bims-skolko Biomed News
on Scholarly communication
Issue of 2020–05–17
24 papers selected by
Thomas Krichel, Open Library Society
  1. On Deepest Caves, Extreme Habitats, and Ecological Superlatives.
  2. Publishers launch joint effort to tackle altered images in research papers.
  3. Meet this super-spotter of duplicated images in science papers.
  4. What makes an effective grants peer reviewer? An exploratory study of the necessary skills.
  5. Forensic science needs registered reports.
  6. Pandemic researchers - recruit your own best critics.
  7. Retractions in Rehabilitation and Sport Sciences Journals: A Systematic Review.
  8. Creating Interesting Review Papers by Emphasizing Novel Themes.
  9. Ways to give an effective seminar about your research project.
  10. Junior researchers are losing out by ghostwriting peer reviews.
  11. Open access of psychological intervention manuals.
  12. Discipline-specific open access publishing practices and barriers to change: an evidence-based review.
  13. Indonesia tops open-access publishing charts.
  14. What is open-access publishing and what it means for the forensic enterprise.
  15. Scientific encounters between Colombia and the United States analyzed through publishing practices in Caldasia journal: The birds of the Republic of Colombia as a publishing event.
  16. Commentaries: Sharks: Predatory journals and conferences in psychiatry, neurology and neuroscience.
  17. The role of conspiracy mentality in denial of science and susceptibility to viral deception about science.
  18. Journal of Hospital Infection moves to Article-Based Publishing.
  19. Introducing CiteScore, Our Journal's Preferred Citation Index: Moving Beyond the Impact Factor.
  20. Research on Research: Publication of Projects Presented at Medical Imaging Research Days Across Canada.
  21. Editors' choice: The four most valued articles published in the European Journal of General Practice in 2019.
  22. PubMed Central archiving: a major milestone for a scholarly journal.
  23. Publishing in a Pandemic: The View from Cell Reports.
  24. Is research in peril in Nepal? Publication trend and research quality from projects funded by the University Grants Commission-Nepal.
  1. Trends Ecol Evol. 2020 Jun;pii: S0169-5347(20)30057-4. [Epub ahead of print]35(6): 469-472
    On Deepest Caves, Extreme Habitats, and Ecological Superlatives.
    Stefano Mammola.
      In an environment where the impact of research is central, scientists face the dilemma of choosing between orthodox writing for objectivity and sensational writing to provoke interest. The use of superlatives in high-ranking ecology journals has increased significantly in recent years, a writing behavior that works against scientific objectivity.
    Keywords:  extreme ecosystems; impact factor; record-breaking species; research integrity; scientific writing; sensationalism
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2020.02.011
  2. Nature. 2020 May 13.
    Publishers launch joint effort to tackle altered images in research papers.
    Richard Van Noorden.
      
    Keywords:  Peer review; Publishing; Research data; Software
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-01410-9
  3. Nature. 2020 May;581(7807): 132-136
    Meet this super-spotter of duplicated images in science papers.
    Helen Shen.
      
    Keywords:  Ethics; Peer review; Publishing; Software
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-01363-z
  4. PLoS One. 2020 ;15(5): e0232327
    What makes an effective grants peer reviewer? An exploratory study of the necessary skills.
    Miriam L E Steiner Davis, Tiffani R Conner, Kate Miller-Bains, Leslie Shapard.
      This exploratory mixed methods study describes skills required to be an effective peer reviewer as a member of review panels conducted for federal agencies that fund research, and examines how reviewer experience and the use of technology within such panels impacts reviewer skill development. Two specific review panel formats are considered: in-person face-to-face and virtual video conference. Data were collected through interviews with seven program officers and five expert peer review panelists, and surveys from 51 respondents. Results include the skills reviewers' consider necessary for effective review panel participation, their assessment of the relative importance of these skills, how they are learned, and how review format affects skill development and improvement. Results are discussed relative to the peer review literature and with consideration of the importance of professional skills needed by successful scientists and peer reviewers.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0232327
  5. Forensic Sci Int. 2020 ;2 41-45
    Forensic science needs registered reports.
    Jason M Chin, Rory McFadden, Gary Edmond.
      The registered report (RR) format is rapidly being adopted by scientific researchers and journals. RRs flip the peer review process, with reviewers evaluating proposed methods, rather than the data and findings. Editors then accept or reject articles largely based on the pre-data collection review. Accordingly, RRs reduce the incentive for researchers to exaggerate their findings, and they make any data-driven changes to the methods and analysis more conspicuous. They also reduce publication bias, ensuring studies with null or otherwise unfavorable results are published. RRs are being used in many fields to improve research practices and increase confidence in study findings. The authors suggest RRs ought to be the default way in which validation studies are conducted and reported in the forensic sciences. They produce more reliable findings, advance criminal justice values, and will lead to several efficiencies in the research process.
    Keywords:  Feature comparison; Open science; Registered reports; Validation studies
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fsisyn.2019.10.005
  6. Nature. 2020 May;581(7807): 121
    Pandemic researchers - recruit your own best critics.
    Daniël Lakens.
      
    Keywords:  Peer review; Publishing; Research management
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-01392-8
  7. Arch Phys Med Rehabil. 2020 May 10. pii: S0003-9993(20)30208-2. [Epub ahead of print]
    Retractions in Rehabilitation and Sport Sciences Journals: A Systematic Review.
    Sinan Kardeş, William Levack, Kağan Özkuk, Ebru Atmaca Aydın, Serap Seringeç Karabulut.
       OBJECTIVE: To identify the characteristics of retracted publications in rehabilitation and sport sciences journals.
    DATA SOURCES: The Web of Science, PubMed, and Retraction Watch databases were searched from inception to August 2019.
    STUDY SELECTION: Retracted publications published in rehabilitation or sport sciences journals, indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) were included.
    DATA EXTRACTION: One author extracted the data. Two other authors checked the data.
    DATA SYNTHESIS: A total of 37 and 52 retracted publications and their retraction notices were identified for rehabilitation and sport sciences, respectively. The majority of retracted publications (68% of all retracted papers in rehabilitation and 54% of all retracted papers in sport sciences) were published in the past decade. Retracted publications in rehabilitation and sport sciences were published in 21 and 22 different journals and originated from 18 and 21 different countries, respectively. The full-text of the retracted publications was available with a retraction watermark or note for 59% of cases in rehabilitation and 58% in sport sciences. The reasons for the retractions were more often attributed to misconduct (79% and 61%) than to honest error (21% and 39%) in rehabilitation and sport sciences, respectively. However, a reason was not stated for 15% of the publications. The median time interval between publication and retraction was 622 days in rehabilitation and 607 days in sport sciences publications.
    CONCLUSIONS: The total number of retracted publications in rehabilitation and sport sciences journals was small. The retracted publications have been published in a variety of rehabilitation and sport sciences journals and came from different countries across the world. Several retracted publications and retraction notices failed to adhere to The Committee on Publication Ethics guidelines in the handling of full-text (retain with a watermark or note) or stating the underlying reasons for the retraction.
    Keywords:  Ethics; Physical and rehabilitation medicine; Plagiarism; Rehabilitation; Retracted publication; Retraction of publication; Scientific misconduct; Sports medicine
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apmr.2020.03.010
  8. West J Nurs Res. 2020 May 11. 193945920920645
    Creating Interesting Review Papers by Emphasizing Novel Themes.
    Vicki S Conn.
      
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1177/0193945920920645
  9. Nature. 2019 May 15.
    Ways to give an effective seminar about your research project.
    Ananya Sen.
      
    Keywords:  Careers; Communication; Conferences and meetings
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-01574-z
  10. Nature. 2019 May 13.
    Junior researchers are losing out by ghostwriting peer reviews.
    Virginia Gewin.
      
    Keywords:  Careers; Peer review; Publishing
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-01533-8
  11. World Psychiatry. 2020 Jun;19(2): 251-252
    Open access of psychological intervention manuals.
    Sarah Watts, Mark van Ommeren, Pim Cuijpers.
      
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20756
  12. F1000Res. 2018 ;7 1925
    Discipline-specific open access publishing practices and barriers to change: an evidence-based review.
    Anna Severin, Matthias Egger, Martin Paul Eve, Daniel Hürlimann.
      Background: Many of the discussions surrounding Open Access (OA) revolve around how it affects publishing practices across different academic disciplines. It was a long-held view that it would be only a matter of time for all disciplines to fully and relatively homogeneously implement OA. Recent large-scale bibliometric studies show however that the uptake of OA differs substantially across disciplines. This study investigates the underlying mechanisms that cause disciplines to vary in their OA publishing practices. We aimed to answer two questions: First, how do different disciplines adopt and shape OA publishing practices? Second, what discipline-specific barriers to and potentials for OA can be identified? Methods: In a first step, we identified and synthesized relevant bibliometric studies that assessed OA prevalence and publishing patterns across disciplines. In a second step, and adopting a social shaping of technology perspective, we studied evidence on the socio-technical forces that shape OA publishing practices. We examined a variety of data sources, including, but not limited to, publisher policies and guidelines, OA mandates and policies and author surveys. Results: Over the last three decades, scholarly publishing has experienced a shift from "closed" access to OA as the proportion of scholarly literature that is openly accessible has increased continuously. The shift towards OA is however uneven across disciplines in two respects: first, the growth of OA has been uneven across disciplines, which manifests itself in varying OA prevalence levels. Second, disciplines use different OA publishing channels to make research outputs OA. Conclusions: We conclude that historically grown publishing practices differ in terms of their compatibility with OA, which is the reason why OA can be assumed to be a natural continuation of publishing cultures in some disciplines, whereas in other disciplines, the implementation of OA faces major barriers and would require a change of research culture.
    Keywords:  Communication Technologies; Meta-Synthesis; Open Access; Open Science; Publishing; Scholarly Communication; Science Policy; Scientometrics
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.17328.1
  13. Nature. 2019 May 15.
    Indonesia tops open-access publishing charts.
    Richard Van Noorden.
      
    Keywords:  Publishing
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-01536-5
  14. Forensic Sci Int. 2019 ;1 290-293
    What is open-access publishing and what it means for the forensic enterprise.
    M M Houck, G Horsman, G Sauzier, M Bidmos.
      
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fsisyn.2019.06.045
  15. Stud Hist Philos Biol Biomed Sci. 2020 May 05. pii: S1369-8486(19)30132-3. [Epub ahead of print] 101289
    Scientific encounters between Colombia and the United States analyzed through publishing practices in Caldasia journal: The birds of the Republic of Colombia as a publishing event.
    Yuirubán Hernández Socha.
      In 1948, American ornithologist Rodolphe Meyer de Schauensee began publishing what would be the most complete list of birds from Colombia that had ever been printed up to that time. His work was called The Birds of the Republic of Colombia (TBRC), and at the invitation of Armando Dugand, the director of the Instituto de Ciencias Naturales at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and of the Caldasia journal, this work was exclusively published in the journal in five installments spanning four years. This paper analyzes the publishing aspects that particularly influenced the process of carrying out this work, with the objective of showing that scientific practices and publishing practices are not two absolutely separate domains. The circuit of communication present in TBRC's development is analyzed, specifically the efforts of the editor, printer and author to bring this work to fruition. This analysis demonstrates the following: (i) how the scientific interests of Meyer and the Instituto de Ciencias Naturales converge, (ii) the contradictions between scientific interests that promoted the publication of TBRC and the publishing rationale of a journal and (iii) how unforeseen publishing issues of the time, such as the increase in printing costs due to inflation, influenced the final structure of the work.
    Keywords:  History of Colombia; History of biology; History of the book; Journals; Ornithology; Rodolphe Meyer de Schauensee
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.shpsc.2020.101289
  16. Aust N Z J Psychiatry. 2020 May 15. 4867420919154
    Commentaries: Sharks: Predatory journals and conferences in psychiatry, neurology and neuroscience.
    Jeffrey Cl Looi, Conor Owens-Walton.
      
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1177/0004867420919154
  17. Politics Life Sci. 2019 Sep;38(2): 193-209
    The role of conspiracy mentality in denial of science and susceptibility to viral deception about science.
    Asheley R Landrum, Alex Olshansky.
      Members of the public can disagree with scientists in at least two ways: people can reject well-established scientific theories and they can believe fabricated, deceptive claims about science to be true. Scholars examining the reasons for these disagreements find that some individuals are more likely than others to diverge from scientists because of individual factors such as their science literacy, political ideology, and religiosity. This study builds on this literature by examining the role of conspiracy mentality in these two phenomena. Participants were recruited from a national online panel (N = 513) and in person from the first annual Flat Earth International Conference (N = 21). We found that conspiracy mentality and science literacy both play important roles in believing viral and deceptive claims about science, but evidence for the importance of conspiracy mentality in the rejection of science is much more mixed.
    Keywords:  conspiracy theories; fake news; flat Earth; motivated reasoning; public acceptance of science; public understanding of science; science communication
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1017/pls.2019.9
  18. J Hosp Infect. 2020 May;pii: S0195-6701(20)30222-X. [Epub ahead of print]105(1): A1
    Journal of Hospital Infection moves to Article-Based Publishing.
    C Fears, N Mahida, B Oppenheim, C Lynch, J Gray.
      
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhin.2020.04.039
  19. Jt Comm J Qual Patient Saf. 2020 Mar 09. pii: S1553-7250(20)30065-9. [Epub ahead of print]
    Introducing CiteScore, Our Journal's Preferred Citation Index: Moving Beyond the Impact Factor.
    David W Baker.
      
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcjq.2020.03.005
  20. Can Assoc Radiol J. 2020 May 12. 846537120921249
    Research on Research: Publication of Projects Presented at Medical Imaging Research Days Across Canada.
    Sarah Melendez, David A Leswick.
       OBJECTIVE: Twenty-one previous studies have shown a mean presentation to publication conversion rates at radiology conferences of 26%. There have been no prior studies on publication of medical imaging residency research presentations. Our objective was to determine how many medical imaging resident research projects presented at internal program research days across Canada go on to publication.
    METHODS: A list of unique medical imaging resident research presentations given at program research days during the 2012-2013 to 2016-2017 academic years was generated via e-mail contact of programs or review of publicly available data on program websites. Unique resident presentations were identified and publications associated with these presentations were sought via database and Internet searching. The number of publications, publishing journals, and time to publication was determined.
    RESULTS: Data from 32 research days at 7 programs were assessed. A total of 287 resident presentations were identified. Of these 287 presentations, 99 had associated publications (34% presentation to publication conversation rate), with variation in presentation numbers and publication conversion rates between schools. These 99 presentations were associated with a total of 118 publications in a total of 57 different journals. Time from presentation to publication was calculable for 109 of the 118 articles. Fifteen (14%) were published before research day and 94 (86%) were published after research day with a mean time to publication of 12.3 ± 13.6 months for all articles.
    CONCLUSIONS: Thirty-four percent of resident research presentations at Canadian medical imaging program research days go on to publication.
    Keywords:  abstracts; biomedical research; education; medical; medical imaging; publications
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1177/0846537120921249
  21. Eur J Gen Pract. 2020 Dec;26(1): 70
    Editors' choice: The four most valued articles published in the European Journal of General Practice in 2019.
    Editorial Board of the European Journal of General Practice
      
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1080/13814788.2020.1761181
  22. Mediterr J Rheumatol. 2020 Mar;31(1): 3-5
    PubMed Central archiving: a major milestone for a scholarly journal.
    Armen Yuri Gasparyan, George D Kitas.
      
    Keywords:  PubMed; PubMed Central; open access; periodicals as topic; publishing; quality control; rheumatology
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.31138/mjr.31.1.3
  23. Cell Rep. 2020 May 06. pii: S2211-1247(20)30631-8. [Epub ahead of print] 107678
    Publishing in a Pandemic: The View from Cell Reports.
    The Cell Reports Editorial Team.
      
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2020.107678
  24. Account Res. 2020 May 12.
    Is research in peril in Nepal? Publication trend and research quality from projects funded by the University Grants Commission-Nepal.
    Prakash K Paudel, Basant Giri, Shanta Dhakal.
      Institutions of higher learning are critical in promoting a knowledge-driven economy through research and training. Nepali universities receive funding from the University Grants Commission, Nepal (UGC-N) to support for impactful research. UGC-N requires grantees to publish research results as journal articles. We reviewed papers published through UGC-N funded research projects over a 10-year period (2008-2018) to assess the trends of article publication in terms of frequency and quality (based on journal impact factor and SCImago journal ranking). At most, 17% projects (n=325) had publications and the majority of articles were published in journals that had neither SJR rank (74 %, n=240) nor impact factor (86%, n=279). Most importantly, 10% of articles (n=23) published in the non-ranked journals appeared in predatory journals. Although there were increasing trends of grants and research article publications in the last 10 years, journal level quality metrics showed no improvements and suggested decreasing trends during the last half decade. The publication output varied among grant categories. Master research grants and PhD research grants performed better than those of faculty research grants in terms of publication in quality journals. We call for an increased commitment from political and academic leadership to promote quality research in Nepal.
    Keywords:  Publication ethics; Research in developing countries; Research integrity; Research productivity; Science funding; Science policy
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2020.1768374
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