Weekend reads: Unscientific peer review; impact factor revolt; men love to cite themselves

The week at Retraction Watch featured a puzzle, and the retraction of a controversial study on fracking. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

• Peer review: “Occasionally corrupt, sometimes a charade, an open temptation to plagiarists.” Drummond Rennie calls for a more scientific peer review process. (Nature)
• Hate journal impact factors? John Bohannon, writing in Science, has a study that you’ll like. Veronique Kiermer, executive editor of PLOS and one of the authors of the new study, gives her take. And Ewen Callaway reports in Nature that a number of journals will ban the figure from their pages.
• Men cite themselves more than women do. Our staff writer Dalmeet Singh Chawla takes a look at why that might be. (Nature)
• “In clinical trials, for-profit review boards are taking over for hospitals,” writes Sheila Kaplan in STAT. “Should they?”
• “I reported plagiarism in a PhD, but my university ignored it.” (Anonymous, The Guardian)
• Established research leaders and a “bias against novelty” both restrict what scientific culture needs most: Innovation. (Beryl Lieff Benderly, Science)
• “Overall, peer review appears open to expansion of the variety of theoretical argument but does little to aid in the winnowing out of established perspectives,” according to a new paper. (Kyle Syler and David Strang; Science, Technology and Human Values; sub req’d)
• Journals: Don’t embargo papers that have already appeared as preprints, urges our co-founder at Embargo Watch. Here’s why.
• In case anyone needed a reminder, here’s why researchers should avoid predatory publishers — and seek out rigorous peer review. (Cami Ryan and John Vicini, Forbes)
• Devoney Looser offers a glimpse inside the lives of journal editors and how they tackle the submission process. (The Chronicle of Higher Education)
• Will a new publishing platform from the Wellcome Trust be a game-changer? Some think so. (John Bohannon, Science) Our co-founders say Wellcome has to take another step. (STAT)
• “The survey found that a whistle-blower arrangement has been put in place in only a minority of the organisations taking part,” according to Science Europe’s 2016 research integrity practices report, which found that a third of survey respondents’ institutions had no definition of research integrity.
• “Some researchers argue that [epigenetics] experiments have been weakly designed,” says Carl Zimmer. “Very often, they say, it’s impossible for scientists to confirm that epigenetics is responsible for the effects they see.” (New York Times)
• Why do bad ideas refuse to die? asks Steven Poole. (The Guardian)
• What are the benefits and limitations of open peer review? A recent conference tackled the issues.
• When it comes to research misconduct, “A fully satisfactory approach to prevention, detection, investigation and adjudication has yet to emerge,” says K. J. Breen. (Internal Medicine Journal, sub req’d)
• The goodwill acts of “academic citizenship,” such as reviewing, are dwindling. Three professors weigh in on how long these acts will last. (Roger Watson, John Corner and Fiona Copland, Times Higher Education)
• What if fast food required peer review? Hilarity ensues. (Digital Science)
• “The rate of retractions in the orthopaedic literature is increasing, with the majority of retractions attributed to academic misconduct and fraud.” (Michelle Ghert and colleagues, Bone & Joint Research)
• A clash over whether research subjects protection should lean toward a biomedical model or a social sciences framework is “about power and power struggles in Latin America, and exposes the gap between the two science cultures,” writes Carla Almeida. (SciDevNet)
• The “inclination to plagiarize is negatively associated with Conscientiousness and Agreeableness traits,” says a new study of Portuguese undergraduates. (Daniela Wilks and colleagues, Journal of Academic Ethics, sub req’d)
• George Borjas rants about peer review, following a recent story we covered.
• “Multiple indicators and their composite give a more comprehensive picture of impact, although no method can pick all the best scientists,” according to a study by John Ioannidis and colleagues. (PLOS Biology)
• How should software be cited? Principles from the FORCE11 Software Citation Working Group. (PeerJ Preprints)
• “We end this war of attrition by considering candidates with fewer years of postdoc experience and, accordingly, shorter publication list.” Thoughts from Carolyn Bertozzi on how to help postdocs enjoy fulfilling careers. (ACS Central Science)
• “[O]nly a minority of researchers are aware of the existence of a [technology transfer office] at their university,” says a new study. (Annelore Huyghe and colleagues, Small Business Economics, sub req’d)
• What’s the best way to distinguish sleeping beauty papers? ask Jiang Li and Fred Ye. (Scientometrics, sub req’d)
• What are the dangers associated with altmetrics? Christian Gumpenberger and colleagues have some ideas. (Scientometrics)
• How do co-authors create and solve contributorship conflicts? ask two co-authors, Jan Youtie and Barry Bozeman. (Minerva)
• Psychology has a meta-analysis problem, says Hilda Bastian. (PLOS Blogs)
• “Where funders are swindled of their grants, where institutions are damaged by fraud, where research conduct is brazenly faked, such conduct is so serious as to justify the intrusion of the criminal law to punish, deter and protect the good name of scholarly research,” says Ian Freckleton. (The Conversation)
• “Some 34 percent of academic theses in Turkey have high plagiarism rates,” according to a new report. (Hurriyet Daily News)
• Here’s how open science helps researchers succeed, from Erin McKiernan and colleagues. (eLife)
• How should journals handle refutations? The editors of one cardiology journal weigh in. (Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology)
• “What’s the point of the PhD thesis?” asks Julie Gould in Nature, part of a package of stories on the subject.
• The Australian Broadcasting Corporation retracted a program on wi-fi and cancer, and suspended the presenter, after a damning report. (Matthew Knott, Sydney Morning Herald)
• The UK is in danger of losing 33,000 female scientists each year after many are choosing not to pursue a scientific career after graduation. (Aftab Ali, The Independent)
• In Ireland, universities could lose funding if they don’t combat gender inequality among staff. (Marése O’Sullivan, UTV)
• Germany will fund 1,000 tenure-track professorships, Amber Dance of Nature reports.

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