WAME Newsletter #80, November 20, 2020

Selected articles in this issue:

  • “Open Access, the Global South and the Politics of Knowledge Production and Circulation” What does measuring quality (as defined by the Global North, read technical standards and impact factor) and open access and data mean for researchers, the research agenda, and journals in the Global South?
  • “Redesign open science for Asia, Africa and Latin America...leading journals are mostly edited by people from Western countries and prioritize research questions relevant to this region. There are many anecdotal reports of papers involving non-Western samples, or asking questions that seem irrelevant to Western culture, not being readily accepted by journals. They are dismissed as being insignificant to the wider readership or viewed with suspicion because of where the research originated… Metrics and policies should be in place only if they are useful to science’s goal: knowledge accumulation for the greater societal good.”
  • What We Can Learn from How Academics and the Public View Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity…Racial discrimination appears to be a less pressing issue than poverty in many parts of the world, where the latter is among the top three barriers globally (60%), ranking highest in Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Southern and Eastern Europe.” Poverty is a substantial barrier in the rest of the world, so why isn’t it considered one?
  • “Final NIH Policy for Data Management and Sharing": Regarding human data, investigators should consider “while developing their Plans, how to address data management and sharing in the informed consent process, such that prospective participants will understand what is expected to happen with their data…NIH also intends to develop resources to help researchers and institutions in communicating the intent to share data with prospective research participants…any limitations on subsequent use of data (which may apply to non-human data as well) should be communicated to those individuals or entities preserving and sharing the scientific data…researchers [should consider] whether, in choosing where and how to make their data available (if not already specified by an FOA or funding NIH ICO expectation), access to scientific data derived from humans should be controlled, even if de-identified and lacking explicit limitations on subsequent use.”

Plus Covid-19 content is freely available and updated as of November 20, 2020

Providing the links does not imply WAME's endorsement. Bold added for emphasis. Please send any suggestions for content or format to [email protected]. See also WAME Newsletter Compilation for content from earlier newsletters.

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ACADEMIA

PhD candidates required to submit list of journals for selection and approval before submitting work: “‘I am still searching for a list of journals that I have to send to the Dean and the Director. They have asked for a list of journals out of which they will select one’…‘You cannot expect to provide the support and infrastructure of research with an impact factor of 0.25 and expect us to deliver papers with an impact factor of 10 or above.’”

How to convert from an in-person to a virtual workshop

ACCESS

“Open Access, the Global South and the Politics of Knowledge Production and Circulation” [from 2018, but it raises points still relevant today]: What does measuring quality (as defined by the Global North, read technical standards and impact factor) and open access and data mean for researchers, the research agenda, and journals in the Global South? “First there is often a conflation of technical interoperability standards for information exchanges with quality standards. Interoperability standards are indeed important for discovery and exchanges but they are external to the quality of research, which can only be assessed by those who have knowledge of the research areas…Second, such “international’ standards are almost without exceptions set by institutions, increasingly private ones, from the Global North. ‘[I]nternational’ often means favouring theoretical and methodological approaches from the North, while undermining or ignoring perspectives and approaches that have significant local relevance. The implicit message is that research from the South has to mimic that from the North, even if it means abandoning research that would contribute to local well-being, while favouring research with international appeal, which means finding readers in journals published in the North…It is becoming clear that adding openness to an asymmetrical and highly unequal system simply amplifies the gap and empowers the already powerful.”

“Redesign open science for Asia, Africa and Latin America: Researchers in many countries need custom-built systems to do robust and transparent science… a commonality will be that all stakeholders — not just the rich or prestigious ones — should be involved in finding a solution…More than 75% of articles analysed in a survey of the journal Psychological Science drew participant samples from Western countries2, despite these countries contributing just 12% to the global population… This bias might also reflect the fact that leading journals are mostly edited by people from Western countries and prioritize research questions relevant to this region. There are many anecdotal reports of papers involving non-Western samples, or asking questions that seem irrelevant to Western culture, not being readily accepted by journals. They are dismissed as being insignificant to the wider readership or viewed with suspicion because of where the research originated… Metrics and policies should be in place only if they are useful to science’s goal: knowledge accumulation for the greater societal good.”

“New SPARC Europe report out: Scoping the Open Science Infrastructure Landscape in Europe… This report collates the results of a survey of infrastructure or services that are part of the European Open Science infrastructure (OSI) landscape…We see a diverse, interconnected, open, professional and viable, OS infrastructure ecosystem in Europe on solid ground; one that is worth investing in. At the same time, this ecosystem — still developing — faces a range of issues that challenge its path to a more open and sustainable future.”

How and why to pursue open science in Africa, using the case example of Nigerian psychological research: “Although African countries and African research are quite heterogeneous in respect to their educational structure and local realities, institutions in individual African countries share some common challenges in African psychology such as lack of international recognition, lack of funding, limited resources and facilities, limited legislative backing and so forth.”

 

EDITING

“Editorial Boards Benefit from Virtual Meetings… ‘Our busy board members are overwhelmingly positive about having virtual meetings. The meetings are easier to schedule when they’re not tethered to a conference, and it’s easier for geographically diverse members to attend. The editors have noted better attendance, more robust discussions, and increased connection between the journal and the board.’”

According to a tweeted table, CrossRef’s members have changed significantly from 2010 to 2020, with characteristics following the profile of journals in LMICs

“Do journals and corporate sponsors back certain views in topics where disagreement prevails?” The case of statins in preventing cardiovascular disease

“Messaging in Biological Psychiatry: Misrepresentations, Their Causes, and Potential Consequences…We summarize the academic studies describing how biomedical observations are often misrepresented in the scientific literature through various forms of data embellishment, publication biases favoring initial and positive studies, improper interpretations, and exaggerated conclusions…studies show that a neuro-essentialist conceptualization of mental disorders negatively affects several aspects of stigmatization, reduces the chances of patients’ healing, and overshadows psychotherapeutic and social approaches that have been found effective in alleviating mental suffering.”

GENDER, RACE, POVERTY

“What We Can Learn from How Academics and the Public View Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity…Racial discrimination appears to be a less pressing issue than poverty in many parts of the world, where the latter is among the top three barriers globally (60%), ranking highest in Latin America, Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Southern and Eastern Europe.” Poverty is a substantial barrier in the rest of the world, so why isn’t it considered one?

Should journals track race and ethnicity or their authors and reviewers? And how transparent are they about diversity (or lack thereof) of their editors and editorial boards?

Sexism in science

IMPACT

“The Role of Information in UN Sustainability Goals: Highlights from the 2020 ASIS&T Meeting…The keynote spotlighted blockchain solutions to foster creativity and innovation in solving food insecurity, and the closing plenary featured regional chairs reporting their progress on initiatives, such as tracking the diffusion of pandemic-related information around the world and increasing health information literacy.”

“In Search of Equity and Justice: Reimagining Scholarly Communication…Today’s challenges reach far beyond discrimination and marginalization in the workplace… We have to grapple with the reality that the racism and inequality we are collectively calling out has been going on for centuries. And that our organizations have played a role in perpetuating it.”

Concept of retraction explained by Association for Science in Autism Treatment: time to bring science to the people?

How can data display tell a visually compelling story (or not)?

What video is being used in scholarly publishing?

JOURNALS AND POLITICS

The science behind polling and voter fraud claims

PEER REVIEW

Should editors ever change peer reviewers’ language, and if so, should they inform them? Commentary about an editor survey preprint [currently under review—preprint previously included in newsletter]

What motivates peer reviewers? Scoping review: “Major internal incentive was ‘communal obligations and reciprocity.’ Major external incentives were ‘career advancement,’ ‘being recognized as an expert,’ and ‘building relationships with journals and editors.’ Major disincentive was the ‘lack of time.’ ”

Should reviewers be paid? The debate continues

Crowd review: collegial for reviewers, easier for editors?

Can interdisciplinary review help spread better methodology (and conversely, why do poor methodologies persist)? A case example from sports medicine: measurement based interference [preprint]

PREDATORY/DECEPTIVE JOURNALS

Cabell’s A to Z features of predatory publishing

 

PREPRINTS

“Preprints Involving Medical Research—Do the Benefits Outweigh the Challenges?”JAMA editors discuss two studies [published as Research Letters, and paywalled: Submissions and Downloads of Preprints in the First Year of medRxiv and Preprint Servers’ Policies, Submission Requirements, and Transparency in Reporting and Research Integrity Recommendations] about preprints, discuss pros and cons of preprints, and journal policy. Additional information about the studies is available here [registration required]. [Unfortunately, one can’t draw one’s own conclusions without paying to read the research.]

“A Lesson of the Pandemic: All Prints Should Be Preprints… As of this week, roughly 10,000 preprints about the novel coronavirus were available on the preprint servers bioRxiv and medRxiv alone, a remarkable feat given that this virus has existed for less than a year. Collectively, these preprints have put vital research information into circulation much faster than would have been possible under the traditional academic publishing model, in which emerging knowledge is sequestered until it clears peer review.”

"The future of arXiv and knowledge discovery in open science...arχiv as of the time of writing contains 1,777,731 e–prints across 158 categories in 8 different subject areas. The e–prints are distributed under license, and archived, free to the author and free to the reader. Distribution is fast, by daily e–mail blasts by category, RSS feeds, and direct web access. arχiv gets approximately a quarter of a million hits per hour, and currently receives about 15,000 new submissions per month.” Plus arXiv projects

“Credibility of preprints: an interdisciplinary survey of researchers”: In exploratory analyses of a convenience sample, the authors found “there was broad agreement that transparency of the underlying research content (i.e. data, materials, code, pre-registration) and evidence of independent verification of content and research claims were the most important factors for assessing the credibility of preprints.”

 

PUBLISHING

“China’s New STM Policies: By the Numbers…the number of Gold OA articles produced by Chinese authors increased by 101.7% between 2016 and 2019, faster than the increase in total number of articles published by Chinese authors (65.9%)…China is on track to publish 683k research articles (at least one of the authors’ organization is located in China) and fund more than 393k of them (at least one of the funders is a Chinese organization) in 2020. Of the 393k funded articles, fewer than 20% will likely be published in Gold and Hybrid journals. Assuming the average cost per article remains the same as 2019, the total APC cost would be $159m USD. If all of these 393k 2020 China funded articles were published in Gold and Hybrid journals, total APC cost would surge to $808m USD.” Figure 2 shows where articles by Chinese authors are published—publication in domestic Chinese English language journals has remained stable while total articles published has grown – now only 9% of Chinese research articles. These trends may change as China’s new policies regarding STM publications are implemented (see past newsletters).

PeerJ is launching PeerJx in which societies can partner with Peer J: "PeerJx partner sites are built on PeerJ’s journal portfolio, platform and infrastructure, but partners have their own editorial responsibilities and community development opportunities. Partners [have] the opportunity to build their own publication pathway, increase their member numbers, and develop their community and opportunities for them to interact...partners can integrate their own branding, and choose the editorial model, community tools, website configuration and even business model to create a bespoke publishing outlet best suited to their organization and members."

Mendeley will retire some features in December 2020: Mendeley Profiles, Feed, Public Groups, and Funding.

REPLICATION, TRANSPARENCY, AND DATA SHARING

“Final NIH Policy for Data Management and Sharing: This Policy establishes the requirements of submission of Data Management and Sharing Plans…It also emphasizes the importance of good data management practices and establishes the expectation for maximizing the appropriate sharing of scientific data generated from NIH-funded or conducted research, with justified limitations or exceptions. This Policy applies to research funded or conducted by NIH that results in the generation of scientific data.” Regarding human data, investigators should consider “while developing their Plans, how to address data management and sharing in the informed consent process, such that prospective participants will understand what is expected to happen with their data…NIH also intends to develop resources to help researchers and institutions in communicating the intent to share data with prospective research participants…any limitations on subsequent use of data (which may apply to non-human data as well) should be communicated to those individuals or entities preserving and sharing the scientific data…researchers [should consider] whether, in choosing where and how to make their data available (if not already specified by an FOA or funding NIH ICO expectation), access to scientific data derived from humans should be controlled, even if de-identified and lacking explicit limitations on subsequent use.”

“CHORUS [a not-for-profit membership organization to promote “sustainable, cost-effective public access to articles reporting on funded research in ways that benefit all in the scholarly communications community”] and DataCite [“global non-profit organization that provides persistent identifiers (DOIs) for research data and other research outputs”] have signed a two-year Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to coordinate efforts to adopt identifiers and standards to manage access to and reporting of research outputs.”

Development and implementation of a tool to help promote data sharing

“Research Quality of Registered Reports [RR] Compared to the Traditional Publishing Model… RRs outperformed comparison papers on all 19 criteria (mean difference=.46) with effects ranging from little difference in novelty (0.13) and creativity (0.22) to substantial differences in rigor of methodology (0.99) and analysis (0.97) and overall paper quality (0.66).” [preprint]

Does peer review of study methodology improve study replicability? Not in this case: “Neither of our primary analysis strategies led to rejection of the null hypothesis that formal peer review has no effect on replicability”

How can one test the claim that science is self-correcting? “Only by obtaining Measurements of Observable Self-Correction (MOSCs) can we begin to evaluate the claim that “science is self-correcting.” We expect the validity of this claim to vary across fields and subfields, and suggest that some fields, such as psychology and biomedicine, fall far short of an appropriate level of transparency and, especially, critical appraisal. Fields without robust, verifiable mechanisms for transparency and critical appraisal cannot reasonably be said to be self-correcting, and thus do not warrant the credibility often imputed to science as a whole.” [preprint]

RETRACTION

“For how long and with what relevance do genetics articles retracted due to research misconduct remain active in the scientific literature…The number of citations received before the retraction notices were published was 3.3 times higher than those received after retraction [26542 (77%) vs 7945 (23%)]. One out of four retracted articles received at least 50% of its citations after retraction.”

How does retraction affect an article’s citations? Not much, apparently… “There was an increase in postretraction citations when compared with citations received preretraction. There were some exceptions however: first, citations received by articles published in first-quartile journals decreased immediately after retraction (p<0.05), only to increase again after some time had elapsed; and second, postretraction citations decreased significantly in the case of articles that had received many citations before their retraction (p<0.05).”

A tool to detect retracted citations? “We are working to solve the problem of citations to retracted studies with the scite Reference Check, which is now live on Manuscript Manager and will be live on other submission systems early next year. Utilizing data from Crossref, Pubmed, and Retraction Watch, we are able to automatically identify and flag references at the submission stage made to retracted studies.”

Retraction language for duplicate publication retraction: “Redundant publications jeopardize the integrity of the scientific literature. They overweigh the relative importance of published findings and distort the academic record of the authors.”

Missing retraction information: include the reason

 

SCIENTIFIC INTEGRITY AND ETHICS

“The ethical questions that haunt facial-recognition research…It’s important to denounce controversial uses of the technology, but that’s not enough, ethicists say. Scientists should also acknowledge the morally dubious foundations of much of the academic work in the field — including studies that have collected enormous data sets of images of people’s faces without consent, many of which helped hone commercial or military surveillance algorithms." Nature conducted a survey and found that “[a]round 40% of the scientists...felt that researchers should get informed consent from individuals before using their faces in a facial-recognition data set, but more than half felt that this wasn’t necessary.”

Making learning about scientific integrity fun: “Bottom-up workshops have laid a foundation for responsible research, but institutions must add structural support…Attendees create and act out scenes depicting irresponsible authorship…we set up role-playing exercises to explore a scenario on influenza research, which helps participants to consider safety and security issues and public dissemination of results. Some act as principal investigators, others act as members of the media and government. We work through ethical questions: should you publish, or not? What is the role of journals? Of government regulators?”

“Fake news and fake research: Why meta‐research matters more than ever…The field of meta‐research or research‐on‐research is the ultimate big picture approach to identifying and solving issues of bias, error, misconduct and waste in research…Meta‐researchers study, analyse and critique the research pathway, focusing on elements such as methods (how to conduct), evaluation (how to test), reporting (how to communicate), reproducibility (how to verify) and incentives (how to reward). In the current climate it is now more critical than ever that we make use of meta‐research and prioritise high‐quality high‐impact research, ultimately leading to improved patient outcomes.”

Do they really want to know? “In the Netherlands, the largest ever study of scientific integrity and sloppy science is being conducted across all disciplines. Or that was the idea, at least, but most universities and teaching hospitals are withholding their cooperation.”

“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Scholarly Research Integrity…This report presents formalized definitions for idea-laundering plagiarism by authors, idea-bleaching censorship by editors, and proposed assertion claims for authors, reviewers, editors, and publishers in ethical peer-reviewed publishing to support integrity in research… we define idea-bleaching censorship by editors as any act that aids and abets the plagiarists by ignoring and silencing inquiries or requests from readers who report the plagiarism.” Recommendations for an editor conflict of interest statement.

SCIENTIFIC MISCONDUCT

“Research fraud: a long-term problem exacerbated by the clamour for research grants” A review of research fraud including the challenges of establishing fraud--“…researchers can have their careers blighted by false accusations, especially when sensationalised in the mass media”—and the academic pressures that contribute: “…the marketisation of higher education, the scramble for research grants and the ingrained credo of publish or perish has created an ideology in which fraudulent activity is both excused and denied.”

“China’s ‘paper mills’ are grinding out fake scientific research at an alarming rate… ‘Countless junior doctors…look down upon the act of faking papers. But the system in China is just like that, you can’t really fight against it. Without papers, you don’t get a promotion. Without a promotion, you can hardly feed your family. I want to have the time to do scientific research, but it’s impossible.’ ”

“What’s the ‘greatest’ scientific fraud of all time?”

More [see previous newsletter] on Andrew Wakefield and “The Doctor Who Fooled the World: Andrew Wakefield’s War on Vaccines”

A method for detecting gel electrophoresis manipulation? [preprint]

Writing similar reviews begets self-plagiarism

Plagiarism threshold reduced from 25% to 10% by a Hyderabad, India, university

Photoshopping one’s way into the scientific literature

 

MAY BE OF INTEREST (subscription required)

Sources include Retraction Watch, Healthcare Information for All listserve, Open Scholarship Initiative listserve, Open Science Newsletter, and Scholarly Kitchen.

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Margaret Winker, MD
Trustee, WAME
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