Matko Marušić

Master's theses represent a substantial yet often underutilised form of scholarly output, containing original empirical, theoretical and methodological contributions. Despite their scientific value, access to master's theses has historically been limited. A 2019 pilot study of six universities in the SEA‐EU Alliance assessed the openness of master's theses within institutional repositories. We conducted a five‐year follow‐up analysis including three newly joined universities, resulting in a sample of nine universities. Institutions were categorised based on legal and institutional policies regulating repository deposition: (1) mandatory public deposit of all theses, (2) mandatory deposit of selected theses, (3) voluntary public deposit and (4) no regulations. Master's thesis availability in 2023 was compared with 2019 baseline data. Across most universities, no substantial improvement in open access availability was detected after 5 years. In several cases, accessibility declined. The overall reduction was largely attributable to decreased openness in Engineering and technology and in Medical and health sciences. Despite increased attention to open science, accessibility of master's theses remains stagnant. We recommend clearer student‐centred copyright policies, guidance on ethical dissemination, improved repository functionality, incentives for supervisors and departments, and enhanced methodological and scientific‐writing support to foster a culture of openness.

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 articles from the CMJ website and screened them based on their titles and abstracts. We then retrieved their citation data using the Clarivate Web of Science and analyzed their citation met-rics, journal impact factors (IF), and quartiles. Articles were categorized by research focus, publication type, and citation frequency.Results: CMJ published 301 war-related articles, most of which appeared in 1992. They acquired 2,544 citations, pri-marily in Web of Science-indexed journals, with 68.9% of citations occurring in international journals. The majority of citations were from journals in the third quartile (32.4%), with only 2.3% occurring in top-tier journals (IF > 10). Key re-search topics included the psychological impacts of war (e.g., PTSD), public health, and healthcare system reorganization. Articles on secondary traumatic stress in war veterans’ fam-ilies, systematic rape during the war, and advancements in forensic DNA analysis were among the most cited articles, with individual citation counts of 78, 76, and 73, respectively.Conclusion: CMJ played an important role in documenting the medical and societal impacts of the War of Independence, advancing knowledge on psychological trauma, healthcare organization during the war, and human rights issues. Despite modest representation in high-impact journals, the articles made visible contributions to global discussions on war-related health research. CMJ’s innovative editorial pol-icies, including its author-supportive pre-review process, fostered excellent research during and after the war. This analysis emphasizes the importance of CMJ in addressing the multifaceted consequences of the war, both as a plat-form for scholarly collaboration and as a repository of his-torical and educational value.

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 numerous scientific articles on various aspects of war (Marušić & Marušić, 2012; Marusic, Markulin, Lukic, & Marusic, 2006). To attract more authors to write about war and to improve the quality of the submissions CMJ editors introduced an authorhelpful prereview (Marusic & Marusic, 2001). CMJ editors worked with the authors to help them prepare their manuscripts until they were ready for an external peer review. Editorial staff working closely with authors formed the cornerstone of CMJ editors' work and became a unique approach in the world of medical journals (Marušić & Marušić, 2002, 2022). In October 2022, the directors of the postgraduate doctoral program Translational Research in Biomedicine (TRIBE), decided to use that experience and together with the editorial board of the ST-OPEN journal, which is now led by the former editors of CMJ, launch the Giving Voice project to help Ukrainian authors write reports about the war in Ukraine. We named the project Giving Voice because we wanted to give a platform to voices that often are not heard loud enough, particularly those that do not belong to academic elites: students, refugees, vulnerable and marginalized groups, and others whose lives have been disrupted by war. In collaboration with the ST-OPEN editorial staff, we are inviting interested authors from Ukraine to send us their manuscripts. ST-OPEN is an interdisciplinary journal so we welcome contributions from all scientific fields. We will re-employ the author-helpful prereview. Our help will include assistance with study planning, statistics, writing, and English language editing to make the obtained data publishable. Other experts who would like to become a part of our network of mentors are more than welcome. All articles will go through a formal external review process, so we cannot guarantee that all will be accepted for publication, but we will do our best to make them publicationready. Although many projects are aimed at helping the academic community in Ukraine, to our knowledge, our approach is unique. Additional details about the Giving Voice project, already published articles, and similar projects are listed on the project website (Sapunar, 2022). As members of the academic community, we can make a difference within our professional realm. We should not only be a simple service for publishing articles but also, perhaps more importantly, agents of change for the scientific community. As directors of the TRIBE doctoral program, we aim to educate scientists to solve research problems and write reports about them. We should not only try to provide future scientists with knowledge and skills or gather them around the key values – we should also help create enlightened agents of change and equip them with leadership qualities accompanied by social and moral accountability (Frenk et al., 2010). We will extend the same efforts to the authors and mentors who decide to take part in the Giving Voice project.

In this article, we suggest a blueprint for an ideal open-access repository for clinical trial data with a description of a model of such a repository using a business process analysis approach. Firstly, we suggested which features an ideal repository should have. Secondly, we used business process management software to describe the whole process, from the decision to share clinical trial data to either publication of data in a repository or discarding data. The research community, legislators and society at large should be interested in a transparent open-access repository that will host clinical trial data. We hope this work can inspire relevant stakeholders to engage in discussion about the necessity of creating such repository, and that we will witness the creation of such a repository in the near future.

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 journal authors and then moved this activity to the next stage – intensive workshops for authors. The work with the journals enabled us to extend these activities to graduate and postgraduate students – future authors.

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 participant’s CVD risk with or without Cochrane blogshots to reduce CVD risk among women aged 45–65 with one or more known CVD risk factors. Methods: The control group received a letter about their CVD risk at the beginning of the trial. The intervention groups received the initial letter about their CVD risk and remainder letters about their CVD risk every 2 months, with or without Cochrane blogshots: (1) effect of calcium in the prevention of high blood pressure, (2) effect of reducing saturated fat acids in eating habits, and (3) effects of green and black tea in CVD prevention. The primary outcome was CVD risk reduction calculated as the difference between the baseline and 6-month score for a 10-year risk of fatal CVD according to the ACC/AHA guidelines. Results: After both interventions, CVD risk reduction was significantly higher compared to the control group (P < 0.001, Kruskal-Wallis H test). The number of participants who decreased their CV risk was 29% (20/70) in the control group, 69% (48/70) in the group receiving the reminder letters, and 70% (49/70) in the group receiving the reminder letters and blogshots. The number needed to treat to achieve risk reduction was 2.41 (95% CI = 1.77 to 3.78) for letters with a CVD risk reminder and 2.50 (1.81 to 4.03) for letters with a reminder and a blogshot. The group receiving reminder letters with Cochrane blogshots had a significant change in the category of CVD risk, mainly from high to moderate and from moderate to low CVD risk category. Conclusions: A simple and inexpensive intervention method in a form of letters reminding women about their CVD risk with or without providing additional health information in the form of Cochrane blogshots about interventions for important CVD risk factors may be effective in CVD management and could be considered by primary care providers. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT04601558. Retrospectively registered on October 19, 2020

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 publishing patient photographs. Objective: This scoping review aimed to identify existing evidence and map knowledge gaps in medical research on the policies and practices of publishing identifiable photographs in scientific articles. Methods: We performed a comprehensive search of the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, CINAHL with Full Text, Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects, Ovid MEDLINE, and Scopus. The Open Science Framework, PROSPERO, BASE, Google Scholar, OpenGrey, ClinicalTrials.gov, the Campbell Collaboration Library, and Science.gov were also searched. Results: After screening the initial 15,949 titles and abstracts, 98 (0.61%) publications were assessed for eligibility at the full-text level, and 30 (0.19%) publications were included in this review. The studies were published between 1994 and 2020; most had a cross-sectional design and were published in journals covering different medical disciplines. We identified 3 main topics. The first included ethical aspects of the use of facial photographs in publications. In different clinical settings, the consent process was not conducted properly, and health professionals did not recognize the importance of obtaining written patient consent for taking and using patient medical photographs. They often considered verbal consent sufficient or even used the photographs without consent. The second topic included studies that investigated the practices and use of medical photography in publishing. Both patients and doctors asked for confidential storage and maintenance of medical photographs. Patients preferred to be photographed by their physicians using an institutional camera and preferred nonidentifiable medical photographs not only for publication but also in general. Conventional methods of deidentification of facial photographs concealing the eye area were recognized as unsuccessful in protecting patient privacy. The third topic emerged from studies investigating medical photography in journal articles. These studies showed great diversity in publishing practices regarding consent for publication of medical photographs. Journal policies regarding the consent process and consent forms were insufficient, and existing ethical professional guidelines were not fully implemented in actual practices. Patients’ photographs from open-access medical journals were found on public web-based platforms. Conclusions: This scoping review showed a diversity of practices in publishing identifiable patient photographs and an unsatisfactory level of knowledge of this issue among different stakeholders despite existing standards. Emerging issues include the availability of patients’ photographs from open-access journals or preprints in the digital environment. There is a need to improve standards and processes to obtain proper consent to fully protect the privacy of patients in published articles.

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 journals that fit the traditional overlay journal definition (they did not host articles but provided links to final versions on repositories or they searched repositories for viable preprints to publish) or that defined themselves as overlay journals. Most journals were not indexed in bibliographic databases, and crucial information such as journal ownership was not publicly available. Likewise, most journals both self‐hosted articles and provided links to final versions on repositories, which might mean repositories are more valuable in their ‘open access’ functionality than in the capacity for hosting articles. Editorial policies and practices of these overlay journals were often undeveloped or non‐existent. It seems overlay journals remain a niche publishing model in 2021, especially due to the increased number of journals accepting preprints and using preprint servers in their core functionality. However, overlay journals can take an ‘active’ approach in finding, reviewing, and publishing preprints, replacing other inefficient publishing models.

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 professional peers. A total of 17 workshops was organized by the editors of the Croatian Medical Journal, Zagreb, Croatia, from 2003 to 2011. We measured the number of publications, citations and H‐indices in the Web of Science and Scopus databases from the time of each workshop to the end of 2017. While workshop participants and their controls had similar publication output before the workshops, workshop participants published significantly more scientific articles and had higher citation rates and H‐index after the workshops. For the subgroup of authors who were all followed up for 11 years (n = 398), the increase in the number of articles became apparent in the third post‐workshop year, and levelled out after the eighth post‐workshop year. Workshop attendance proved to be a significant predictor of post‐workshop publishing even when controlled for age, gender, and previous publications (OR = 3.547, CI = 2.320–5.423, p < 0.001), indicating that short‐term workshops on planning and writing research may be an important tool to increase long‐term scientific productivity of medical professionals.