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B – Antidepressants. An untold story?6 January 2009Lenzer J, Brownlee S. Antidepressants. An untold story? BMJ 2008;336:532-534 doi:10.1136/bmj.39504.662685.0F This story about antidepressants highlights the ongoing problem of how study results are often distorted by a failure to access full datasets. In fact, the analysis of published and unpublished data from studies of antidepressants in adults shows that only a very small subset […]
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N – Weak pound hurts subscriptions6 January 2009The fall in the value of the pound is damaging the budgets of UK university libraries. Costs of subscriptions to foreign research journals from Europe and the United States have risen due to changes in the exchange rate. Since July 2008, the value of the pound has fallen by about 25% against the US dollar […]
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B – Experts still needed. Be suspicious of metric-based research assessment.2 January 2009Experts still needed. There are good reasons to be suspicious of metric-based research assessment. (Editorial) Nature 2009 (457):7-8 doi:10.1038/457007b There are different kinds of metrics for research, but they do not always prove to give robust results. This is the case of the Research Assessment Evalutaion in UK, as described in this editorial. Expert review […]
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N – BMJ: 10 years of free access29 December 2008After 10 years of providing free access to its peer reviewed research online, the BMJ is officially an open access journal. In 1998 it started to provide free access to the full text of research articles; to deposit the full text in PubMed Central; and to allow authors to retain copyright. The BMJ Group has […]
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N – International open access day29 December 2008The 14 October was open access day 2008, with the goal “to broaden awareness and understanding of open access, including recent mandates and emerging policies, within the international higher education community and the general public.” The Open Access Directory compiled a wiki to help organise much of the world’s material (http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Main_Page). And Greg Laden wrote […]
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N – More resources with open access29 December 2008The Bahrain Medical Bulletin went open access from December 2008 and is published under a copyright that allows readers to reuse the articles provided they cite them correctly. In the open access Global Library of Women’s Medicine (www.glowm.com), recently launched by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in London, more than 650 experts discuss […]
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N – Outcome reporting bias exposed29 December 2008Only 11 of 73 funders of randomised controlled trials contacted mentioned the importance of publication of negative as well as positive outcomes, a study in Trials has found (2008;9:66, doi:10.1186/1745-6215-9-66). The funders often mentioned trial registration, protocol adherence, trial publication, and monitoring. The report highlights the need for more detailed guidance from funders to prevent […]
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N – Europe promises open access to research29 December 2008The European Commission has launched a pilot project that will give unrestricted online access to research results funded by the European Union, primarily research published in peer reviewed journals, after an embargo of 6-12 months. The pilot will cover about 20% of the budget of the Seventh Research Framework Programme, €50bn between 2007 and 2013, […]
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N – Pressure to publish scoop science29 December 2008Research in Cell has been criticised by five researchers from four research groups in three countries for not properly crediting their earlier findings (2008;133:1093-105, doi:10.1016/j.cell.2008.04.048). One critic, Peter Lawrence, said, “There’s a pressure on scientists to publish in these top journals to promote their work as more novel than it really is.” The paper’s main […]
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N – Google feels credit contraction29 December 2008The internet search provider Google will close its scientific data service, Google Research Datasets, in January, before the product’s official launch. The experimental service was to offer scientists a way to store the terabytes of open source data that are generated in life sciences, pharmaceuticals, and other fields. A few weeks ago, the company’s chief […]
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N – Professor charged with ghostwriting29 December 2008A US inquiry has charged an Australian professor for being author of an article in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology that was sympathetic to a treatment after it was linked to cancer. The inquiry is investigating whether drug companies pay ghostwriters to favour their products. The professor stands by the article, and the […]
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N – JISC aggregates journal contents29 December 2008The tables of content of the tables of content of 11469 scholarly journal from 421 publishers can be viewed together in a service from the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC). The service, Tictocs, is free to use and seeks to help researchers keep up to date with what is being published in the most recent […]
