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Background: Despite the nearly ubiquitous reported use of peer review among reputable medical journals, there is limited evidence to support the use of peer review to improve the quality of biomedical research and in particular, imaging diagnostic test accuracy (DTA) research. Purpose: To evaluate whether peer review of DTA studies published by imaging journals is associated with changes in completeness of reporting, transparency for risk of bias assessment, and spin. Study Type: Retrospective cross‐sectional study. Study Sample: Cross‐sectional study of articles published in Journal of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (JMRI), Canadian Association of Radiologists Journal (CARJ), and European Radiology (EuRad) before March 31, 2020. Assessment: Initial submitted and final versions of manuscripts were evaluated for completeness of reporting using the Standards for Reporting Diagnostic Accuracy Studies (STARD) 2015 and STARD for Abstracts guidelines, transparency of reporting for risk of bias assessment based on Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies 2 (QUADAS‐2), and actual and potential spin using modified published criteria. Statistical Tests: Two‐tailed paired t‐tests and paired Wilcoxon signed‐rank tests were used for comparisons. A P value <0.05 was considered to be statistically significant. Results: We included 84 diagnostic accuracy studies accepted by three journals between 2014 and 2020 (JMRI = 30, CARJ = 23, and EuRad = 31) of the 692 which were screened. Completeness of reporting according to STARD 2015 increased significantly between initial submissions and final accepted versions (average reported items: 16.67 vs. 17.47, change of 0.80 [95% confidence interval 0.25–1.17]). No significant difference was found for the reporting of STARD for Abstracts (5.28 vs. 5.25, change of −0.03 [−0.15 to 0.11], P = 0.74), QUADAS‐2 (6.08 vs. 6.11, change of 0.03 [−1.00 to 0.50], P = 0.92), actual "spin" (2.36 vs. 2.40, change of 0.04 [0.00 to 1.00], P = 0.39) or potential "spin" (2.93 vs. 2.81, change of −0.12 [−1.00 to 0.00], P = 0.23) practices. Conclusion: Peer review is associated with a marginal improvement in completeness of reporting in published imaging DTA studies, but not with improvement in transparency for risk of bias assessment or reduction in spin. Level of Evidence: 3 Technical Efficacy Stage: 1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: P-hacking, the tendency to run selective analyses until they become significant, is prevalent in many scientific disciplines. Purpose: This study aims to assess if p-hacking exists in imaging research. Methods: Protocol, data, and code available here https://osf.io/xz9ku/?view%5fonly=a9f7c2d841684cb7a3616f567db273fa. We searched imaging journals Ovid MEDLINE from 1972 to 2021. Text mining using Python script was used to collect metadata: journal, publication year, title, abstract, and P -values from abstracts. One P -value was randomly sampled per abstract. We assessed for evidence of p-hacking using a p-curve, by evaluating for a concentration of P -values just below.05. We conducted a one-tailed binomial test (α =.05 level of significance) to assess whether there were more P -values falling in the upper range (e.g.,.045 < P <.05) than in the lower range (e.g.,.04 < P <.045). To assess variation in results introduced by our random sampling of a single P -value per abstract, we repeated the random sampling process 1000 times and pooled results across the samples. Analysis was done (divided into 10-year periods) to determine if p-hacking practices evolved over time. Results: Our search of 136 journals identified 967,981 abstracts. Text mining identified 293,687 P -values, and a total of 4105 randomly sampled P -values were included in the p-hacking analysis. The number of journals and abstracts that were included in the analysis as a fraction and percentage of the total number was, respectively, 108/136 (80%) and 4105/967,981 (.4%). P-values did not concentrate just under.05; in fact, there were more P -values falling in the lower range (e.g.,.04 < P <.045) than falling just below.05 (e.g.,.045 < P <.05), indicating lack of evidence for p-hacking. Time trend analysis did not identify p-hacking in any of the five 10-year periods. Conclusion: We did not identify evidence of p-hacking in abstracts published in over 100 imaging journals since 1972. These analyses cannot detect all forms of p-hacking, and other forms of bias may exist in imaging research such as publication bias and selective outcome reporting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]