Objective Randomised clinical trials (RCTs) are complex endeavours that demand extensive collaborative efforts from researchers, institutions, and funding partners. Undoubtedly, there is ample reason to acknowledge these efforts and to be grateful for publication of the results. However, some RCTs explicitly express gratitude in an acknowledgment section whereas other do not. We hypothesized that this would be related to author’s gender and religion, medical field, journal, and year of publication. DesignQuantitative analysis of all available full-text randomised clinical trials identified through PubMed.Methods We determined the presence of an acknowledgment section containing explicit words of gratitude in 90,163 full-text publications. The hypotheses were publicly pre-registered before study conduct. We tested the following determinants of the presence of these acknowledgment sections: gender of the first and last author, the percentage of protestant inhabitants in the country of the primary research institution, the year of publication, journal impact factor (JIF), the journal’s medical field (compared to the medical field of surgery). Explorative analyses were performed on the different determinants that were associated with received gratitude in the acknowledgement sections. Main outcome measureThe presence of an acknowledgment section with explicit words of gratitude.Results In total, 28,897 (32%) RCT publications contained an acknowledgement section with explicit words of gratitude. All hypotheses were confirmed, with a higher likelihood of an acknowledgement section with words of gratitude when the first and/or last author was female (OR 1.28 95% CI 1.24-1.31), an increased percentage of protestant inhabitants in the country of the first author’s affiliation (+ 10%; OR = 1.04 95% CI 1.04-1.05), and more recent publication (+ 1 year; OR 1.04 95% CI 1.04-1.05). The journal’s impact factor (- 1 JIF; OR = 0.99 95% CI 0.99-0.99) and RCTs published in surgical journals (OR 0.35 95% CI 0.32-0.38) were associated with a lower likelihood of RCT publications containing words of gratitude. Conclusions Acknowledgement sections with explicit words of gratefulness are more frequently present when researchers are female, from protestant countries, working in non-surgical fields, and published in lower impact factor journals, and this trend has increased over time. To foster a healthy and responsible publication culture, it is important that all individuals, institutions, and groups that have contributed to the research are acknowledged. Credit should go where credit is due, and Christmas is the most suitable period to remind us of the importance of gratitude.
APPLICABILITY OF RANDOMIZED TRIALS IN HAND SURGERY: SURVEY STUDY