SHORTER NOTICES 267 DONNE'S PREBEND SERMONS. Edited by Janel M. Mueller. Harvard University Press, 1971. xi +361 pp. £5.50.This new book maintains the high standard of production and scholarship which we have come to expect from American work onJohn Donne. It contains five of his sermons, preached at St Paul's, on the five psalms, numbered sixty-two to sixty-six, which he was required to say each day as part of the duty of his prebend. With the second sermon towering above the rest, this small group give a fair idea of the whole range of Donne's sermons, and shows this eminent preacher at the height of his powers.Mrs Mueller has tracked down his references to the works of the Fathers, and shown in detail his use of the various translations of the scriptures available, when the Authorized Version was as new as the New English Bible is now. She has also drawn attention to a psychological aspect of Donne's preaching, the importance which he attached to the memory as a gateway to the soul.
Plain English summaryThere is a need for the authors of research reports to be able to communicate their work clearly and effectively to readers who are not familiar with the research area. The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), along with a number of other funding bodies and journals, require researchers to write short lay summaries, often termed plain English summaries (PESs), to make research accessible to the general public. Because many researchers write using technical, specialised language, particularly in scientific reports, writing PESs can be challenging. In this study we looked at how to improve the quality of PESs. We took PESs which had been submitted to the NIHR Journals Library and asked authors to rewrite them using new guidance. We also asked an independent medical writer to edit the summaries. We measured the quality of these three versions (original summary, rewritten summary and edited summary) in two ways. First, we asked a group of people who were not specialists in the subject area to read and rate how easy the summaries were to understand. Secondly, we used a well-known measure called the Flesch reading ease score to assess how easy the PESs were to read. We found that there was no difference in how easy people found the summaries to understand across the three versions. However, the PESs that were rewritten by the authors and that were edited by the independent medical writer were both easier to read than the originals. This shows that PESs can be improved and for organisations who feel that employing an independent writer to edit summaries, providing clear, practical guidance to authors may be a cost-effective alternative.AbstractBackgroundPlain English summaries (PES) or lay summaries are often included as part of research reports and journal articles. These summaries are vital to ensure that research findings are accessible and available to non-specialist audiences, for example patients and members of the public.Writing a PES requires the adoption of a different style than is generally used in a traditional scientific report, and researchers can find this challenging. This study explored two possible ways to improve the quality of PESs in the NIHR Journals Library: 1) Providing enhanced guidance to authors and asking them to rewrite the PES and 2) Employing an independent medical writer to edit the PES.MethodsWe compared the three versions of the PES (original, author rewritten and independent writer edited) to assess 1) how easy they were to understand and 2) how easy they were to read. In order to establish how easy PESs were to understand, a group of 60 public reviewers read a set of summaries and rated them on a four point scale from “Did not understand” to “Understood all”. The Flesch reading ease score was used to measure how easy the summaries were to read.ResultsResults indicated no significant difference across the three versions of the PES in terms of ease of understanding. However, both the author rewritten and independent writer edited versions were significantl...
BackgroundChalmers and Glasziou’s paper published in 2014 recommends research funding bodies should mandate that proposals for additional primary research are built on systematic reviews of existing evidence showing what is already known. Jones et al. identified 11 (23 %) of 48 trials funded during 2006–8 by the National Institute for Health Research Health Technology Assessment (NIHR HTA) Programme did not reference a systematic review. This study did not explore the reasons for trials not referencing a systematic review or consider trials using any other evidence in the absence of a systematic review. Referencing a systematic review may not be possible in certain circumstances, for instance if the systematic review does not address the question being proposed in the trial. The current study extended Jones’ study by exploring the reasons for why trials did not reference a systematic review and included a more recent cohort of trials funded in 2013 to determine if there were any changes in the referencing or use of systematic reviews.MethodsTwo cohorts of NIHR HTA randomised controlled trials were included. Cohort I included the same trials as Jones et al. (with the exception of one trial which was discontinued). Cohort II included NIHR HTA trials funded in 2013. Data extraction was undertaken independently by two reviewers using full applications and trial protocols. Descriptive statistics was used and no formal statistical analyses were conducted.ResultsFive (11 %) trials of the 47 funded during 2006–2008 did not reference a systematic review. These 5 trials had warranted reasons for not referencing systematic reviews. All trials from Cohort II referenced a systematic review. A quarter of all those trials with a preceding systematic review used a different primary outcome than those stated in the reviews.ConclusionsThe NIHR requires that proposals for new primary research are justified by existing evidence and the findings of this study confirm the adherence to this requirement with a high rate of applications using systematic reviews.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12874-015-0102-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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