrity and responsible conduct of research, reduce questionable research practices, and improve job satisfaction. The aim of our study was to explore how employees and students perceive organizational climate and its consequences in the unive...

The Embassy of Good Science ( https://www.embassy.science ) aims to improve research integrity and research ethics by offering an online, open, 'go-to' platform, which brings together information on research integrity and research ethics and makes that information accessible, understandable, and appealing. It effectively organizes and describes res...

Structures for and practices of research integrity (RI) and research ethics (RE) differ among countries. This study analyzed the processes and structures for RI and RE in Europe, following the framework developed at the World Conferences on Research Integrity. We present RI and RE Country Report Cards for 16 European countries, which included the i...

We present the experience of journal editors in improving the quality of published papers. As the editors of the Croatian Medical Journal, a journal from the so-called scientific periphery, we realized, very early after the start of the journal in 1991, that our authors needed significant assistance with their articles. We worked individually with...

Background: The GRADE (Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation) approach is a system for transparent evaluation of the certainty of evidence used in clinical practice guidelines and systematic reviews. GRADE is a key part of evidence-based medicine (EBM) training of health care professionals. Objective: This study aimed...

BACKGROUND The GRADE (Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation) approach is a system for transparent evaluation of the certainty of evidence used in clinical practice guidelines and systematic reviews. GRADE is a key part of evidence-based medicine (EBM) training of health care professionals. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to...

Reports of questionable or detrimental research practices (QRPs) call into question the reliability of scientific evidence. The International Research Integrity Survey (IRIS) maps the opinions and behaviors of 2,300 researchers based in the US and 45,000 in Europe (including UK, Norway, Iceland and Switzerland)., and how they assess their instituti...

Universities and other research institutions are increasingly providing additional training in research integrity (RI) in an attempt to improve the quality and reliability of research. Various training courses have been developed, with diverse learning goals and content. Despite the importance of training that focuses on moral character and profess...

Background Health information and patient education on lifestyle changes may have a positive effect on the prevention of many chronic conditions, especially cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). We performed a parallel, three-arm randomized controlled trial (RCT) of 6-month educational intervention in a form of letters containing a reminder of the partic...

Background Lack of knowledge about systematic reviews (SRs) could prevent individual healthcare workers (HCWs) from using SRs as a source of information in their clinical practice or discourage them from participating in such research. In this study, we aimed to explore in-depth the opinion of a sample of HCWs about the newly created online educati...

This research analyzed and compared master’s theses deposits in institutional repositories of the SEA-EU Alliance universities in order to determine whether universities’ mandates to deposit master’s theses influence the number of theses deposited to the institutional repositories. We compared the universities’ institutional repository content focu...

Most ethics and research integrity (ERI) training approaches are based on teaching moral rules, duties or responsibilities, often not sufficiently addressing virtue-based ethics. This study aimed to obtain a consensus among relevant experts on the importance of essential virtues for ERI training and their acquisitions. A modified Delphi consensus p...

Background Publishing identifiable patient data in scientific journals may jeopardize patient privacy and confidentiality if best ethical practices are not followed. Current journal practices show considerable diversity in the publication of identifiable patient photographs, and different stakeholders may have different opinions of and practices in...

Fostering research integrity (RI) increasingly focuses on normative guidance and supportive measures within institutions. To be successful, the implementation of support should be informed by stakeholders’ experiences of RI support. This study aims to explore experiences of RI support in Dutch, Spanish and Croatian universities. In total, 59 stakeh...

Background Lack of knowledge of systematic reviews (SRs) could prevent individual health care professionals from using SRs as a source of information in their clinical practice or discourage them from participating in such research. Objective In this randomized controlled trial, we evaluated the effect of a short web-based educational intervention...

Various stakeholders in science have put research integrity high on their agenda. Among them, research funders are prominently placed to foster research integrity by requiring that the organizations and individual researchers they support make an explicit commitment to research integrity. Moreover, funders need to adopt appropriate research integri...

We assessed the methodological quality and transparency of all the national clinical practice guidelines that were published in Croatia up until 2017 and explored the factors associated with their quality rating. An in-depth quantitative and qualitative analysis was performed using rigorous methodology. We evaluated the guidelines using a validated...

The rising importance of preprints and the growing number of journals accepting them necessitate a (re)definition of an overlay journal and its place in today's publishing context. Using a snowball search strategy, we searched Web of Science and Scopus databases for articles on overlay journals. From these articles, we identified 28 overlay journal...

The introduction of interdisciplinarity and industry-academia collaborations (IAC) into higher education institutions (HEIs) and curricula as tools for promoting sustainable development has been debated both in academic and non-academic contexts. While overall rising trends in the acceptance of interdisciplinarity and IAC exist, research has stress...

Promoting and implementing research integrity is considered the joint responsibility and effort of multiple stakeholders in the research community. We conducted a scoping review and analyzed 236 research articles and grey literature publications from biomedical sciences, social sciences, natural sciences (including engineering), and humanities that...

Background To assess registration completeness and safety data of trials on human genome editing (HGE) reported in primary registries and published in journals, as HGE has safety and ethical problems, including the risk of undesirable and unpredictable outcomes. Registration transparency has not been evaluated for clinical trials using these novel...

The evaluation of grant proposals is an essential aspect of competitive research funding. Funding bodies and agencies rely in many instances on external peer reviewers for grant assessment. Most of the research available is about quantitative aspects of this assessment, and there is little evidence from qualitative studies. We used a combination of...

The Embassy of Good Science ( https://www.embassy.science ) aims to improve research integrity and research ethics by offering an online, open, 'go-to' platform, which brings together all information on research integrity and research ethics relevant for researchers, and makes that information accessible, understandable, and appealing. It effective...

Background Health research teams increasingly partner with stakeholders to produce research that is relevant, accessible, and widely used. Previous work has covered stakeholder group identification. Objective We aimed to develop factors for health research teams to consider during identification and invitation of individual representatives in a mu...

Background There is conflicting evidence on predictors of nursing degree completion. Identification of predictors of student desire to continue their education could be important in developing strategies for encouraging and supporting students to complete their university-level nursing education. Aim To explore the factors associated with the enro...

Research integrity, research ethics, and research misconduct are increasingly focusing on discussions in academic, professional, and research communities. As formal documents sending a message to the professional community about standards guiding professional behavior, ethics codes seem to be a good place for addressing responsible conduct of resea...

Background : The areas of Research Ethics and Research Integrity (RE+RI) are rapidly evolving. In the EU and internationally, new legislation, codes of conduct and good practices are constantly being developed. New technologies (e.g. gene editing), complex statistical methods (e.g. biostatistics), pressure to publish and obtain grants, and growing...

Background The European Charter of Patients' Rights (ECPR) presents basic patients' rights in health care. We analysed the characteristics of patients' complaints about their rights submitted through the official complaints system and to a non-governmental organization in Croatia. Methods The official system for patients’complaints in Croatia does...

Responsible research and innovation, or RRI, is a concept that aims to bring together society and science for a better future. There are six key elements of RRI: public engagement, gender equality, science education, open access, ethics and governance. Higher Education Institutions and Responsible Research and Innovation (HEIRRI) project aimed to b...

Global health diplomacy (GHD) is a novel concept in health with a focus on the interactions in foreign affairs. GHD coordinates policies for improving global health, which was particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic.This study aimed to evaluate how GHD can help healthcare professionals (HCP), and identify the problems for the HCP in practice as w...

Research integrity (RI) guidance documents often lack sufficient details on handling specific RI issues causing the lack of harmonized approaches to RI and opening the way to research misconduct and other detrimental research practices. Standard operating procedures (SOPs) are developed and implemented by organizations for ensuring the uniformity a...

Acute crises, such as a war or a pandemic, are the ultimate tests for health care systems’ resilience (temporary response to stress with change and adaptation) and antifragility (permanent benefit from change in response to stress). In this Health Policy paper, we analyse and discuss how the healthcare systems of two European countries – Bosnia and...

"The areas of Research Ethics and Research Integrity (RE+RI) are rapidly evolving. Guidelines, standards, and laws have been drafted in many countries, regions and institutions. However, the regulatory proliferation does not necessarily yield clear guidance for practice: researchers often lack up-to-date and easily accessible information and guidan...

We evaluated long-term publication outcomes of a workshop on planning and writing a research article attended by medical professionals. A prospective cohort study included 243 participants (68 men and 175 women) attending 18-h workshops on research planning and writing and 243 controls (78 men and 165 women) identified by participants as their prof...

Background: We assessed the ethics review of proposals selected for funding under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) and the European Research Council (ERC) in Horizon 2020, EU’s framework programme for research and innovation, 2014-2020. Methods: We analysed anonymized datasets for 3,054 MSCA individual fellowships (IF), 417 MSCA Innovative...

The widespread problems with scientific fraud, questionable research practices, and the reliability of scientific results have led to an increased focus on research integrity (RI). International organisations and networks have been established, declarations have been issued, and codes of conducts have been formed. The abstract principles of these d...

Objectives: We validated the Croatian version of the test using multiple-choice questions (MCQs) from the Claim Evaluation Tools item bank of the Informed Health Choices project, and measured the ability of high school students to appraise health claims. Setting: 16 high schools from the urban agglomeration of the city of Split, Croatia. Partic...

To foster research integrity (RI), it is necessary to address the institutional and system-of-science factors that influence researchers’ behavior. Consequently, research performing and research funding organizations (RPOs and RFOs) could develop comprehensive RI policies outlining the concrete steps they will take to foster RI. So far, there is no...

Background: Recognising the importance of addressing ethics and research integrity (ERI) in Europe, in 2017, the All European Academies (ALLEA) published a revised and updated European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity (ECoC). Consistent application of the ECoC by researchers across Europe will require its widespread dissemination, as well as...

Background: We assessed the ethics review of proposals selected for funding under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) and the European Research Council (ERC) in Horizon 2020, EU’s framework programme for research and innovation, 2014-2020. Methods: We analysed anonymized datasets for 3,054 MSCA individual fellowships (IF), 417 MSCA Innovative...

Background Navigating the rapidly growing body of scientific literature on the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is challenging, and ongoing critical appraisal of this output is essential. We aimed to summarize and critically appraise systematic reviews of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in humans that were available at the beginning of the pandemic. Methods Nin...

We have limited understanding of why reviewers tend to strongly disagree when scoring the same research proposal. Thus far, research that explored disagreement has focused on the characteristics of the proposal or the applicants, while ignoring the characteristics of the reviewers themselves. This article aims to address this gap by exploring which...

Organizational climate and culture may influence different work-related outcomes, including responsible conduct of research and research misconduct in academic or research organizations. In this scoping review we collected evidence on outcomes of interventions to change organizational climate or culture in academic or research settings. Out of 32,0...

In contrast to the principle-based approach to ethics and research integrity (ERI) training, which stresses the importance of following moral rules, the virtue-based approach focuses on developing good character traits. This study has aimed to explore what virtues mean in scientific practice and their suitable place in ERI training, using a qualita...

Webinar on February 17, 2020 ***Zoom Link*** - <https://ucl.zoom.us/j/93340220679?pwd=THhLcVk1Y094Y2t0WER3dnFSTmFudz09> . . . . Topic: Fostering international co-operation and junior researchers’ engagement during a pandemic Presenter: Israel Borges, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil Date: Wednesday 17th February, 4pm GMT (view in your t...

Background The European Charter of Patients' Rights (ECPR) presents basic patients' rights in health care. We analysed the characteristics of patients' complaints about their rights through the official system and non-governmental organizations in Croatia. Methods The official system for patients ’complaints in Croatia does not have a common proto...

Research integrity (RI) is a continuously developing concept, and increasing emphasis is put on creating RI promotion practices. This study aimed to map the existing RI guidance documents at research performing organisations (RPOs) and research funding organisations (RFOs). A search of bibliographic databases and grey literature sources was perform...

Many members of TV and newspaper crews were killed in the war against Croatia. Up to Jan~a!)' 1, 19~2, '14 deaths of journalists a~d TV and radio maintenance workers were recorded by the Croatian Medical Corps Headquarters. This paper presents a part of the medical forensic evidence regarding their deaths. The majority of killed reporters were Croa...

Most funding agencies rely on peer review to evaluate grant applications and proposals, but research into the use of this process by funding agencies has been limited. Here we explore if two changes to the organization of peer review for proposals submitted to various funding actions by the European Union has an influence on the outcome of the peer...

Background Public or patient versions of guidelines (PVGs) are derivative documents that “translate” recommendations and their rationale from clinical guidelines for health professionals into a more easily understandable and usable format for patients and the public. PVGs from different groups and organizations vary considerably in terms of quality...

Twenty one civilians, 5 women and 16 men, were found dead in their doorways and yards after Serbian terrorist attacked the village of Cetekovac on September 3, 1991. The age of the decedents ranged from 18 to 91 years. The oldest victims were women (aged 63, 68, 72, 86 and 91). The wounds found on 19 decedents were characteristic of long-range guns...

Abstract Background Knowledge assessment in evidence-based medicine (EBM) is usually performed by the measurement of memorised facts, understanding of EBM concepts and application of learned knowledge in familiar situations, all of which are considered lower-level educational objectives. The aim of this study was to assess EBM knowledge both on hig...

Scholarly journals are often blamed for a gender gap in publication rates, but it is unclear whether peer review and editorial processes contribute to it. This article examines gender bias in peer review with data for 145 journals in various fields of research, including about 1.7 million authors and 740,000 referees. We reconstructed three possibl...