Ana Marusic

• Professor
• Chair at University of Split

Funding agencies rely on panel or consensus meetings to summarise individual evaluations of grant proposals into a final ranking. However, previous research has shown inconsistency in decisions and inefficiency of consensus meetings. Using data from the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, we aimed at investigating the differences between an algorithmic...

Background Plain language summaries (PLSs) of Cochrane systematic reviews are a simple format for presenting medical information to the lay public. This is particularly important in oncology, where patients have a more active role in decision-making. However, current PLS formats often exceed the readability requirements for the general population....

Background The publication of patient photographs in scientific journals continues to pose challenges regarding privacy and confidentiality, despite existing ethical guidelines. Recent studies indicate that key stakeholders—including health care professionals and patients—lack sufficient awareness of the ethical considerations surrounding patient p...

One well-established way of integrating ethics into the development of emerging technologies is the ethics review process which originated in biomedical research. This relies on an ex-ante review of research proposals through institutional bodies, usually known as research ethics committees (RECs). RECs are typically highly skilled in biomedical re...

Aim: To evaluate the scientometric characteristics of ar-ticles related to the Croatian War of Independence (1991–1995) published in the Croatian Medical Journal (CMJ) by analyzing citation trends and identifying key contributions to medical and societal research during and after the War (1991–2024). Methods: We manually identified war-related arti...

Background: Universities are increasingly offering training in research integrity (RI) to enhance research quality and foster RI. Despite the importance of integrating scientific virtues into such training, there is a lack of assessment of virtue ethics-based RI training. Methods: This was a randomised controlled study assessing the impact of a...

Background Artificial intelligence (AI) is present in preclinical, clinical and research work, in various branches of medicine. Researchers and teachers at school of medicines may have different ethical attitudes and perspectives about the implementation of AI systems in medicine. Methods We conducted an online survey among researchers and teacher...

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...

Research Funding Organizations (RFOs) play an important role in promoting research integrity (RI). Not only do they allocate resources to research institutions and researchers, but they also set and monitor research standards in their funded projects. In spite of their crucial role, there is a paucity of guidance on how RFOs can promote research in...

Introduction The GRADE-ADOLOPMENT methodology has been widely used to adopt, adapt or de novo develop recommendations from existing or new guideline and evidence synthesis efforts. This guidance refines the operationalization for applying GRADE-ADOLOPMENT. Methods Through iterative discussions, online meetings and email communications, the GRADE...

The assessment of problems identified by peer researchers during peer review is difficult because the content of these reports is typically confidential. The current study sought to construct and apply a glossary for the identification of methodological and statistical concepts mentioned in peer review reports. Three assessors created a list of 1,0...

Objective: To investigate differences between an algorithmic approach to summarise the informationfrom grant proposal individual evaluation reports (IER) to those resulting from consensus meeting reports(CR).Method: An exploratory comparative analysis of individual scores. The algorithmic approachemployed was a Bayesian hierarchical model resulting...

Background: Conflicts of interest (COIs) of contributors to a guideline project and the funding of that project can influence the development of the guideline. Comprehensive reporting of information on COIs and funding is essential for the transparency and credibility of guidelines. Objective: To develop an extension of the Reporting Items for pra...

BACKGROUND The publication of patient photographs in scientific journals continues to pose challenges regarding privacy and confidentiality, despite existing ethical guidelines. Recent studies indicate that key stakeholders—including health care professionals and patients—lack sufficient awareness of the ethical considerations surrounding patient p...

This cross-sectional study compared plain language summaries (PLSs) from medical and non-medical organizations regarding conclusiveness, readability and textual characteristics. All Cochrane (medical PLSs, n = 8638) and Campbell Collaboration and International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (non-medical PLSs, n = 163) PLSs of latest versions of s...

The quality of reporting practice guidelines is often poor, and there is no widely accepted ­guidance or standards for such reporting in health care. The international RIGHT (Reporting Items for practice Guidelines in HealThcare) Working Group was established to address this gap. The group followed an existing framework for developing guidelines fo...

In times of war raging on European soil, the academic community can help by doing what it knows best – documenting important evidence and publishing research. The experience of the Croatian Medical Journal (CMJ) editors during the Homeland War shows how a scientific journal can help during wartime (Marušić & Marušić, 2002). The CMJ published numero...

Background: After the fall of communism, post-communist Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries struggled to advance to the level of Western European countries of similar sizes, both in quality and quantity of their publication performance. (Gui et al., 2019; Hu & Zhang, 2017; Jurajda et al., 2017) The same may apply to the field of medicine,...

Background: Health literacy is a global problem and is particularly relevant when making health care decisions about small children. We analysed how parents of preschool children assess health claims and explored the predictors of their assessment skill. Background: Health literacy is a global problem and is particularly relevant when making health...

Background During health emergencies, leading healthcare organisations, such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (ECDC), and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), provide guidance for public health response. Previous studies have evaluated clinical practice gui...

of Findings (SoF) tables concisely present the main findings of evidence synthesis of health evidence, but how users navigate it to understand and interpret the presented information is not clear. We quantified the interaction of medical students with an SoF table while answering a knowledge quiz. Read&Learn tool was used to measure the number of t...

Introduction Non-pharmacological invasive interventions in cardiology are complex and often inadequately reported. Template for Intervention Description and Replication (TIDieR) checklist and guide were developed to aid reporting and assessment of non-pharmacological interventions. The aim of our study was to assess the completeness of describing i...

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 pu...

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 b...

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...

Publication and communication of research findings are important for the development of science, since future scientific work relies and builds on previous findings. However, this is not possible if researchers cannot trust the published work or if the principles of research integrity are not implemented in all phases of the research process, inclu...

Recently, initiatives to share data on peer review (Squazzoni et al, 2020) have brought about better understanding of the peer review process across different disciplines (Buljan et al, 2020, Squazzoni et al 2021a, Squazzoni et al 2021b). Some studies (Strang & Siler, 2015; Siler & Strang, 2016) examined the changes from initial submissions to jour...

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...

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...

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 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...