Tag Archives: preprint papers
What’s with superconductors and peer-review?
Throughout the time I’ve been a commissioning editor for science-related articles for news outlets, I’ve always sought and published articles about academic publishing. It’s the part of the scientific enterprise that seems to have been shaped the least by science’s … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Scicomm, Science
Tagged academic publishing, arXiv, Jan Hendrik Schön, LK-99, Nature journal, peer review, preprint papers, Ranga P Dias, room-temperature superconductivity, Science journal
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The identity of scientific papers
This prompt arose in response to Stuart Ritchie’s response to a suggestion in an editorial “first published last year but currently getting some attention on Twitter” – that scientists should write their scientific papers as if they were telling a … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm, Science
Tagged IMRaD structure, knowledge production, preprint papers, replication crisis, science journalism, scientific papers, scientific publishing, storytelling
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Are preprints reliable?
To quote from a paper published yesterday in PLOS Biology: Does the information shared in preprints typically withstand the scrutiny of peer review, or are conclusions likely to change in the version of record? We assessed preprints from bioRxiv and medRxiv that had … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Science
Tagged Open Access, peer review, PLOS Biology, preprint papers
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PeerJ’s peer-review problem
Of all the scientific journals in the wild, there are a few I keep a closer eye on: they publish interesting results but more importantly they have been forward-thinking on matters of scientific publishing and they’ve also displayed a tendency … Continue reading
Posted in Science
Tagged glamour journals, negative results, peer review, PeerJ, preprint papers, scientific publishing, sound science
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India’s missing research papers
If you’re looking for a quantification (although you shouldn’t) of the extent to which science is being conducted by press releases in India at the moment, consider the following list of studies. The papers for none of them have been … Continue reading
Posted in Science
Tagged Bharat Biotech, Biocon, Covaxin, COVID-19, COVID-19 epidemic, COVID-19 pandemic, ELISA test kit, favipiravir, hydroxychloroquine, Indian Council of Medical Research, Itolizumab, novel coronavirus, peer review, preprint papers, remdesivir, science academies, science by press release, seroprevalence survey, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, tocilizumab, Zydus Cadila
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The costs of correction
I was slightly disappointed to read a report in the New York Times this morning. Entitled ‘Two Huge COVID-19 Studies Are Retracted After Scientists Sound Alarms’, it discussed the implications of two large studies of COVID-19 recently being retracted by … Continue reading
Posted in Science
Tagged COVID-19, Elisabeth Bik, hydroxychloroquine, New England Journal of Medicine, New York Times, peer review, preprint papers, preprints, scientific literature, scientific publishing, The Lancet
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Poor journalism is making it harder for preprints
There have been quite a few statements by various scientists on Twitter who, in pointing to some preprint paper’s untenable claims, point to the manuscript’s identity as a preprint paper as well. This is not fair, as I’ve argued many times before. … Continue reading
Posted in Op-eds, Science
Tagged Ars Technica, COVID-19, journalism, misinformation, peer review, preprint papers, preprint repositories, preprints, press release, science journalism, scientific literature, scientific publishing, The Lancet
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Distracting from the peer-review problem
From an article entitled ‘The risks of swiftly spreading coronavirus research‘ published by Reuters: A Reuters analysis found that at least 153 studies – including epidemiological papers, genetic analyses and clinical reports – examining every aspect of the disease, now called … Continue reading
Posted in Science, Uncategorized
Tagged bioRxiv, cherry-picking, COVID-19, Elisabeth Bik, peer review, preprint papers, preprints, Reuters, Smut Clyde, The Lancet
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The scientist as inadvertent loser
Twice this week, I’d had occasion to write about how science is an immutably human enterprise and therefore some of its loftier ideals are aspirational at best, and about how transparency is one of the chief USPs of preprint repositories … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Science
Tagged Bioinformatics, Bioinformatics journal, citation, citation racket, H-index, impact factor, Journal of Theoretical Biology, Kuo-Chen Chou, Lorenz attractor, peer review, post-publication peer-review, preprint papers, preprint repositories, reviewer coercion, scientific research, transparency, trustlessness
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