Research on clinical trials with drugs under development is the foundation upon which pharmaceutical companies base the development of their new drugs, thus the reliability of the outcomes of this research is of utmost importance. However studies show that between 60% and 70% of this research may include irreproducible results. It is necessary that the parties involved become aware of the extent of the problem and join together to find a solution. … Read More →
Reproducibility of research results: a subjective view
At a time when discussions about ethics in experimentation and scientific publication are going beyond laboratories and academic environments, and are peaking the interest of society as a whole, another threat is emerging to the credibility of science. Irreproducibility of research results is affecting the different areas of knowledge and is of concern to all. The pressure on researchers for positive and high impact outcomes is bound up with the natural desire of scientists to make groundbreaking discoveries, even if the evidence points to the contrary. … Read More →
Editorial ethics: the detection of plagiarism by automated means
The growth in plagiarism in academic articles requires publishers to have effective plagiarism detection systems, known as PDS, since there are multiple ways that this dishonest practice can be concealed. The issue is of such importance that, since 2004, the University of Applied Sciences in Berlin has been maintaining a specialized site of PDS software evaluations. … Read More →
Scientific Data: Nature Publishing Group moves the communication of scientific data forward with its new online open access publication
The description and communication of research data is an integral part of the opening up of science and one which eScience adheres to; it is one of the specific SciELO action lines. Amongst the many initiatives which are in progress, it is the announcement made by Nature Publishing Group concerning the launch of the publication entitled Scientific Data which stands out. This publication is geared towards communicating the descriptions of scientific data files. … Read More →
The SciELO in Perspective Blogs Space in 2014
2014 will be a decisive year for the development of the SciELO blog space. The priorities will be to strengthen the general blog on contemporary issues in scholarly communication, broaden the participation of the journals in the Humanities, and launch new thematic blogs. … Read More →
Ethical Editing – Ghostwriting is an unhealthy practice
In scholarly communication, contrary to politics and literature, it is considered unethical to write anonymously (as a ghostwriter) and to put the name of another person to what has been written. This can have legal consequences. Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for pharmaceutical and medical equipment companies to use ghostwriters to publish articles that promote their products, often without them having been properly tested in independent clinical trials. Nevertheless, these articles are often published in journals that have international impact. … Read More →
Preservation: the construction of our digital continuity
The amount and variety of digital information continues to grow, and this includes academic journals, government records, information for education, and all that is produced and published on the Internet which needs to be preserved. The need for long-term preservation is not an issue of technology, but rather an enormous unplanned challenge for institutions which requires professional skills not commonly found in the professional labor market. This challenge is one of the most pronounced issues in developing countries which are devoting large sums of money to deal with it. … Read More →
“Small Journals”, indexes and ecancer: an opportunity for Latin America
Most biomedical journals from developing countries have a special characteristic, which consists in the fact that they can be grouped under the heading “Small Journals”. Some of these publications have significant historic value since they have been in circulation for more than fifty years, while others have been published more or less on a regular basis for over a century. The Open Access international journal “ecancer” is beginning to enrich this context, and is contributing to the regional and international dissemination of knowledge produced in the field of oncology in Latin America.” … Read More →
PubMed Commons: NLM launches pilot version of open comments on articles
The United States National Library of Medicine announced the implementation of the PubMed Commons, an innovative system that enables researchers to comment on published scientific papers, promoting a forum of discussion among peers. For the pilot phase, NIH and Wellcome Trust scientists were selected to test the initiative, along with invited colleagues. This system meets the worldwide trend to promote the open discussion of research results. … Read More →
The way ahead for innovating and renewing the management of the SciELO journals
The SciELO Program team is pleased to wish all the readers of the SciELO in Perspective blog Seasons Greetings, and hopes that 2014 will be full of success for you all. The celebration of 15 years of the on-going operation of SciELO in 2013 was enriched by the wide-ranging and in – depth analysis and discussion concerning SciELO’s successes and the advances made, the lessons learned, and the problems which still persist as well as the challenges and future perspectives. … Read More →
To blog or not to blog – what academics are doing
When we speak of scientific blogs, we think of them as a means by which importance is given to the dissemination of scientific activities to the public in general. But apparently this ideal of transferring scientific knowledge to the citizens via blogs is not occurring. Instead, the blogs are becoming internal discussion forums amongst colleagues interested in their own professional careers, in other words, blogs by scientists for scientists. … Read More →
Open-Data: liquid information, democracy, innovation… the times they are a-changin’
Open data are changing teaching, research and decision making. The Open Government registry registers more than 385 catalogs in 40 countries which offer more than one million open data-sets. Open data joins Open Access, Open Source and Creative Commons in a process of global change. A recent report from the McKinsey Global Institute concludes that the availability of Open data could increase trillions of dollars in economic value annually. … Read More →
Ethical editing practices and the problem of self-plagiarism
If an author copies a passage from another author without indicating it, it is considered plagiarism, but … what happens if he takes passages from his own previously published works without indicating it? Self-plagiarism is not an offense against intellectual property but it is, however, a significant ethical lapse in scholarly communication. Is it Ok to reuse one’s own material? To what degree can a work incorporate parts of previous works? … Read More →
The SciELO 15 Years Conference on Twitter
The SciELO 15 Years Conference was a huge success, and its impact was felt far and wide thanks to its dissemination by social media – effective ways of broadcasting information and which are already important for the dissemination of scientific activity. They are also becoming useful tools for the evaluation of the influence and impact of research as measured by the new altmetrics. See the extent of the reach of the conference in Twitter! … Read More →
Controversial Article in The Journal “Science” exposes the weaknesses of Peer-Review in a set of Open Access Journals
Just before celebrating the Open Access Week worldwide, a controversial article published on Science exposed the recurrent question of the weaknesses of the peer review process in scientific communication. The paper focus on the selection of journals which collect article processing fees and describes how 304 versions of a fictitious article containing serious and obvious flaws were accepted in 157 open access journals, many already considered predatory. This post describes the experiment and gathers comments from international blogs. … Read More →
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