Weekend reads: Papers from prison; profs’ kids as co-authors; a history journal flap

The week at Retraction Watch featured a look at whether scientists in industry or academia admit to more misconduct, another strange publication twist for a vaccine study, and the correction of a study that claimed anti-gay attitudes could take more than a decade off of gay peoples’ lifespans. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:

• Ali Kaya picked an unusual way to pass time in Turkish prison: He wrote physics papers. (Alison Abbott, Nature)
• An investigation in South Korea found “Some 82 cases of professors listing their secondary school offspring as co-authors in academic papers.” (Aimee Chung, University World News) Nature reports that the government is looking into the scheme, which was apparently to “give the children an edge when applying to university, a highly competitive process in South Korea.” (Mark Zastrow)
• “After a major editorial flap, history’s premier journal announces a series of changes aimed at diversifying viewpoints and contributors.” (Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed)
• “’The way that scientific publishing fetishizes novelty is gross,’ says [Leon] Van Eck.” (Ed Yong, The Atlantic)
• A university in Taiwan “rejected allegations that university president-elect Kuan Chung-ming (管中閔) plagiarized a student’s master’s thesis on the grounds that Kuan’s conference paper was not a ‘formal publication.'” (Ann Maxon, Taipei Times)
• In an unusual move, a judge gave CrossFit the right to unmask the peer reviewers of a now-retracted paper. (Andrew P. Han, Science/Retraction Watch)
• “You heard it here first biotechies: Ignore PubPeer at your peril.” Our co-founders argue investors should monitor the site. (STAT)
• Lizzie Gadd says “metrics aren’t bad in and of themselves, it’s what we do with them that can make them dangerous.” (The Bibliomagician)
• “What follows is an automated way to create a list of legitimate journals, in other words a whitelist for people to consult.” (Alex Holcombe’s blog)
• Our co-founder Ivan Oransky sat down with PubPeer’s Brandon Stell and others to discuss contemporary science. (Transcript and podcast, Transmissions)
• “Frankenstein never submitted his experiment to fictional Ingolstadt’s non-existent Institutional Review Board (IRB).” (Leah Fowler, PolicyWise) (Should he have?)
• A science news site — well aware of the predatory journal problem— retracts a story after discovering the paper it was based on was published in one such journal. (Research Matters)
• Starting this month, Nature Research journals will ask all authors to disclose non-financial conflicts of interest that may influence them, as well as financial conflicts. (Nature)
• “PREreview helps to turn journal clubs from destructive to constructive exercises.” (Lenny Teytelman, Protocols.io)
• Academic journals need authorship policies, “so that they have a process for assessing lengthy author lists” and guidelines for dealing with authorship disputes.” (Danielle Padula, Theresa Somerville and Ben Mudrak; LSE Impact Blog)
• The Wellcome Trust’s Robert Kiley says a new journal the Trust built for its grantees “is working effectively.” (ASAPbio)
• “E-cigarettes — aka vaping — may not involve smoke or a flame, but a study of their potential risks may have just landed New Scientist in a hot spot.” A broken embargo. (Embargo Watch)
• “Why do authors publish in ‘predatory’ OA journals?” (Serhat Kurt, Learned Publishing, sub req’d)
• The U.S. FDA chief has ordered an agency-wide review of animal testing afterfour squirrel monkeys died. (Sheila Kaplan, New York Times)
• Michael Eisen’s newest project “is both a model and experimental platform for what peer review can and should look like in a world without journals.” (ASAPBio)
• Publishers should move away from distribution “towards a ‘knowledge retrieval’ or ‘knowledge-centric’ model,” Matthias Björnmalm says. (LSE Impact Blog)
• “‘Never mind’ might be a constant headline if mainstream media covered the more than 1,000 retractions from scientific publications counted by Retraction Watch every year.” (Nicole Ireland, CBC News)
• “This Professor Resigned From Caltech After Harassing Two Students,” reports Azeen Ghorayshi. “Now He Has A New Job.” (BuzzFeed)
• “Here are five ways capitalist logic has sabotaged the scientific community.” (Justin Podur, UMMID.com)
• “When permissions get in the way: Why a Science journal removed accompanying material before embargo.” (Embargo Watch)
• “It’s time to open the black box of peer review,” say Jessica Polka and Ron Vale. (ASAPBio) (Read Irene Hames’ thoughts on the subject here.)
• The upside-down of publishing, in which a publisher asks Eiko Fried to join one of their editorial boards while he’s writing a blog post critical of them. (Eiko-Fried.com)
• Vincent Larivière and Cassidy R. Sugimoto offer “A brief history, critique, and discussion of adverse effects” of the Impact Factor. (arXiv)
• Those thousand-plus author papers? A single field is behind their rise, reports Smriti Mallapaty. (Nature Index)
• “[P]ublishing is not just about the technology, it is foremost about the academic communities it supports,” says Jason Hoyt, co-founder and CEO of PeerJ. (LSE Impact Blog)

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