Loscalzo, Joseph. 2006. The NIH Budget and the Future of Biomedical Research. New England Journal of Medicine. 354(16):1665-1667
Whatever mechanisms are chosen, it seems clear that new methods of support must be developed if biomedical research is to continue to thrive in the United States. The goal of a durable, steady stream of support for research in the life sciences has never been more pressing, since the research derived from that support has never promised greater benefits. The fate of life-sciences research should not be consigned to the political winds of Washington.
Author: EASE Secretary
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ECONOMICS AND FUNDING
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POLITICS OF PUBLISHING
Buela-Casal, Gualberto; Perakakis, Pandelis; Taylor, Michael; Checa, Purificacion. 2006. Measuring internationality: Reflections and perspectives on academic journals. Scientometrics. 67(1):45-65
Internationality as a concept is being applied ambiguously, particularly in the world of academic journal publication. Although different criteria are used by scientometrists in order to measure internationality and to supplement its minimal literal meaning, the present study suggests that no single criterion alone is sufficient. Internationality Index, constructed from a combination of suitably weighted criteria, is the only way to unambiguously quantify the degree of internationality.
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PRACTICE OF PUBLISHING
Lowell L. Hargens and Jerald R. Herting. 2006. Analyzing the association between referees’ recommendations and editors’ decisions Scientometrics 67 (1): 15-26
The association between referee recommendations and editorial decisions at two scholarly journals are analysed. The method enables researchers to (1) determine the number of latent dimensions needed to account for this association, and (2) estimate scale values for both the referee-recommendation and the editorial-decision categories.
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SCIENCE
UK Royal Society. 2006. Science and the public interest: Communicating the results of new scientific research to the public The Royal Society: London
The vast majority of scientific papers are of direct interest only to specialists, even if they report research of long-term importance. However, a few journal papers are published every week that have immediate relevance for health and safety, or for public policy. This report has resulted from three years of investigation by the Royal Society into best practice in communicating the results of new scientific research to the public, carried out as party of the Society’s ‘Science in Society’ programme. The study was carried out by a working group drawn from science in academia and industry, scientific publishing and groups representing consumer and patient interests.
Available online as PDF file at: http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/downloaddoc.asp?id=2879 -
ETHICAL ISSUES
Collins Jannette. 2006. Professionalism and Physician Interactions With Industry. Journal of the American College of Radiology. 3 (5):325-332
This article presents a broad framework for understanding the professional and legal responsibilities of physicians when interacting with industry. Physicians have unique responsibilities based on the “fiduciary” nature of the patient-physician relationship and specified laws regarding health care. Physicians must protect the best interests of patients, with clinical decisions free of undue influence. Physicians have special obligations related to receiving gifts from industry and ensure that these gifts do not compromise professional judgment, they should generally not accept personal gifts from industry and consider accepting only those that primarily entail a benefit to patients, are not of substantial value, and have no “strings” attached.
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ETHICAL ISSUES
Goldberg David M. 2006. Is scientific publishing a criminal activity?Clinical Biochemistry 39(5):473-481
A published scientific paper is the end-result of a complex interaction between authors, referees, editors and publishers. Each brings to the process a different agenda, and a widely disparate adherence to standards of competence and integrity. This subjective analysis attempts to explain why and where the regulatory mechanisms that ought to detect and eliminate the publication or the dissemination by other means of poor, erroneous, or frankly fraudulent scientific finds have broken down, and what can be done to fix them
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SCIENCE
O’Grady Laura. 2006. Future directions for depicting credibility in health care web sites. International Journal of Medical Informatics. 75 (1):58-65
The purpose of the paper was to determine a theoretical framework by which credibility in health care web sites can be depicted. A comprehensive literature review of published articles, policy papers, and grey literature using relevant search terms was conducted. Sources for articles reviewed included MEDLINE, PsycINFO, ERIC and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) databases. The Web of Science citation service and Google were also implemented. The common term, credibility, was purposed for use in this context. A comprehensive set of credibility criteria, was also developed. Conclusions pointed out that relevancy and readiness of the purposed common terminology, criteria, and implementation within the theoretical framework must be further researched. -
ETHICAL ISSUES
Bonetta Laura. 2006 The Aftermath of Scientific Fraud. Cell. 124 (5):873-875
When a retraction is published it appears in PubMed linked to the original paper, thereby alerting scientists to the problem, however, retracted papers continue to be cited in the scientific literature at rates comparable to those for nonretracted papers. Being the coauthor of a paper that is retracted can be very damaging. Scientists who have come face to face with scientific misconduct consider its consequences years later.Cases of possible scientific misconduct involving research funded by the NIH and other agencies within the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) are brought to the attention of the Office of Research Integrity (ORI). Most countries outside the United States do not have an independent institute like ORI dedicated to handling scientific misconduct. -
ECONOMICS AND FUNDING
Frank, Martin. 2006.Access to the Scientific Literature – A Difficult Balance. New England Journal of Medicine. 354(15):1552-1555
In reviewing the case for open access, it makes more sense to focus readers’ attention on ways of increasing access, rather than holding to a strict line on whether a journal article, a journal, or a publisher, for that matter, is open or closed. A commitment to the value and quality of research carries with it a responsibility to extend the circulation of such work as far as possible and ideally to all who are interested in it and all who might profit by it. What follows on this principle, given the current transformation of journals from print to online formats, is that researchers, scholarly societies, publishers, and research libraries have now to ask themselves whether or not they are using this new technology to do as much as can be done to advance and improve access to research and scholarship.
Dipak Kalra, Renate Gertz, Peter Singleton, Hazel M Inskip. 2006. Confidentiality and consent in medical research: Confidentiality of personal health information used for research BMJ ;333:196-198, doi:10.1136/bmj.333.7560.196
Researchers must balance the quest for better health for all against the need to respect the privacy of research participants. In this article, Kalra and colleagues look at what needs to be done to ensure best practice. Several areas of research practice need to be improved, and staff training and access policies are essential, but firstly the main contemporary public concerns must be recognised and understood, they say.
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SUBJECT HEADINGS
ABOUT EDITORS
ECONOMICS AND FUNDING, including
MarketingEDITORIAL PROCESS
ETHICAL ISSUES, including Misconduct and fraud
INFORMATION
LANGUAGE AND WRITING
POLITICS OF PUBLISHING
PRACTICE OF PUBLISHING, including Models of publishing; Metadata; Peer review
PUBLISHING
SCIENCE