JournalologyJournalologyPublishing trends, ethics, peer review, and open access
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Funding for publication ethics research
2007-12-16 17:18:00 The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) has established a Grant Scheme to fund research in the field of publication ethics. The Scheme is designed to provide financial support to any member of COPE for a defined research project that is in the broad area of the organisation’s interests, and specifically in the area of ethical standards and practice in biomedical publishing.The project should have a specific goal and be intended to form the kernel of a future publication. A maximum sum of £5000 will be allocated to any one project, but applications for smaller sums are welcomed.The terms and conditions of the Grant are as follows:1. At least one of the applicants must be a member of COPE.2. Calls for applications will be made twice a year with closing dates of 1 December and 1 June. An electronic version of the application form must be sent to the Administrator no later than 12 pm (noon GMT) on the closing date for consideration by COPE Council.3. The application must cont... More About: Research , Funding
Journalology roundup #13 - plagiarism special
2007-11-17 23:35:00 Policing plagiarism. "The internet has made both copying other people's work and detecting plagiarism much easier. Michael Cross looks at some of the tools used to tackle plagiarism". Plagiarism and punishment. "Plagiarism is one of the three high crimes of research fraud. The US Office for Research Integrity (ORI) puts it up there with the big boys, fabrication and falsification, in its definition of research misconduct (http://ori.dhhs.gov). Some have argued that the definition should extend to lesser crimes such as undeclared conflict of interest and duplicate publication, but to my knowledge no one has questioned that theft of another person's work is fraud". Plagiarism? No, we're just borrowing better English. "The accusations made by arXiv that my colleagues and I have plagiarized the works of others, reported in your News story 'Turkish physicists face accusations of plagiarism' (Nature 449, 8; doi:10.1038/449008b 2007) are upsetting and unfair. It's inappropriate to si... More About: Roundup , Special
This Is The Truth
2007-11-01 13:53:00 - A WEB EXPERIMENT - (In no particular order) 1. Cigarettes are bad for you. 2. Men and Women are equal. 3. Global Warming is real, and (by the way) it’s all our fault.* 4. It’s not all relative. 5. Gin is better than Whiskey. Whiskey is better than Gin. 6. Intelligent Design is wrong. 7. Overconsumption is a serious problem. 8. The Millennium Development Goals are worthy*. 9. Wilco is good, sometimes exceptional, but often inconsequential.(I don't understand this one...)10. Shit happens (ditto for sex and death). 11. Creationism is silly. (also, see 6) 12. SUVs are just stupid. 13. The truth is worth more than an iPod*. 14. On the whole, disorder increases. 15. Science, for better or for worse, is all around. - - - If you agree with the above statements, please link to this page: http://www.scq.ubc.ca/?p=677 by tagging the word “truth” (yes, just like that),and spread the word.This is a Google bomb from The Science Creative Quarterly. More About: Truth , Ruth , The Truth
Journalology roundup #12
2007-10-29 22:15:00 Dealing with scientific misconduct. "Europe needs policies for good scientific practice and for investigating misconduct allegations". That Dezenhall briefing in full! Anti-OA briefing exposed! Achievement index climbs the ranks. "Hirsch measure can predict future success of researchers". It's Time to Free the Dark Data of Failed Scientific Experiments. "In 1981, the New England Journal of Medicine published a Harvard study that showed an unexpected link between drinking coffee and pancreatic cancer. As it happened, researchers were anticipating a connection between alcohol or tobacco and cancer. But according to the survey of several hundred patients, booze and cigarettes didn't seem to increase your risk. Then came a surprise: An incidental survey question suggested that coffee did increase the chances of pancreatic cancer. So that's what got published. Those positive results, alas, were entirely anomalous; 20 years of follow-up research showed the coffee-cancer connection to... More About: Roundup
Conflicts of interest in the open access debate
2007-10-29 16:55:00 I can accept that some society publishers are concerned that open access may make it harder for them to fund their activities. I can accept that some people are confused about the implications of open access.What I find very difficult to accept is that executives at the American Chemical Society appear to be raising spurious arguments against open access, such as calling it 'Socialized Science', and that they have clear, undeclared conflicts of interest in this debate, namely that they are paid bonuses depending on the profits of the publishing division of the ACS.Just as we now expect medics to declare their competing interests in journal publications, anyone involved in the open access debate should declare their own competing interests. My own financial competing interest is a fixed salary received from BioMed Central. Let's see some more transparency from all concerned. More About: Open , Debate , Access , Interest , Conflicts
Don't reinvent the wheel - jump on the bandwagon!
2007-10-29 16:44:00 In A modest (billion-dollar) proposal, Alexandre Linhares suggests that "papers published online should be freely accessible to all, no login, no paywall, nothing in the way. Copyright should remain in the hands of authors".I was surprised to read this, as I thought this was what we were doing already with the open access movement. I posted this in reply:I completely agree. Stevan Harnad proposed something quite similar in his "Subversive Proposal" way back in 1994; he calls electronic publishing that is free of the tyranny of paper the "Post-Gutenberg World".The Internet truly has allowed the beginnings of a revolution in scientific publishing. Vitek Tracz (my employer) launched BioMed Central in 1999, and Mike Eisen and Harold Varmus launched the Public Library of Science in 2000 (originally an advocacy organisation, now a publisher). BioMed Central and PLoS are the two biggest players in open access publishing. All our peer-reviewed research is immediately available online at no ... More About: Jump , Wheel
Conversion to open access
2007-10-29 15:20:00 Stevan Harnad is arguing again that conversion of journals to open access is a distraction to self-archiving, which he believes will more quickly and broadly deliver open access.He suggests that publishers face a 'Prisoner's Dilemma' in converting from toll access to open access. The prisoner's dilemma is when two prisoners are being interrogated. If both stay quiet and refuse to implicate each other, they may get a short sentence. This is an example of 'honour among thieves'. If one implicates the other, they will get let free and the other will be punished. But if each implicates the other, both get severely punished. While I can see how Game Theory in general is worth invoking in this debate, I cannot see how the Prisoner's Dilemma translates to journal publishing strategies. Maybe I'm just being slow.I don't believe that open choice options bring the major conflicts that Stevan describes. While I much prefer full open access journals, a transition to open access via o... More About: Open , Access , Conversion
Published at last!
2007-09-21 19:51:00 I'm now somebody. I'm in PubMed.I mentioned before that I'd co-authored an editorial on authorship, and the article is now available online. I've also just published an editorial with Penny about BMC Systems Biology.Isn't it exciting? Of course, neither article was peer-reviewed... More About: Published
Journalology roundup #11
2007-09-20 23:59:00 Publishing and Values. "At first glance, the decision of a scholarly society to move its journals from one publisher to another might seem like inside baseball for the publishing industry. But the news that the American Anthropological Association is moving all of its journals from the University of California Press to Wiley-Blackwell is being viewed by scholars, librarians and publishing industry officials — including many who have nothing to do with anthropology or the publishers involved — as significant and potentially worrisome".Questioned findings confirmed. "The results of three papers by University of Wisconsin researcher appear valid, but possible grant fraud unresolved".The effect of open access and downloads ('hits') on citation impact: a bibliography of studies. "a continually updated bibliography on the relationship between open access and impact/citations" Peer usage versus peer review. "It is often asserted that peer review is the essence of scientific evaluati... More About: Roundup
Facebook - science meets social networking
2007-09-20 22:57:00 In my recent look at Web 2.0 I noted that "Facebook is more for play than for work". I underestimated it. Facebook has exploded in popularity since they removed the need to belong to a recognised school or university, and the addition of applications in May has given it an extra boost. BioMed Central has now jumped onto the Web 2.0 bandwagon, with the new functionality of including links to social network sites - including Facebook - on each article, which has been well received. Facebook has a plethora of groups, allowing people to easily discuss any number of topics, and has a growing number of applications, some useful, some fun (like Scrabulous, the Scrabble app), some totally pointless (like Zombies). There are now a host of science-related groups and a handful of applications, and I'm going to list just a few that I've come across, some of which I use myself.Facebook 'friends' tend to be people you've actually met in real life (LinkedIn is the real professional network... More About: Science , Social , Social Networking , Networking
Multiple Stab Wounds May Be Harmful To Monkeys
2007-09-08 16:56:00 Multiple Stab Wounds May Be Harmful To Monkeys . Repeatedly stabbing monkeys with sharpened objects may have an adverse effect on their health, according to a new study.In other news, four CIA agents are trapped in a dating mining disaster.
Journalology blog statistics
2007-09-02 20:06:00 An average of 25 people a day have viewed this blog since I started posting back in January, from all over the world. As well as Western Europe, the US, Canada and Japan, there are readers in Argentina, India, China, Russia, Iran and Saudi Arabia, to name but a few countries. It seems that you're reading Journalology as part of your dedicated "social notworking": page views plummet by 40% at the weekends, and it appears that Wednesdays are the most boring work days, as daily readership tips 30 on average on those days. The most read posts have been Tools to search the literature, Peer review lite at PLoS ONE? (my ever first post), My favourite Firefox add-ons (by virtue of it appearing second in a Google search for "favourite Firefox add-ons") and Mashups, mining, mirrors and open access. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that one of my posts is among the top 10 Google results for the phrase "Political correctness gone mad". The most viewed tag has been Impact Factor, another... More About: Blog , Statistics , Ology
Tracked by Technorati!
2007-09-02 19:26:00 A mere 7 months since I first registered my blog with Technorati , they've finally got around to recognising it! More About: Trac
Journalology roundup #10
2007-09-02 18:46:00 I've built up a bit of a backlog with these snippets. Lord knows how some bloggers manage daily updates!Should medical journals carry drug advertising?Yes: Richard Smith (former-Editor of the BMJ). "Major journals like the BMJ have multiple sources of income-subscriptions, classified advertising, non-pharmaceutical advertising, reprints, and sales of articles to other publications. These multiple sources bring independence from each, but at least one is, I believe, much more pernicious than advertising-and that is reprints (sales of large numbers of copies of individual articles)". No: Gareth Williams. "Editors set high standards for their publications, and contributors who fall short on evidence, honesty, clarity of writing, and professionalism can expect to face the full wrath of peer review. How peculiar that the journals feel able to relax their principles and print, alongside the research papers, material that would not look out of place in a glossy tabloid and that often rais... More About: Roundup , Ology
PRISM are scum
2007-09-02 17:46:00 The Partnership for Research Integrity in Science & Medicine (PRISM) are scum.Their arguments against open access are stupid, tired and old, and have been dealt with before.Rather than dealing with this tripe all over again, instead here are some links to the explosion of reaction on the blogosphere.The Partnership for Integrity in Science Dissemination (PISD) are also in on the act, arguing that if open access were to come to fruition "civilization would suddenly collapse. Cities would rust, industries would implode, dinosaurs would once again rule the Earth".A Blog Around the Clock has the definitive run-down on the reactions.Of course, Peter Suber!Bryan Vickery has posted BioMed Central's response.The Scientific Activist: Now that is one ugly PRISM.Peter Murray-Rust: Analysis and letters to OUP and CUP.Bill Hooker has a lot to say.Jonathan Eisen calls for a boycott of the AAP.open... Through a PRISM darkly.The Daily Transcript.Boing Boing points out PRISM's copyright infringeme... More About: Prism , Scum
Modelling the needed population of tooth fairies
2007-08-18 16:40:00 The posting on the Bad Science blog of articles from an issue of Homeopathy about the memory of water has let to quite a lot of critical appraisal of the science behind these articles.My favourite quote from these discussions is from a comment on the Good Math blog regarding the modelling of dilution and succussion ('shaking' in homeopathy):"Nobody models the needed population of tooth fairies". More About: Modelling , Pula
A new way to find reviewers - the ouija board
2007-08-13 00:07:00 Authors of manuscripts submitted to our journals can suggest potential peer reviewers.A recent submitting author took advantage of this to suggest...His former supervisorWait, it gets better....His dead former supervisorWait, wait, it gets even better.....His dead former supervisor, indicated with (deceased)Guys, who last had the ouija board? More About: Board , Find , The O
13 ways to get your manuscript rejected
2007-07-17 02:27:00 I've seen a couple of good guides to getting your work published in a peer reviewed journal. But how to ensure that you get it rejected? 1. Don't write in clear English. Hell, forget clear English, don't even write in English. Editors who insist on good English are probably just pining for the days of the Empire. The more incomprehensible the better. Ignore simple grammatical rules like the use of articles, and don't run a spell check. Spell check is for losers. Certainly don't get it copyedited - good lord, that'd just be throwing good money after bad.2. Never cite prior work. Be like this correspondent to a physics journal*, who gaily admits that "The only time I access previous articles is when the referee forces me to". Oh joy.3. Try and try again. So your work has been rejected several times over? Play the lottery of peer review, and eventually you'll slip it past the reviewers! Reviewers love it when they see an article for the fourth time, with none of their advice act... More About: Rejected , Anus
Not being clear about authorship is lying
2007-07-12 23:49:00 That blunt statement is the start of the title of an editorial in the March/April issue of the National Medical Journal of India, "Not being clear about authorship is lying and damages the scientific record" by Charlotte England, Matt Hodgkinson and Pritpal Tamber. Yes, that's right, I'm published. Very exciting.The online version isn't available yet; I'll see if I can get permission to reproduce the text here. I forgot to speak to Pritt about an 'Authors' addendum' when he submitted it, so the journal retains copyright and their permissions policy is that "The published manuscript may not be reproduced elsewhere, wholly or in part, without the prior written permission of the Journal".I can, however, post an early version that I drafted with Charlotte, which formed the skeleton for the finished editorial. It bears little resemblance to the final version, so I'm in no danger of breaching copyright.------Misattribution of authorship is corrupting the scientific and medical lit... More About: Lying , Clear
Open Choice takes a beating
2007-07-11 01:25:00 I've been impressed with the way that publishers have begun the shift to open access with schemes such as Springer's Open Choice , offering authors the choice to have their article made open access in an otherwise subscription journal, depending on the payment of a fee ($3000 for Springer).Stevan Harnad has criticised Open Choice, arguing against double payment (readers and authors in effect paying for the same article), and what Stevan sees as the way that paying for open access publication is a distraction from self-archiving.Now, Open Choice is being criticised from another front: researchers such as Peter Murray-Rust who are keen on open access publication, but who find that Open Choice does not quite meet the usual standards they expect of open access.Peter Murray-Rust has resigned from the editorial board of a Springer journal in protest at the way that Open Choice is working. In particular, he is concerned at the lack of visibility or explanation of Open Choice, other than ... More About: Ice T , Beating
Journalology roundup #9
2007-07-11 00:54:00 Mentors of tomorrow. "Everyone knows bad peer review when they come across it — but too few are nurturing good referees".Physicians and researchers have different needs. "Alex Williamson is publishing director at the BMJ Group, the publishing arm of the British Medical Association (BMA). We ask her about the role of journals in clinical medicine". A pity to see the BMJ Group being ambivalent about open access, especially as the BMJ is a good example of a high-profile medical journal publishing open access research.Is physics the new biomedicine? "A new set of physics and maths journals are planned for BioMed Central. Siân Harris finds out why this open-access publisher is branching out from biomedical sciences". All about the launch of Chemistry Central and PhysMath Central.Researcher accused of breaching research ethics faces GMC. "A former senior lecturer at the UK Institute of Psychiatry repeatedly breached research ethics guidelines and lied to study sponsors while building a... More About: Roundup , Ology
Science hype it up
2007-06-30 00:14:00 "First genome transplant turns one species into another".Wow! Really? That sounds amazing!!"Scientists have converted an organism into an entirely different species by performing the world's first genome transplant, a breakthrough that paves the way for the creation of synthetic forms of life".No kidding! "An entirely different species"?! What was it, turning a whale into a petunia!?!And it's a paper in Science !?This must be big!!!!!Wait for it....Here it is.........."In the experiment, researchers extracted the whole genetic code from a simple bacterium, Mycoplasma mycoides. They squirted the DNA into a test tube containing a related species, Mycoplasma capricolum. They found that some of the bacteria absorbed the new genome and ditched their own. These microbes grew and behaved exactly like the donor".Oh.Can I piss on their fire now?These mycoplasma are very closely related:"The members of the M. mycoides cluster are very closely related, as judged from biochemical, physiologica... More About: Hype
Open peer review & community peer review
2007-06-28 22:47:00 There has been a lot of discussion about 'open peer review' lately - this letter to Nature is just the latest example. With all these opinions and hypotheses about peer review flying around, I think that it is useful to make some distinctions between the different types of 'open' review, so here goes.Traditional peer review. Anonymous reports received pre-publication. Letters to the editor are considered by many journals, but especially in paper journals relatively few are published. All the BioMed Central journals accept signed comments from readers.Open peer review. Named, pre-publication review, which is how the BMC-series medical journals work, and the BMJ too. The difference lies in that the reviews are available for readers to see in the BMC-series medical journals, but the BMJ never made this move. Comments can also be posted by readers: the BMJ's Rapid Responses should be envied by any journal. It is controversial as some reviewers don't wish to be named, and it can ma... More About: Community , Review , Peer , Unit
omg web 2.0 is kewl
2007-06-19 01:14:00 I'm not going to try any sort of systematic assessment of 'Web 2.0 ' and science, or even bother with a definition. This is just a stream-of-consciousness post, prompted by my wide-eyed wonder at the explosion of social networking and 'user generated content'.Nature have completely bought into all this Web 2.0 malarkey - they've got umpteen blogs, Nature Network, Connotea, a new aggregator thingy called Scintilla, Postgenomic... they've even got a group on the "social notworking" site Facebook and an island in Second Life.Social networking is a huge part of Web 2.0. Myspace is a mess, Facebook is more for play than for work, but The Scientist recently profiled the use of the 'Facebook for professionals' site, LinkedIn, by scientists. Another site that I've yet to look at properly is SciLink.Social bookmarking is quite the thing. As well as Connotea, there's citeulike, another shared record of articles people came across and liked (hence the name). All the BioMed Central j...
Well done, Reed Elsevier
2007-06-15 01:17:00 As has been reported in many places, Reed Elsevier will stop their involvement in defence exhibitions this year. It's an impressive example of how protest can give results. Congratulations to Reed Elsevier for listening to the calls for them to do this. More About: Done , Well
The perils of editing
2007-06-15 01:08:00 The editor of Fertility and Sterility has apologized to authors he accused of plagiarism and lying in The Scientist. Without getting into the rights and wrongs of this particular case, the legal threats flying back and forth serve to highlight why you need to tred carefully when accusing authors of misconduct!Brian Deer in the BMJ recently reported on the controversy surrounding Mark Geier, a brave move for the journal's editors considering Dr Geier's familiarity with litigation, and also considering that they had recently apologised and paid £100,000 to Matthias Rath, another controversial doctor who they had accused of fraud.It is fortunately not too often that journals receive threats of legal action, but I remember one author saying that he would sue us for rejecting his article; I remember, as I had handled that manuscript. Peter Newmark, our Editor-in-Chief at the time, gave this pretty short shrift, and sent the authors a response that put quite plainly his dim view of the... More About: Editing , Peri
Journalology roundup #8
2007-06-15 00:46:00 Sean Eddy Celebrates Open Access in Franklin Speech. "Sean Eddy [editorial board member of BMC Bioinformatics] accepted the 2007 Benjamin Franklin Award and then proceeded to poke a few good-natured holes in Franklin’s sterling open access reputation".I blogged about this in my first post on the official BioMed Central blog. Peer review in open access scientific journals. "Open access publications should be at the forefront in experimenting with strategies to foster what might be called an increasingly open science. As the open access movement blossoms, its supporters should continue to critically evaluate the parallel development of openness and transparency in the peer review process. We need to ensure that a commitment to high-quality peer review is maintained... Open access journals are in an ideal position to test the merits of open, unblinded, peer review". Although BioMed Central is open access and our medical journals have open peer review, there's no necessary connection... More About: Roundup , Ology
Science, being Green, and the precautionary principle
2007-06-15 00:44:00 I'm feeling the conflict between being involved in science and being in the Green Party. A lot of members of the Green Party are instinctively opposed to many modern technologies and scientific practices, such as animal research, GM and lately, mobile phone and WiFi radiation. This attitude often rests on the precautionary principle, the idea that if something might cause harm it is better to act as though it does cause harm rather than to hope that it won't. I'm not opposed to this principle, but I despair at the tendency of the green movement (and newspaper weekend supplements) to succumb to hype and scaremongering. A prime example is Julia Stephenson, who is the Kensington and Chelsea Green candidate, and is a columnist for the Independent. She wrote a column recently, titled "My war on electrosmog", describing her efforts to rid her life of electromagnetic radiation after having her feelings of fatigue 'diagnosed' by her naturopath (not her GP, mind) as due to 'electrosmo... More About: Science
Journalology roundup #7
More articles from this author:2007-05-11 01:45:00 Scooped by a blog. A then PhD student Reed Cartwright came up with the same hypothesis on his blog as an accepted paper in Plant Cell, so the author offered him co-authorship on the paper. A nice feel-good story, but by Reed's admission "There are maybe three sentences in the published paper that I had anything to do with". I might be a spoil-sport, but I think that an acknowledgement would have made more sense! Reed's blog is here.Physician-Industry Relationships. "Most physicians (94%) reported some type of relationship with the pharmaceutical industry, and most of these relationships involved receiving food in the workplace (83%) or receiving drug samples (78%). More than one third of the respondents (35%) received reimbursement for costs associated with professional meetings or continuing medical education, and more than one quarter (28%) received payments for consulting, giving lectures, or enrolling patients in trials".The Scientist's take on the Shelley Batts figure reuse ... More About: Roundup , Ology 1, 2 |
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