Last month, I talked with Colin McEnroe from Connecticut’s NPR about the open access movement. I haven’t listened to the show, because I can’t stand the sound of my own voice. I hope I’m not too screechy.
5 thoughts on “NPR and Open Access”
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Apt. 11d 
The British Medical Journal reported in January that almost seventy-five percent of clinical trials are still not published within two years of completion.
I’ve been on teams with worse records than that. Even if you hop right to writing (which, you may not if you have other priorities and the trial was negative), it can be very hard to publish a negative trial. Trying five or six different journals can easily eat up two years.
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MH said:
“Even if you hop right to writing (which, you may not if you have other priorities and the trial was negative), it can be very hard to publish a negative trial. Trying five or six different journals can easily eat up two years.”
Somebody needs to open an online “Journal of Negative Results.”
Yoohoo, Bill Gates, it would be really cheap!
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There are several online journals of negative results. But all the incentives for the people writing up the results are to try for the higher impact journals first. This isn’t entirely for resume-building reasons. There is a tendency to think that if a trial can’t be published in a reasonably established journal, it’s not so much negative as poorly designed. And, because there’s only so much money, lots of trials are underpowered (that is, don’t have enough people in them).
If you can think of a way around the problem, let me know. I’ll want to use it to kill Elsevier first, but after that looking at improved reporting for negative trials seems reasonable.
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MH said:
“There are several online journals of negative results.”
Yay!
“But all the incentives for the people writing up the results are to try for the higher impact journals first. This isn’t entirely for resume-building reasons. There is a tendency to think that if a trial can’t be published in a reasonably established journal, it’s not so much negative as poorly designed.”
Boo!
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Sort of on topic:
In the past few days, I have received two invitations from two different journals with the same name. One existed and was asking me to read it and consider submitting. One doesn’t exist yet and was inviting me to join the editorial board. That second request was well enough written that it make it past the spam filters, though it did ask me to reply three days before it was sent. I think it is safe to assume both are fraudulent in the sense that nobody but the publisher has any reasonable expectation of gain.
Anyway, journal articles are now a form of currency and as such subject to counterfeiting and a doctor* with a western name is the functional equivalent of the printing plates.
* I’m not a doctor, but even real journals constantly assume I am.
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