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B – Double-blind review23 December 2015Menéndez J. More on double-blind review. APS News 2015;24(10):4 Letter that gives reason why double-blind review should not be optional and also thinks it would be valuable in avoiding institutional or country bias.
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B – Internet influence on plagiarism23 December 2015Ison DC. The influence of the Internet on plagiarism among doctoral dissertations: an empirical study. Journal of Academic Ethics 2015;13(2):151-66(doi: 10.1007/s10805-015-9233-7) The online environment is accelerating the decline in academic ethics. This study collected empirical data to investigate the potential influence Internet had on significant higher education artifacts by comparing dissertations written prior to widespread […]
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B – Retraction policies of top journals23 December 2015Resnik DB, Wager E, Kissling GE. Retraction policies of top scientific journals ranked by impact factor. Journal of the Medical Library Association 2015;103(3):136-9(doi: 10.3163/1536-5050.103.3.006) The purpose of this study was to provide updated information on the retraction policies of major science journals. The specific aims were to: (1) determine the percentage of the top 200 […]
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B – The end of journals22 December 2015Krumholz HM. The end of journals. Circulation e-pub Nov. 10, 2015(doi:10.1161/CIRCOUTCOMES.115.002415) According to the author, there are at least 9 deficiencies in the current publication model that fuel the sense that journals as we have known them are approaching their final act. Among them: the publication process is too long; the expense of publishing is […]
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B – Negative results6 October 2015Teixeira da Silva JA. Negative results: negative perceptions limit their potential for increasing reproducibility. Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine 2015;14:12(doi: 10.1186/s12952-015-0033-9) Not all negative results in science get published. Part of the problem lies with a traditional mind-set and rigid publishing framework that tends to view negative results in a negative light, or that only […]
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B – Increasing value and reduce waste6 October 2015Moher D, Glasziou P, Chalmers I, et al. Increasing value and reducing waste in biomedical research: who’s listening? The Lancet Sept. 28, 2015(doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(15)00307-4) Published online during the REWARD/EQUATOR Conference in Edinburgh (September 28-30), this review provides some initial observations on the possible effects of The Lancet 2014 series of five reviews showing how dividends from […]
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B – Can a medical researcher have too many publications?6 October 2015Jorm AF. Can a medical researcher have too many publications? The Medical Journal of Australia 2015;203(5):230-1(doi: 10.5694/mja15.00194) Most prolific researchers may not be adhering to authorship guidelines: the author argues that very high publication rates should be seen as indicating poor authorship practices and should be discounted in evaluating track record.https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2015/203/5/can-medical-researcher-have-too-many-publications
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B – The COBWEB randomized controlled trial6 October 2015Barnes C, Boutron I, Giraudeau B, et al. Impact of an online writing aid tool for writing a randomized trial report: the COBWEB (Consort-based WEB tool) randomized controlled trial. BMC Medicine 2015;13:221(doi: 10.1186/s12916-015-0460-y)The authors developed a writing aid tool based on the CONSORT guidelines and its extension for non-pharmacologic treatments to help authors when writing […]
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B – How to improve the medical research literature24 September 2015Moher D, Altman DG. Four proposals to help improve the medical research literature. PLoS Medicine 2015;12(9):e1001864(doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1001864) The authors discuss four potential contributory actions by journals and educational institutions to help increase the value of research articles: publications officers, core competency training of medical editors, training authors to write articles “fit for purpose” , and training […]
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B – Gender gap in social-science funding24 September 2015Boyle PJ, Smith LK, Cooper NJ, et al. Women are funded more fairly in social science. Nature 10 Sept. 2015;525:181-183 In the biomedical sciences, women get smaller grants than men in the United States and the United Kingdom. This pattern is evident at different rates across disciplinary domains. The data presented in the article show […]
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B – Editorial Board meetings24 September 2015Cochran A. The value in attending editorial board meetings. The Scholarly Kitchen Apr 9 2015 The author has learned a lot from her own large experience about what makes editorial board meetings successful from the publisher perspective. They are like mini focus groups: you hear about what is going on at the universities, what hot topics are […]
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B – Overflow in science and trust21 September 2015Siebert S, Machesky LM, Insall RH. Overflow in science and its implications for trust. eLIFE 2015;4:e10825(doi: 10.7554/eLife.10825) To explore the question of how the perceived decline in reproducibility and integrity in some areas of science has affected trust in the scientific enterprise, the authors interviewed a number of senior biomedical researchers. The interviews revealed a […]
