IBI-Weblog » PLOS

Steal This Research Paper!

Kristin — Mon, 30 Sep 2013 04:21:23 +0000

…He and Brown realized that it would be immensely helpful to cross-reference their data against the existing scientific literature. Conveniently, the Stanford library had recently launched HighWire Press, the first digital repository for journal articles. “We marched down there and told them what we wanted to do, and could we have these papers,” Eisen recalls. “It didn’t occur to me that they might say no. It just seemed such an obvious good. I remember coming back from that meeting and being like, ‘What a bunch of fuckin’ dicks! Why can’t we have this stuff?’”

The lab’s gene-chip battle, Eisen says, had “inspired a similar attitude with what ultimately became PLOS: ‘This is so ridiculous. We can kill it!’” Brown, luckily, had friends in high places. Harold Varmus, his own postdoctoral mentor, was then in charge of the NIH—one of the most powerful jobs in science. The NIH doles out more than $20 billion annually for cutting-edge biomedical research. Why, Brown asked Varmus, shouldn’t the results be available to everyone?

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Artikel auf Mother Jones

1. Internationaler Open Access Tag

SandraL — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:30:52 +0000

Wie die Informationsplattform Open-Access.net berichtet, findet am 14. Oktober 2008 der 1. Internationale Open Access Tag statt. Veranstalter sind SPARC, PLoS und Students for free culture. Auch Studierende sind aufgerufen, sich am Open Access Tag zu beteiligen. Weitere Informationen zur Teilnahme und Organisation gibt es über die Seite der Kampagne.

Was tun mit späten Peers: Anreizsysteme für pünktliches Reviewing, in der Diskussion

Ben — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 21:24:06 +0000

“Reviewers that turn in their reviews late are punished, whereas those that arrive on time are rewarded”. They suggest that “for every day since receipt of the manuscript for review plus the number of days past the deadline, the reviewer’s next personal submission to the journal will be held in editorial limbo for twice as long before it is sent for review” and “for every manuscript that a reviewer refuses to review, we add on a one-week delay to reviewing their own next submission”.

In Ergänzung zu den 12 Peer-Reviewing-Tipps hier ein Hinweis auf einen weiteren Aspekt dieses Themas. In ihrem Text An Incentive Solution to the Peer Review Problem in PLOS Biology überlegen Marc Hauser und Ernst Fehr, wie man mit säumigen Reviewern umgeht und sie zum rechtzeitigen Einreichen ihrer Begutachtungsergebnisse motivieren kann:

Here’s a proposed solution to the problem that some individuals review swiftly and others, extremely slowly. Whenever a reviewer sends in a review, the date is logged, as is common practice. Next to the date the editor enters a positive or negative value that indicates the relative timeliness of the review: negative values for reviews arriving before the deadline, and positive values for those arriving afterwards. Reviewers that turn in their reviews late are punished, whereas those that arrive on time are rewarded.

Allerdings stimmt dem nicht jeder zu:

If we respect each other and agree with the aim of efficiently and effectively assessing scientific research, we’re all better off. I’m not sure that penalties are the best way to achieve this.

meint Matt Hodgkinson von BioMed Central, das übrigens einen Reviewer Discount einräumt, in seinem Blog Journalology. Und dort kommentiert ein Begutachter namens Bill Hooker durchaus etwas unwirscher:

I get my reviews in on time anyway, but I’m a volunteer dammit. I can pretty much guarantee horrible backlash if Hauser and Fehr’s proposal is ever tried. It’s offensive.

Mit den Peer Reviewern ist anscheinend nicht in jedem Fall zu spaßen. Mal sehen, was aus dem Vorschlag wird.