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An enquiry among 47 traditional publishers of journals asked if they support the principles formulated by SURF foundation and JISC, which attempt to clarify and balance the relationship between the rights of authors and publishers. The main points of these principles are that the author retains copyright of his/her work, while granting the publisher the rights needed to publish the work; the author may freely deposit the article in a research repository, with an embargo before public release of a maximum of six months. The results showed that a substantial number of traditional publishers support some or all of these principles or are looking into changes in their current policies to meet them. Errami M, Garner H. Tale of two citations. Nature 2008;451:397–399. (doi:10.1038/451397a) Are scientists publishing more duplicate papers? An automated search of seven million biomedical abstracts suggests that they are. High-profile cases of scientific misconduct remind us that not all of these publications are to be trusted. The scientific community must be aware that the three major sins of modern publishing (duplication, co-submission, and plagiarism) are becoming widespread. Martin BR. Keeping plagiarism at bay—a salutary tale. Science Direct 2007;36(7):905–911. (doi:10.1016/j.respol.2007.08.001) Examines whether plagiarism is increasing in social sciences and, if so, what should be done to keep it under control. The study was prompted by the discovery of a serious case of plagiarism. A fair degree of vigilance and a greater willingness to pursue suspected research misconduct are required by editors, referees, publishers, and the whole academic community to keep plagiarism at bay. McGilchrist M, Sullivan F, Kalra D. Assuring the confidentiality of shared electronic health records. BMJ 2007;335:1223–1224. (doi:10.1136/bmj.39421.544063.BE) We urgently need better technical measures to enforce and verify procedures that represent good practice in storing, managing, and sharing electronic health records between institutions. Standard operating procedures can prevent inadvertent disclosure of data only if staff are trained to use them consistently; if users do not have malicious intent, are competent, and don’t make mistakes; and if the author of the procedure has planned for all scenarios relating to data access and sharing. These procedures form a closed opaque system; they need to be improved to provide transparency, to counter conflicts of interest, and to enforce agreed procedures. Vlassov VV. Is content of medical journals related to advertisements? Case–control study. Croatian Medical Journal 2007;48:786–790. (doi:10.3325/cmj.2007.6.786) To investigate the hypothesis that journal content is manipulated to place more emphasis on the advertisements, a case–control study was performed on a convenience sample of seven journals subscribed to by the Central Medical Library in Moscow: four international and three Russian peer-reviewed journals. The study assessed the relationship between the content of the journal and the paid advertisements published in the same journal. In three of the seven journals, the contents were related to the paid advertisements, which were usually placed face-to-face or overleaf from the related research articles. Williams L. Publishing perils include single-blind review. Physics Today 2007; 60(11):12. Discusses the exacting, and often confusing, electronic paper submission process. But a much more important and corrosive impediment to publication is single-blind peer review, which has a fundamental flaw: it allows reviewers to assess the author(s) of a paper along with the scientific content, and thereby allows non-scientific considerations to creep in. Single-blind peer review can thus discourage scientists from publishing in new fields and add irrelevant considerations to the review of scientific content. For this reason peer review should be double-blind. © Copyright 2008 by European Association of Science Editors Top of Page |
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