Another busy week at Retraction Watch. Here’s what was going on around the web in scientific publishing and related issues:
Here at Retraction Watch, we judge retraction notices every day. We even have a category called “unhelpful retraction notices.”
But we haven’t systematically analyzed those notices, so lucky for us, a group of academics at Vanderbilt decided to. In a new paper published in a special issue of Publications — an issue whose editor, Grant Steen, put out a call for papers for here on Retraction Watch — Emma Bilbrey, Natalie O’Dell, and Jonathan Creamer explain: Continue reading A rating system for retractions? How various journals stack up
There were lots of pieces about scientific misconduct, publishing, and related issues posted around the web this week, so without further ado: Continue reading Weekend reads: Trying unsuccessfully to correct the scientific record; drug company funding and research
The first full week of 2014 featured a slew of stories and commentary about scientific publishing and related issues. Here’s a sampling: Continue reading Weekend reads: Waste in research, a praise-worthy swift correction in NEJM, and more
A bumper crop of material about misconduct, peer review, and related issues came to our attention this week, so without further ado: Continue reading Weekend reads: Most scientific fraudsters keep their jobs, random acts of academic kindness, and more
No question, 2013 has been a busy year at Retraction Watch. And no wonder: There have been more than 500 retractions in the scientific literature, according to Thomson Scientific’s Web of Knowledge. We’ve posted roughly that many times, and had more than five million pageviews (thank you!).
So, to send 2013 off with a bang, Continue reading The top 10 retractions of 2013
Another busy week at Retraction Watch, beginning with a story we broke about faked HIV vaccine results that was picked up by the Des Moines Register and other outlets. Here’s what was happening elsewhere on the web: Continue reading Weekend reads: Snarky acknowledgement sections, journal editors on fraud
A pair of engineering researchers has analyzed the work of a handful of prolific scientific fraudsters, and has concluded that science needs a “shame list” to deter future misconduct.
The paper, “Analysis and Implications of Retraction Period and Coauthorship of Fraudulent Publications,” by Jong Yong Abdiel Foo and Xin Ji Alan Tan, of Ngee Ann Polytechnic in Singapore, appeared online last week in Accountability in Research: Policies and Quality Assurance.
The authors write that Continue reading Does science need a retraction “shame list?”
It’s been another busy week at Retraction Watch. Here’s what was happening elsewhere around the web in scientific publishing, plagiarism, and retractions: Continue reading Weekend reads: Who plagiarizes most? Why are women cited less often? And more
By now, Retraction Watch readers may have heard about new Nobel laureate Randy Schekman’s pledge to boycott Cell, Nature, and Science — sometimes referred to the “glamour journals” — because they damage and distort science. Schekman has used the bully pulpit of the Nobels to spark a conversation that science dearly needs to have about the cult of the impact factor.
The argument isn’t airtight. Schekman — now editor of eLife, an open access journal — says that open access journals are a better way to go, although he doesn’t really connect mode of publishing with the quality of what’s published. Others have pointed out that the move will punish junior members of his lab while likely having no effect on the career of someone who has published dozens of studies in the three journals he’s criticizing, and has, well, won a Nobel.
All that aside, it was Schekman’s reference to retractions that, not surprisingly, caught our eye: Continue reading Cell, Nature, Science boycott: What was Randy Schekman’s tenure at PNAS like?