ArticleBMJ (Clinical research ed.)2025
How recent is recent? Retrospective analysis of suspiciously timeless citations.
Article in BMJ (Clinical research ed.), 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Trends in demographic and health survey publications based on a bibliometric analysis.Global health action · 2026Pooled it
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveTo quantify the time lag between biomedical articles and the studies they describe as "recent," a term widely used to imply timeliness despite rarely reflecting the actual age of the cited evidence.
designRetrospective analysis of suspiciously timeless citations based on a structured PubMed search of 20 predefined "recent" expressions. SAMPLE: 1000 English language, full text biomedical articles in which a "recent" expression is directly linked to a citation.
main outcome measureTime lag in years between citing articles and their referenced "recent" studies.
resultsThe age of the cited "recent" studies varied widely. The citation lag ranged from 0 to 37 years (mean 5.53 years, median 4 years, interquartile range 2-7). The most frequent lag was one year (n=159, 15.9%), and 177 references (17.7%) were at least 10 years old. Citation patterns varied across medical specialties: critical care, infectious diseases, genetics, immunology, and radiology showed shorter median lags (around two years), while nephrology, veterinary medicine, and dentistry displayed substantially longer lags (ranging from 8.5 to 14 years). Among expressions, "recent approach," "recent discovery," and "recent study" were linked to older references, whereas "recent publication" and "recent article" had much fresher citations. The citation lag was similar across world regions and gradually decreased over time, with the most recent publications showing the shortest lags. Journals with high impact factors (≥12) cited more up-to-date work.
conclusionsThis playful analysis suggests that "recent" is applied with striking elasticity across biomedical literature. While some authors cite genuinely recent work, others stretch the definition to decades. Readers and reviewers should take "recent" claims with a grain of chronological salt.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.