METRICS – Nanoparticle-Based Cancer Therapy and Diagnostics

 

APJCP receives many manuscripts describing or studying the initial/interim reports of Nanoparticle-Based Cancer Therapy and Diagnostics results.  There are unrepresented variations in reporting quality and structure of these manuscripts bringing many uncertainties in the peer review process.  In the light of such a variation, there is a need to develop a consensus-based guideline for an objective quality improvement/assessment for authors as well as reviewers, and editors evaluating these reports and manuscripts.

Specific objectives: 

  • To develop, validate and publish a valid, reliable, and consensus-based guideline for authors reporting Nanoparticle-Based Cancer Therapy and Diagnostics study results.
  • To provide an objective tool to evaluate manuscripts reporting Nanoparticle-Based Cancer Therapy and Diagnostics studies

 

The Method

The road map for developing this tool (as a quality assessment instrument for reviewers and a quality improvement guideline for authors) includes six steps. A core working committee will develop an initial draft, and a scientific committee consisting of editors and scientists in the field of nanoparticle-based cancer therapy and diagnostics studies will comment, evaluate, and improve the initial draft. The whole process of the development consists of 6 steps (detailed below). The core working committee was involved in providing the first draft, managing the scientific committee’s consensus, and finalizing the guideline. In addition, three independent reviewers/editors are involved in step 5 (evaluating the reliability of the tool). The details of all steps are listed as follows:

  • Step one: A core working committee of four experts will develop the first draft of the checklist, going through the following steps:
    1. Comprehensive review of available relevant quality assessment tools
    2. Extracting important and relevant items from these tools and adapting these items in order to develop the guideline’s specific items.
    3. Developing new specific items that may not be covered by previous tools.
    4. Holding several rounds of Delphi and online meetings to finalize the first draft of the tool.
  • Step two: After developing the first draft, we will form a “scientific committee” including at least 10 editorial experts from different countries, various journals, and international societies. The core working committee will collaborate with scientific committee members to obtain their comments and suggestions for the draft item using a pre-defined electronic form, which aims to:
    1. Assessing the current items of the first draft of this tool, regarding some criteria such as CVI, CVR.
    2. Suggest any corrections or revisions to the current items
    3. Suggest any new items to be added to the first draft
  • Step Three: After collecting the scientific committee comments on the draft, the core working committee will provide a first final draft to be presented in an online meeting with all scientific and core working committee members to discuss on this version after a mini-workshop (to describe the consensus procedure) to evaluate face validity. At the end of the meeting, all final corrections will be made and the semi-final version will be approved.
  • Step Four: For psychometric and tool reliability evaluation we will conduct an online survey of at least 50 reviewers on the semi-final version of this tool a written comments and opinions if available. All questionnaires will be collected and summarized by analysis software, along with qualitative content analysis of open written comments. Considering the results of this step, this tool will be revised again by the core working committee, and a new revised tool will be developed.
  • Step Five: In this step, we will conduct another online survey, including 30 previously accepted and 30 preprint manuscripts (preferably from other journals rather than APJCP). All these papers will be assessed by three independent reviewers using our new revised tool. The data will be analyzed to calculate inter-observer reliability. If any item could not obtain enough reliability score, it will be revised or removed by a consensus between these three reviewers and core working committee members.
  • Step Six: The final revision of this tool will be provided to prepare the final version of this tool. Inviting scientific committee members, another online meeting will be held and all final changes are presented in this meeting. At the end of this meeting, the final tool will be approved by all members of both committees (core working and scientific). The final tool, along with the results of this multi-phase study, will be published by the authorship of all committee members and three independent reviewers.

 

The Core working group team:

The lead Contributor:

Dr. Abdolreza Mohamadnia, PhD, Associate Professor of Molecular Medicine, Chronic Respiratory Diseases Research Center, Dr. Masih Daneshvari Hospital, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences. 

The Core Committee members:

Dr. Neda Moattar Husseini, PhD, Chronic Respiratory Diseases Research Center, Dr. Masih Daneshvari Hospital, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences.

Aram Halimi, RN & MSc, Research Center for Social Determinants of Health, Research Institute for Endocrine Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences.

Prof. Alireza Mosavi Jarrahi, MSPH, Ph.D., Editor-in-Chief, Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
Prof. of Epidemiology, Medical School, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences.

Asal Amiri, MD Stu, Medical School, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences.

Interim Scientific Committee Members:

Dr. Abdolreza Mohamadnia, PhD, Associate Professor of Molecular Medicine, Chronic Respiratory Diseases Research Center, Dr. Masih Daneshvari Hospital, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences.

Prof. Alireza Mosavi Jarrahi, MSPH, Ph.D., Editor-in-Chief, Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
Prof. of Epidemiology, Medical School, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences

Dr. Neda Moattar Husseini, PhD, Chronic Respiratory Diseases Research Center, Dr. Masih Daneshvari Hospital, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences.

Aram Halimi, RN & MSc, Research Center for Social Determinants of Health, Research Institute for Endocrine Sciences, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences.

Prof. Alireza Mosavi Jarrahi, MSPH, Ph.D., Editor-in-Chief, Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
Prof. of Epidemiology, Medical School, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences.

Asal Amiri, MD Stu, Medical School, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences.

 

The project is still under development.  No product has been delivered yet.

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