An increasing number of agencies are using lottery systems to distribute research funding. Supporters of the approach have even suggested lotteries could be used by journals to select which papers to publish [1]. In this blog, we discuss how this would potentially work, and look at the pros and cons of such a system. How […]
Is it misconduct to submit a translated version of a published paper to another journal?
The short answer … Yes – if you do not declare that it is a translated version of an already published paper. No – if you make it clear that it is a translated version, i.e., not original research. This blog English is the (current) universal language of science. The pressure on English-as-a-second-language (ESL) researchers […]
Author or contributor? The A to Z of authorship
The average number of authors on scientific articles has increased 5-fold over the last 100 years, from one author per paper in 1913 to more than five authors per paper in 2013 [1], and recent times have seen the rise of hyperauthorship, with one paper listing 5,154 authors [2]. This development has resulted in an […]
Funder data sharing policies
As well as journals, funders (NIH, STFC, NERC, Wellcome Trust, et al.) are also starting to implement mandatory data sharing policies [1], with applicants being asked to disclose their data management plans (with obvious implications if they have no such plan [or a weak plan] in place). In 2013, it was announced that all US […]
Publisher data sharing policies
Many journals (PLOS One, Nature, The Royal Society, et al.) now have mandatory data sharing policies. This means that researchers must make their datasets publicly available, whereby readers can “reach the conclusions drawn in the manuscript” and “replicate the reported study findings in their entirety.” [1]. Datasets can be made publicly available in three ways: In the […]
