Table 1 Summary of issues that influence the likelihood rejection without review of articles submitted to Implementation Science
Issue | Likely to be accepted | Likely to be rejected |
|---|---|---|
Field of interest | Healthcare and public health | Anything else |
Effectiveness studies | Evaluating the introduction of an intervention/evidence-based practice of known effectiveness | Evaluating the effectiveness of a clinical, organizational, public health, or policy intervention |
Outcome | Health or health-related | Anything else |
Implementation | Researching implementation | Doing implementation |
Validity | Maximizes internal and external validity as appropriate in the chosen study designs | |
Patient decision aids | Evaluations of the introduction of patient decision aids (of known effectiveness) into healthcare care settings; involvement of healthcare providers | Initial development or pilot testing of patient decision aids |
Implementation (Knowledge Translation) direct to patients | Outcomes referring to evidence-based practice with some involvement of healthcare providers | Other types of outcomes |
Intervention development reports | Prepared and submitted prior to the reporting of the effectiveness of the intervention | Post hoc submission |
Going to be, (robustly) evaluated | Not going to be (robustly) evaluated | |
Process evaluation | Submitted contemporaneously with or following report of intervention effectiveness | Process evaluations submitted in advance of the conduct of the main effectiveness analysis (it cannot be clear if they are explaining an effect or the absence of an effect) |
Process evaluations that take account of the main evaluation outcomes | Process evaluations that do not take account of the main evaluation outcomes | |
Pilot studies | If appropriate criteria for conduct | No justification for conduct |
If appropriate degree of inference | Overclaim on basis of results | |
If there are plans for further evaluation | ||
Protocols | Been through (inter)national level peer review as part of their funding | Not been through national level peer review as part of their funding |
Received ethics review board approval | Not received ethics review board approval | |
Submitted prior to data cleaning or analysis | Have begun data cleaning or analysis (may not apply to some qualitative studies) |