Analysis of the structural quality of articles published in Iranian scientific medical journals based on the Standard of International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE)

The Structure of articles based on scientific standards is one of factors that affects the quality of papers. The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the structural quality of articles published in Iranian scientific journals of Medical Sciences based on International Standards Committee of Medical Journal Editors during 2010-2012. This descriptive study was performed on 150 articles from 15 medical journals. The journals were selected through simple randomized sampling and the articles were selected using systematic randomized sampling. The articles matching degree with ICMAJE was analysed according to a researcher-designed checklist using Binomial trial, Kruskal-Wallis and Mann–Whitney tests at the significant level P<0.05. The results showed that the sections allocated to tables (94/09%), results(85/77%), and introduction (82/16%) matched with the instructions given received the most scores and had a favorable rank However, methodology section (64/4%), abstracts (61/37%), figures and abbreviations (59/32%), and pictures (16/89%) received the lowest ratings. Besides, it was found that there was a significant difference between the articles with regard to their mean scores considering their matching with the above instruction and their subject matter (P=0.000). But the scores of the articles, their publishing year, and their language(s) were not significant (P=0.07). The present study showed that the structural quality of the articles has various problems, which necessitates more proficiency in basics of Essay Writing on the part of writers. and editors’ more careful review of various sections of the articles.