Author: Amanda Ehrhardt

Do Changes Actually Create Change?

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Amanda Ehrhardt, MA, JAMA Network

Part of the purpose of the AMA Style Insider is to report on changes made in the AMA Manual of Style that aim to improve not only the editing process but also advance ethics and equity in medical publishing. Changes are not made arbitrarily but as a result of many experts building consensus on what represents best practices, and they’re made to create a widespread standard.

However, the manual can only release these standards to the world–what requires more follow up is whether the changes are actually implemented in publishing and how successful they are in creating new standards.

This year, in JAMA Network Open, several JAMA Network editors and staff published a cross-sectional study1 that examined race and ethnicity reporting across 3 JAMA Network journals before (January to March 2019 and May to July 2021) and after (January to March 2022) the implementation of the Updated Guidance on the Reporting of Race and Ethnicity in Medical and Science Journals2 in August 2021 (which was based on revisions made to 11.12.3 of the style guide).

Among the key takeaways were that the number of articles that reported race and ethnicity information for study participants increased by 10.4% from 2019 to 2022, more articles reported participants’ age or sex and gender, and the number of articles that defined categories included in the term “other” increased 58.1% from 2019 to 2022.

Additionally, the number of articles that listed racial and ethnic group categories by alphabetical order increased by 75.9% between 2021 and 2022, and there was a 24.1% increase in the number of articles that defined how race and ethnicity were determined.

Although this study had limitations (which are clearly stated in the article) and more improvement is needed, these results seem encouraging that AMA Style Manual updates are not made just to alter the day-to-day of editors across medical publishing, but to potentially create real and lasting change.

References

  1. Flanagin A, Cintron MY, Christiansen SL, et al. Comparison of reporting race and ethnicity in medical journals before and after implementation of reporting guidance, 2019-2022. JAMA Netw Open. 2023(6):e231706. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.1706
  2. Flanagin A, Frey T, Christiansen SL, et al. Updated guidance on the reporting of race and ethnicity in medical and science journals. JAMA. 2021;326(7):621-627. doi:10.1001/jama.2021.13304

September 5, 2023.

It’s All About Access

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Amanda Ehrhardt, MA, JAMA Network

Let’s take a little jaunt through time to before the pandemic days (remember those?) and look at one of the most downloaded and cited articles in the history of the JAMA Network. Perhaps you’ll recognize the title (or, more likely, the author).

As you move toward the reference section of this article by our former president, you may notice that something looks a bit different about the first citation.

It’s subtle, but according to the newest edition of the AMA Manual of Style, 3.15.3, the location of the published and access dates now comes before the URL in electronic references, and there is no longer a period after the URL.

If President Obama’s article were published today, that reference would look like this:

  1. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. National Health Expenditure Data: NHE tables. Published December 3, 2015. Accessed June 14, 2016. https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/NationalHealthAccountsHistorical.html

Just as access to health care is important, so is the access date in articles!

IQR You Serious?!

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Amanda Ehrhardt, MA, JAMA Network

Compared with navigating the treacherous waters of causal language, or throwing down the proverbial gauntlet against the terms renal and mutation, upholding AMA Manual of Style rules regarding abbreviations and when to expand them may seem like Not That Big of a Deal. If you had to plot the interquartile range for feelings surrounding this task, it may go something like this:

The median response toward expanding an abbreviation was “Meh” (interquartile range, “Yuck!” to “Yay!”).

However, one of the beautiful things about style rules is that they evolve and adapt with changes in cultural and societal outlooks and the editing process, and they occasionally throw you a colorful floatie while you’re swimming in copy.

That interquartile range that I’ve mentioned several times now? Well, check out the Common Abbreviations and Expansions table in the updated version of 13.11.

That’s right, it’s IQR! From beginning to end! No expansion necessary anymore!

So perhaps we should reassess that statement from the beginning?

The median response to learning that IQR no longer needs to be expanded was “Woohoo!” (IQR, “Cool.” to “Best thing ever!”).