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B – A checklist to improve medical writing23 May 2017Leventhal PS. A checklist to improve your writing. Medical Writing 2017;26(1):43-45 A checklist of eight items to improve medical writing is provided, with explanations and examples for each item. Several of the checklist items are discussed in detail in other articles in the same issue of Medical Writing journal. A series of exercises to help readers put […]
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B – Scientists on Twitter23 May 2017Ke q, Ahn Y-Y, Sugimoto CR. A systematic identification and analysis of scientists on Twitter. PLoS ONE 2017;12(4):e0175368. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0175368 The authors developed a systematic method to discover scientists who are recognized as scientists by other Twitter users and self-identify as scientists through their profile. They studied the demographics, sharing behaviors, and interconnectivity of the identified scientists […]
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B – Meta-assessment of bias23 May 2017Fanelli D, Costas R, Ioannidis JP. Meta-assessment of bias in science. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 2017;114(14):3714-3719(doi: 10.1073/pnas.1618569114) Actual prevalence of biases across disciplines is unknown. To gain a comprehensive picture of the potential imprint of bias in science, the authors probed for multiple bias-related patterns and risk factors in a large random sample […]
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B – Institutional OA publishing4 April 2017Shashok K. Can scientists and their institutions become their own open access publishers? arXiv:1701.02461 This article offers a personal perspective on the current state of academic publishing, and posits that the scientific community is beset with journals that contribute little valuable knowledge, overload the community’s capacity for high-quality peer review, and waste resources. Open access […]
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B – Full discovery: the publisher’s role29 March 2017Dove JG. Full discovery: what is the publisher’s role? Learned Publishing 2017;30(1):81-86(doi: 10.1002/leap.1086) Efforts over the years to improve content discoverability have made great progress, but an increasing amount of freely available content brings up new issues. Readers of all kinds rely on a variety of ‘discovery pathways’, such as search engines, library systems, and […]
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B – Evidence-based review of Open Access29 March 2017Tennant JP, Waldner F, Jacques DC, et al. The academic, economic and societal impacts of Open Access: an evidence-based review. F1000Research 2016;5:632(doi: 10.12688/f1000research.8460.3) This review presents published evidence of the impact of Open Access on the academy, economy and society. Overall, the evidence points to a favorable impact of OA on the scholarly literature through […]
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B – Accountability in publishing29 March 2017Mani H. Foot print of a paper: accountability in academic publishing. The Lancet 2016;338(1004):562-563(doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(16)31217-X) At the moment, the publishing process is unaccountable to the readers and is not transparent. In a published paper, there is no record of previous submissions to other journals and the comments it might have received in the journey to […]
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B – Journal self-citations29 March 2017Heneberg P. From excessive journal self-cites to citation stacking: analysis of journal self-citation kinetics in search for journals, which boost their scientometric indicators. PLoS One 2016;11:e0153730(doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0153730.s001)Little is known about kinetics of journal self-citations. The author hypothesized that they may show a generalizable pattern within particular research fields or across multiple fields. Currently used scientometric indicators provide […]
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B – Publication ethics statement29 March 2017Gasparyan AY, Yessirkepov M, Voronov AA, et al. Statement on publication ethics for editors and publishers. Journal of Korean Medical Science 2016;31(9):1351-1354(doi: 10.3346/jkms.2016.31.9.1351) Editors and publishers are frequently encountered with the fast-growing problems of authorship, conflicts of interest, peer review, research misconduct, unethical citations, and inappropriate journal impact metrics. The aim of this Statement is […]
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B – Systematic reviews29 March 2017Barbui C, Addis A, Amato L, et al. Can systematic reviews contribute to regulatory decisions? European Journal of Clinical Pharmacology 2017;73(4):507-509(doi: 10.1007/s00228-016-2194-y) Discusses the potential usefulness of systematic reviews in responding to regulatory needs. By collecting, analysing and critically appraising all relevant studies on a specific topic, they may be used by different stakeholders as […]
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B – Reproducibility28 March 2017Allison DB, Brown AW, George BJ, et al. Reproducibility: a tragedy of errors. Nature 20163 Feb. 3 530(7588):27-9(doi: 10.1038/530027a) Mistakes in peer-reviewed papers are easy to find but hard to fix. Post-publication peer review is not consistent, smooth or rapid. Many journal editors and staff members seemed unprepared or ill-equipped to investigate, take action or even respond. […]
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B – Are pseudonyms ethical in publishing?28 March 2017Teixeira da Silva JA. Are pseudonyms ethical in (science) publishing? Neuroskeptic as a case study. Science and Engeneering Ethics 2016. (doi: 10.1007/s11948-016-9825-7) In science publishing, there are increasingly strict rules regarding the use of false identities for authors, the lack of institutional or contact details, and the lack of conflicts of interest, and such instances […]
