Peer Review Process Comments
American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA)
Clinician/Clinician Society
The American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA) agrees with PCORI’s processes for registration of trials, registries, and registries.
It should be feasible to report primary outcomes within 3 months after the completion of data analysis.
AOTA commends PCORI for its outreach to consumers and stakeholders for peer review. We agree with the processes outlined in the proposal but we do have one comment regarding the provision “PCORI would have the option of engaging a qualified vendor to perform the peer review of draft final reports. However, the review process and expertise of the review team would be the same as if PCORI performed the peer review.” We recommend careful scrutiny of the vendor’s staff expertise because some writers and communication specialists may not fully understand the nuances of the study’s context, methodologies, and limitations.
AOTA supports PCORI’s knowledge translation product: a “500-word (lay) abstract for patients, consumers, and the general public” and agrees that it addresses the law’s section ‘‘Release of Research Findings”- making the findings comprehensible and useful to patients and providers. We do recognize that “usefulness” will depend upon where patients and providers are on the continuum of health care. The questions patients ask differ markedly in the acute phase of an injury/disease compared to patients with the same condition but in a chronic or rehabilitative phase. Another approach for providing information could be creating products for different stakeholders (patient, provider, etc.) or temporally.
AOTA agrees with the proposed procedures and timeline for posting results tables to ClinicalTrials.gov and relevant links (i.e., abstract and results table) to PCORI’s website.
We concur with PCORI’s proposed timeline for posting the funded study’s full final report on PCORI’s website. Regarding the issue of withholding the final report so that it will not violate journals’ embargo policies, with the increasing number of online journal issues there may be opportunities for expediting publication of research that has been supported by PCORI. If however, such agreements cannot be reached with journals, it is fair that PCORI may choose to “delay posting beyond 12 months to coordinate posting with publication of a peer-reviewed journal version of study findings.”
Some of the proposed timelines may be challenging (e.g., revisions of final draft report) if the scientists do not respond in a timely manner, but overall they seem reasonable.
Very Well
AOTA finds PCORI’s proposal of peer review and public release of PCORI’s research findings balanced, maintaining scientific rigor and review with the unique needs of patients and providers.
Very Clear
Strongly Agree