Archive by date | December 2006

“Content Matters” on Nature’s peer review trial

Posted by Maxine Clarke | Categories:

Barry Graubart writes about Nature‘s peer-review trial at his Content Matters blog. Mr Graubart refers to the Wall St Journal’s erroneous comment that Nature has “cancelled” the trial. As explained in the Nature report , the trial was originally intended to be a three-month experiment starting in June. In the event, we extended it by a month, closing it to new submissions in October. Since then, the remaining manuscripts in the trial have completed the peer-review process and we have been analysing the results (which necessarily meant waiting until the final manuscripts had received referees’ reports and could be removed from the trial).  Read more

Richard Charkin on Nature’s peer-review trial

Posted by Maxine Clarke | Categories:

Richard Charkin, Chief Executive of Macmillan, owner of Nature Publishing Group, has posted an interesting entry on his blog about Nature’s peer review trial. The post contains a link to a radio interview with Philip Campbell, Editor in Chief of Nature, and features an article on the trial in the Wall St Journal.  Read more

Peer-review of work by “interested parties”

Posted by Maxine Clarke | Categories: ,

At Nautilus, the blog for authors, I’ve posted about competing interest statements in scientific papers. I’ve asked there what scientists think of this practice as authors. But what about when the scientists are peer-reviewers? Does it make a difference to you, when you are reviewing a paper, to know that the author has taken out a patent on the discovery or has shares in a spinoff company? Do peer-reviewers judge the scientific results independently of these declarations, or does it make a difference to the level of scrutiny they apply to the work? The Nature journal editors would like to hear about the reviewers’ perspective, via your comments to this post.  Read more

Peer to Peer is welcomed

Posted by Maxine Clarke | Categories:

Peer-to-Peer and Nautilus have received their first welcome to the scientific blogosphere from outside the Nature Publishing Group. At Blog Around the Clock, Coturnix, er, welcomes us here. Lukman has added a comment: “Thanks for this great info. Your blog is very informative for science development for ordinary people like us.”  … Read more

An editors’ guide to peer review

Posted by Maxine Clarke | Categories:

The Council of Scientific Editors (CSE) yesterday (7 December 2006) published a guide to “”http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-12/cose-gtp120706.php”>promoting integrity in scientific journals”. This document aims to guide editors and publishers in benchmarking their journals’ policies and procedures, as well as to provide advice to scientists in their varied roles as authors, editors or peer-reviewers, in all aspects of the publication process. The comprehensive guide covers many aspects of the publication process, including workable ‘conflict of interest’ policies and reseach misconduct.  Read more