The first salvo in the Guardian’s recently published series of articles on academic publishing was delivered by veteran agitator George Monbiot. Journals publish government funded research, written and often edited for free by academics says Monbiot. “But to see it, we must pay again, and through the nose,” he says. The monopolist practices of academic publishers […]
Tag: journalology
Richard Smith: What is post publication peer review?
I’ve been tramping from stage to stage arguing that pre publication peer is slow, expensive ($1.8 billion a year), ineffective, biased, and anti-innovatory and should be dumped in favour of post-publication peer review. But what do I mean by post publication peer review? Despite my best efforts, which are clearly not good enough, people are […]
Andrew Burd on conflict of interest
Following on from my blog on professionalism, I want to discuss conflict of interest. The term has been appearing more and more in the world of medicine. A 2009 study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine found that orthopaedic surgeons at a large annual meeting were somewhat reluctant to share details of their financial […]
Richard Smith: Might copies of PLoS ONE change journals forever?
I continue to be amazed that despite the appearance of the internet, which some have compared with the invention of fire, our methods for disseminating scientific studies are essentially the same as they were 50 years ago. We still have journals, and, although papers have electronic versions, those papers are indistinguishable from those of 50 […]
Liz Wager: Journals that dare not speak their name
There’s a new species of journal lurking in the medical publishing jungle, but it doesn’t seem to have a name. As a zoologist turned writer (ie somebody obsessed by taxonomy and words) this bothers me so I hope somebody will christen them soon. To launch this campaign, I’ll begin by describing what the new type […]
Andrew Burd: Naughty editor, bad editor
I have been the human guardian of both cats and dogs over the years. I cannot call myself either a cat person or a dog person. They have such different personalities. Cats are free spirits but are also wonderfully self-indulgent and will be happily stroked for hours. Dogs are more keen on activity and many […]
Trish Groves: Let SPIRIT take you … towards much clearer trial protocols
Reporting statements like the CONSORT and STROBE statements are making an important and demonstrable difference to the quality of research papers by helping authors report exactly what happened in their studies. But these statements can’t fix studies that were inadequately designed or poorly conducted. They’re the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, rather than […]
Richard Smith: A ripping yarn of editorial misconduct
In what has been called the age of accountability, editors have continued to be as unaccountable as kings. But stories of editorial misconduct are growing, and another story, nothing less than a ripping yarn, has recently appeared in the Harvard Health Policy Review (2008; 9: 46-55.) The story is told by Donald Light and Rebecca […]
Rob Siebers: Inadvertent duplicate publication
Duplicate or highly similar publications are unethical and unacceptable in the biomedical literature. Déjà Vu, a freely accessible database of highly similar and duplicate publications, is a valuable tool for journal editorial staff to identify whether a submitted article has previously been published and has the potential to be a powerful deterrent to this behaviour. […]
Juliet Walker: Free v. Open Access
Recent changes to the BMJ’s copyright licence and the information it includes in research articles means that they can be formally listed as open access articles in PubMed Central and other repositories. So should we change the labels of open access research articles on our website from “free” to “open access”? […]