Finishing Touches: Enhancing Scientific Communication Through Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes’ Technical Review

Scientific communication is not easy. Yet the sharing of scientific-related knowledge across diverse audiences has never been more important given the increasing number of research articles being published every year.¹ Communicating science effectively encompasses more than just enhancing the clarity of language for researchers—it is also about ensuring that science can be interpreted as consistently and reliably as possible by other types of readers, including clinicians, policymakers, and patients.² One of many indirect effects of the COVID-19 pandemic is that the general public has developed an increasingly vested interest in findings in medicine and public health. Accordingly, improving the overall clarity of scientific publications is paramount given the broader audiences.

Yet many well-recognized challenges currently impede how scientific information is properly shared and used from scientific publications.^3,4 The most notable include (1) suboptimal quality, consistency, or reliability of the information itself, (2) time constraints that hamper readers from sufficiently digesting the information, and (3) limited science training of those sometimes interpreting the information (including experts in some fields consuming detailed knowledge from fields outside their expertise). Of these challenges, ensuring the overall clarity and quality of information is central from the perspective of a scientific journal. This clarity is particularly important for the bit-sized, but critical, units of information presented in titles, abstracts, and tables and figures where readers typically concentrate their attention.⁵

At Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes (CQO), we have long considered these challenges in communicating scientific information. We too have experienced increasing interest in the complex research being published and shared through our journal over the past several years, and we have grappled with how best to insert ourselves in this communication process to support our authors and readers. After much consideration, we have decided to expand our efforts in engaging with scientific communication in our journal by creating a new Associate Editor position, the Technical Editor and Scientific Communications Liaison (ie, Technical Editor) to enhance the way in which science is communicated within our journal articles. We view the Technical Editor ultimately as an advocate for our readers who can help to direct us toward the needs of the audience as a article enters its final stages.

The primary focus of this role is to maximize the clarity and scientific impact of the original research published in our journal in a systematic way. The Technical Editor’s primary function will be to review original research articles in CQO nearing final acceptance for the clarity and consistency of communication of the scientific findings. This process is similar to those already in place at other American Heart Association journals, including Stroke, Circulation Research, and Atherosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology (ATVB). The Technical Editor, therefore, does not play a central role in judging the article’s value in regards to selection criteria such as scientific validity or priority. Rather, their focus is on how best the information that has been already determined to be valuable can be communicated most effectively and clearly to readers. We also see a secondary benefit that this additional role can ensure accurate communication so that it could further address scientific reliability concerns.

How will this work at CQO? At the time each original research article is accepted or accepted with revision internally, the Technical Editor will conduct an additional review focusing on the clarity of communication using a brief consistency checklist. This consistency checklist is mainly concentrated on the article title, abstract, tables, and figures. For the title, the Technical Editor reviews whether it is aligned with the article’s main objective and is sufficiently specific (eg, implies geography or disease state, as relevant). For the abstract, the Technical Editor similarly reviews whether the abstract’s objectives and data and interpretation presented are consistent with the overall article; for example, this review may include whether key results are left out of the abstract or whether some are perhaps overemphasized relative to the main article. For the figures and tables, the Technical Editor reviews what aspects could be improved to enhance clarity and consistency with the overall findings of the article (eg, identifying graphical elements that are distracting or those could be inserted to clarify the findings).

We aim to have the requested revisions be concise and focused, typically as 3 to 5 bullet points. These comments by the Technical Editor will be provided to the author as part of their official CQO acceptance, or acceptance with revision, letter in a new Technical Editor comment section. Inserting the requested revisions at this stage will ensure that (1) authors will not have to undertake any revisions that will not be published, (2) the edits will be incorporated before the proofing stage to maximize efficiency, and (3) publication of articles will not be delayed. We expect to eventually make a final version of the consistency checklist publicly available to authors in advance on our Instructions to Authors webpage.

Importantly, we do not expect this Technical Editor review process to be the conclusion of our scientific communication efforts in CQO. Over the coming months, we plan to develop additional strategies to highlight specific original research articles in our journal, in tandem with other American Heart Association journal Technical Editors and Media teams. We are specifically interested in enhancing digital media and social media opportunities to spotlight important findings and continuing our efforts to date on our Twitter social media platform through our social media editor. The American Heart Association also has a well-established and vibrant media team that widely promotes research using several different media.

Given the increasingly important need for our field to be as clear as possible, we believe that ensuring that consistent and reliable evidence is presented in our original research articles will not only improve the articles’ quality but also enhance the extent to which readers will discover and interact with our articles. Thus, we trust our authors and readers will find that this additional focus on the finishing touches of scientific communication will not only strengthen the individual articles but also result in wider attention and dissemination to the scientific community and beyond, ultimately enhancing their clinical and public health impact. As always, we are open to your comments and feedback as we develop this program further.

Article Information

Footnotes