Category: bmc microbiology

Should peer review be open, and rely less on author-picked reviewers? Study says…

BMJ openAfter reviewing hundreds of peer review reports from three journals, authors representing publishers BioMed Central and Springer suggest there may be some benefits to using “open” peer review — where both authors and reviewers reveal their identity — and not relying on reviewers hand-picked by the authors themselves.

But the conclusions are nuanced — they found that reviewers recommended by authors do just as good a job as other reviewers, but are more likely to tell the journal to publish the paper. In a journal that always uses open reviews — BMC Infectious Diseases — reviews are “of higher quality” than at a journal where authors are blinded to reviewers, but when one journal made a switch from a blinded to an open system, the quality didn’t improve.

Here’s what the authors conclude in the abstract of the paper, published today in BMJ Open: Continue reading Should peer review be open, and rely less on author-picked reviewers? Study says…

The new math: How to up your citations (hint: duplication). Plus a correction for Naoki Mori

Here’s a good way to increase the number of times your work is cited: Publish studies three times.

On second (or third) thought, maybe not: The Journal of Steroid Biochemistry & Molecular Biology has retracted a pair of articles by three Japanese researchers who apparently liked their own work so much they decided to submit it, and submit it—and submit it again.

Here’s the notice for the first paper, a 2004 publication titled “Vitamin D receptor (VDR) promoter targeting through a novel chromatin remodeling complex,” by Shigeaki Kato, Ryoji Fujiki and Hirochika Kitagawa, fairly well-known molecular endocrinologists at the University of Tokyo: Continue reading The new math: How to up your citations (hint: duplication). Plus a correction for Naoki Mori

Three more withdrawals for Naoki Mori, and a hint of the mother of retractions

Lest readers of Retraction Watch had forgotten about Naoki Mori, the cancer researcher who liked his Western blots so much he decided to reuse them — and reuse them some more — he’s back.

The British Journal of Haematology (BJH) has retracted two papers Mori published in that journal, and BMC Microbiology has retracted another, bringing the total of retractions involving his work to at least 19 by our count. [See update at end.]

The BJH issued both retractions online in the end of February, and they’ve since come out in print. Here’s the retraction notice for the first paper, in the BJH (first only because it was published first): Continue reading Three more withdrawals for Naoki Mori, and a hint of the mother of retractions