B - Core competencies for scientific editors

Galipeau J, Barbour V, Baskin P, et al. A scoping review of competencies for scientific editors of biomedical journals. BMC Medicine 2016;14:16
(doi: 10.1186/s12916-016-0561-2)

This scoping review is the first attempt to systematically identify possible competencies of scientific editors of biomedical journals. It informs readers on the extent and nature of existing literature in this area, as well as the breadth of skills, abilities, tasks, knowledge, and training that may be necessary to fulfill the position of scientific editor. More importantly, the review is part of a larger program to develop a minimum set of core competencies for scientific editors of biomedical journals which will be followed by a training needs assessment, a Delphi exercise, and a consensus meeting.
https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-016-0561-2

B - Personalized medicine

Schork NJ. Personalized medicine: time for one-person trials. Nature 2015;520:609-611

(doi:10.1038/520609a)

Every day, millions of people are taking medications that will not help them. The top ten highest-grossing drugs in the United States help between 1 in 25 and 1 in 4 of the people who take them. Recognition that physicians need to take individual variability into account is driving huge interest in 'precision' medicine, that requires a different type of clinical trial focusing on individual, not average, responses to therapy. But  regulatory agencies, researchers and clinicians are rightfully wary of moving away from classical clinical trials, and pharmaceutical companies tend to focus on drugs that are likely to be used by thousands or millions of people.
http://www.nature.com/news/personalized-medicine-time-for-one-person-trials-1.17411

B - Emerging trends in peer review

Walker R, Rocha da Silva P. Emerging trends in peer review—a survey. Frontiers in Neuroscience 2015;9:169.
(doi: 10.3389/fnins.2015.00169)

“Classical peer review” has been subject to intense criticism for slowing down the publication process, bias against specific categories of paper and author, unreliability, inability to detect errors and fraud, unethical practices, and the lack of recognition for unpaid reviewers. This paper surveys innovative forms of peer review that attempt to address these issues.  According to the authors, the most likely scenario for the coming years is a continued diversification, in which different review mechanisms serve different author, reader, and publisher needs.
http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnins.2015.00169/abstract

B - Open access platforms for clinical trial data

Navar AM, Pencina MJ, Rymer JA, et al. Use of open access platforms for clinical trial data. (Letter). JAMA 2016;315(12):1283-1284
(doi: 10.1001/jama.2016.2374)

Concerns over bias in clinical trial reporting have stimulated calls for more open data sharing. In response, multiple pharmaceutical companies have created mechanisms for investigators to access patient-level clinical trials data. Although more than 3,000 trials are available to investigators through open data platforms, only 15.5% had been requested by a limited number of researchers. Availability of shared clinical trial data should be promoted and use of individual patient data for validation studies encouraged.
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2504799

B - Predatory open access

Shen C, Bjork B. "Predatory" open access: a longitudinal study of article volumes and market characteristics. BMC Medicine 2015;13:230

(doi: 10.1186/s12916-015-0469-2)

The so-called predatory publishers are causing unfounded negative publicity for open access publishing in general. The authors of this article used a multistage stratified sampling method to take a look into the predatory publishers and journals on Beall’s list and generated their development trend over time. They found that the problems caused by predatory journals are limited to just a few countries, where the academic evaluation practices strongly favor international publication, but without further quality checks.They believe that the publishing volumes in such journals will cease growing in the near future.
http://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12916-015-0469-2

B - Reproducibility in preclinical research

Freedman LP, Cockburn IM, Simcoe TS. The economics of reproducibility in preclinical research. PLoS Biology 2016;13(6):e1002165
(doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1002165)

 

Low reproducibility rates within life science research undermine cumulative knowledge production and contribute to both delays and costs of therapeutic drug development. An analysis of past studies indicates that the cumulative (total) prevalence of irreproducible preclinical research exceeds 50% in the United States alone. The authors outline a framework for solutions and a plan for long-term improvements in reproducibility rates that will help to accelerate the discovery of life-saving therapies and cures.
http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002165

B - Peer review: current landscape and future trends

Jubb M. Peer review: the current landscape and future trends. Learned Publishing 2016;29:13-21
(doi: 10.1002/leap.1008)

This paper catalogues current initiatives and trends in the systems and processes surrounding peer review. It considers issues such as open and interactive reviews, post-publication comments and ratings, and the platforms provided by both publishers and other organisations to support such activity; third-party peer review platforms; and measures from publishers and others to provide more recognition and rewards for peer reviewers. Peer review remains fundamental to scholarly communications. Experiments and innovations, both pre-publication and post-publication, are in part a response to concerns about the effectiveness and fairness of current systems but have also been stimulated by new technologies, and new entrants.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/leap.1008/full

B - Does it take too long to publish research?

Powell K. Does it take too long to publish research? Nature 2016;530:148-151

Some researchers complain that publishing papers takes too long. But is the publication process actually becoming longer — and, if so, then why? To find out, Nature examined some recent analyses on time to publication and spoke to scientists and editors about their experiences. Journal editors counter that science itself has become more data-rich, that they work to uphold high editorial and peer-review standards. Some data suggest that wait times have increased within certain subsets of journals, such as popular open access ones and some of the most sought-after titles.
http://www.nature.com/news/does-it-take-too-long-to-publish-research-1.19320

B - Gender-inequality problem in science

Hilton D. Practical policies can combat gender inequality. Nature 2015;523:7

How can science address the gender-inequality problem? According to the author, Director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne (Australia), the mechanisms helping researchers balance work and home lives have made a positive difference to the gender balance at his Institute. For example, they demand that at least half of speakers at conferences organized by the Institute are women, and they created a gender-equality committee to monitor implementation of policies.
http://www.nature.com/news/practical-policies-can-combat-gender-inequality-1.17856

B - Peer review effectiveness

Siler K, Lee K, Bero L. Measuring the effectiveness of scientific gatekeeping. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 2015;112(2):360-365
(doi: 10.1073/pnas.1418218112)

This article tracks the popularity of rejected and accepted manuscripts at three elite medical journals. The authors found that editors and reviewers generally made good decisions regarding which manuscripts to promote and reject. However, many highly cited articles were surprisingly rejected. The research suggests that evaluative strategies that increase the mean quality of published science may also increase the risk of rejecting unconventional or outstanding work. Systematic evidence regarding the effectiveness—or lack thereof—of scientific gatekeeping is scant, largely because access to rejected manuscripts from journals is rarely available.
http://www.pnas.org/content/112/2/360.abstract

B - Peer review and research data

Murphy F. An update on peer review and research data. Learned Publishing 2016;29(1):51-53
(doi: 10.1002/leap.1005)

Technological advances in the amounts of data that researchers generate and use are causing problems for the scholarly communication system. How, when and by whom should quality checks and assurance be integrated into this – already overloaded – ecosystem? This paper outlines the challenges, illustrates some current initiatives and posits possible directions for the future.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/leap.1005/full

B - Science and sexism

Morello L. Science and sexism: in the eye of the Twitterstorm. Nature 11 November 2015

Social media has enabled an increasingly public discussion about the persistent problem of sexism in science. Although it is not yet clear whether the social-media conversation about sexism in science will help to create lasting change, some scientists think that it may provide a sense of solidarity for women across disciplines. Twitter is an important outlet for younger scientists, who often don’t know how to respond to instances of sexism or sexual harassment, and it can also help to build a sense of community among scientists in different disciplines.
http://www.nature.com/news/science-and-sexism-in-the-eye-of-the-twitterstorm-1.18767

B - Ethics approval of research

Newson AJ, Lipworth W. Why should ethics approval be required prior to publication of health promotion research? Health Promotion Journal of Australia 9 November 2015  (Epub)
(doi: 10.1071/HE15034)

Most academic journals that publish studies involving human participants require evidence that the research has been approved by a human research ethics committee (HREC). Yet journals continue to receive submissions from authors who have failed to obtain such approval. In this paper, the authors provide a systematic and comprehensive assessment of why research ethics approval should generally be obtained before publishing in the health promotion context.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26548539

A: ESE Author Q&A: Daniel Johnston

Welcome to the first of a new regular feature we will be bringing you on the EASEBlog – interviews with our European Science Editing authors.

Through these interviews, we aim to pursue our goals of scientific responsibility, knowledge sharing and communication by shedding more light on the people behind the articles you read in the ESE Journal, provide some further detail and background to the publications, and help spread the messages from the people and their papers to the publishing community and the general public.

So to our very first interviewee: Publons co-founder Daniel Johnston tells us more about his work incentivising and recognising the work of peer reviewers, and offers further insight into his article which appeared in European Science Editing 41(3); Peer review incentives: a simple idea to encourage fast and effective peer review.

The article is now free to access from the EASE website. Download it here.

We begin, by asking Daniel to summarise the themes of the paper he wrote for European Science Editing:

Daniel Johnston: The peer review process is unnecessarily slow and inefficient due to a lack of incentives for researchers to prioritise peer review.  Providing recognition for peer review contributions in a format that researchers can use to advance their career -- a service provided by Publons -- encourages researchers to prioritise peer review and results in a faster review process.  In addition, indexing the review history of researchers across all publishers makes it possible to provide tools for editors to further improve the peer review process.

EASE: What is your main role at Publons?

DJ: As one of two Publons cofounders my role is part-strategic, part-operational, and has varied a lot over the years.  Currently my focus is on improving the Publons product for reviewers, editors, and publishers.

EASE: How long have you been involved in this area?

DJ: We formally launched Publons in 2013, about four years after we first started work on the idea.

EASE: What are some of the most innovative aspects you could tell us about your work?

DJ: As the first in this space, almost everything we do is innovative by definition!  I’d say the most notable innovation is the idea at the heart of Publons -- that you can incentivise better and faster peer review by giving reviewers credit in a format they can add to their resume.

EASE: What do you feel are your most significant work-related achievements?

DJ: Taking that idea and making it work, to the point now where we are seeing 1% of the world’s peer review flow through Publons.  We’re particularly happy to see Publons is already speeding up science, as we’ve seen from before/after analysis of our pilots with publishers.  Offering credit on Publons increases review invitation acceptance rates by about 18% for a typical journal, and decreases review turnaround time by about 8%.

EASE: Those are impressive results.  How did you isolate the effect of the Publons credit? Did you use control groups within the same journal, or other journals as controls?

DJ: We intend to publish the full analysis in the near future, but I can speak a little bit to our methodology:

We can isolate the effect pretty well through two major comparisons: comparing a journal's peer review metrics before and after the Publons integration started, and comparing metrics for reviewers that ‘opt in’ to Publons versus the metrics for reviewers that ‘opt out’ (i.e. choose not to participate).  The reviewers that choose not to join Publons act as a pretty good control.  By comparing these two reviewer groups before Publons we were also able to determine that the differences were not due to selection bias.

This was a small preliminary study on 15 journals across multiple publishers.  We have around 200 integrated journals on Publons now, so would love for a research team to do a more comprehensive study on the effects of reviewer credit on the peer review process.

EASE: Do you have any interesting projects in the next year or so, that you are able to speak about?

DJ: Providing value to editors is our next big project.  The aim is to not only provide public recognition for the work of editors, but also to supply editors with tools that make their editorial activities easier.  With the world’s largest database of verified reviews there are a lot of exciting tools we can build for editors.

EASE: Some questions now, about the article you wrote for us.  What motivated you to write for ESE?

DJ: It was a good opportunity to reach out directly to a community of editors.  At that time most of the information on our website was tailored to reviewers, so it was nice to focus on how Publons works for editors.

EASE: What impact do you hope this paper could have, what changes could it make?

DJ: I hope it gets editors excited about Publons!  We have really good traction among reviewers and publishers, and expect many more editors to add Publons to their editorial toolbelt as we roll out improvements to our services for editors in the coming months.

The potential impact is enormous: the greater the number of editors and reviewers using Publons, the greater the effect on speeding up peer review and increasing the rate of scientific discovery.

EASE: If people want to read more about this subject, can you name one or two specific articles they should read? Are there any websites or other resources related to your paper they should seek out?

DJ: I’d recommend readers check out these new resources/articles:

Publons for Editors, Publons

Getting Credit for Peer Review, Science

Will Publons Popularize the Scientific Peer-Review Process?, BioScience

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You can find Daniel's article, in the full August issue of the ESE Journal archive on the EASE website here.


Interview conducted by Duncan Nicholas of the EASE Council.