Preprints

Questionable Rejection

Sociologist says journal dismissed her paper because she'd shared it elsewhere as a preprint -- even though the publication had a pro-preprint policy. How often does this happen?

 

By Colleen Flaherty

 

Most academics have lots of rejection stories. Far fewer have rejection stories like Alison Gerber’s.

The U.S.-trained postdoctoral researcher in sociology at Lund University in Sweden recently got a terse email from the editor of an unnamed journal saying she couldn’t publish her paper because Gerber had already shared it in the preprint repository SocArXiv.

“One of the reviewers who agreed to evaluate your paper for the journal had the presence of mind to plug the title into a search engine,” the email reads. “He asked if he should review the paper for us given that it is already published (without the benefit of peer review). Of course not.”

The email’s haughty tone in itself is stunning, if not unusual. But Gerber was struck by the idea that sharing her preprint with other social scientists made her ineligible to formally publish it elsewhere. After all, many sociologists and academics in dozens of other fields are pushing for increased sharing of manuscripts and data in preprint archives in the name of transparency and better science. The idea behind unrefereed preprints is to get research in the public domain faster than the traditional peer-review process allows, to get feedback from colleagues that might make eventually published papers better, and to find potential collaborators.

Luckily, Gerber didn’t take the editor’s word for it and asked a librarian to help her investigate. The trusty librarian (also unnamed) soon reported back to Gerber what she’d expected all along: that the journal had no policy against publishing papers that had been submitted elsewhere as preprints. In fact, the journal had a policy encouraging preprint sharing.

Gerber declined requests for an interview and that she name the journal. She did say that the journal's editorial team worked mostly in the U.S., United Kingdom and Canada. Beyond that, she referred questions to her Twitter thread about her misadventure. According to her account, Gerber sent a polite follow-up to the journal editor, who soon admitted the error and said the paper would be considered for publication after all.

Interest in Gerber’s mini-saga was high -- probably for a number of reasons. A supposedly “blind” reviewer had searched for her paper title, which could have easily given away her name, gender and academic credentials even if she’d just shared it at a conference and not on SocArXiv. Both the reviewer and the editor did not know their journal's own policy on preprints. And the exchange revealed either a misunderstanding of or antipathy for preprint repositories on the part of at least one journal.

What is the purpose of a preprint repository such as a SocArXiv and how does it differ from that of a traditional publication? Can, and should, the two systems really coexist? Philip Cohen, professor of sociology at the University of Maryland at College Park and a member of SocArXiv’s steering committee, said that he and his collaborators designed the platform “not to replace journals but to supplement them.”

The point of preprint repositories “is to get work out faster and for free, and then still use the peer-review system for validating what's good and/or important,” Cohen added via email. “Almost everyone in the journal disciplines, as opposed to humanities, is still publishing in journals, even if they are also posting papers on systems like SocArXiv. Journals are how we get formal recognition and get tenure.”

Preprint archives typically have some standards for publication, but they are nowhere near as stringent as most peer-reviewed journals, which publish on regular schedules and are space-limited. SocArXiv papers, for instance, are moderated before they appear online -- a process that takes up to two days, not months. SocArXiv's policy says that papers must be scholarly, relevant to the social sciences, "plausibly categorized" and correctly attributed, and in moderated languages.

Even if the journal Gerber submitted to doesn’t have a problem with preprints, do other publications have policies against them? Jessie Daniels, a professor of sociology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York who has written several books on digital sociologies, said that the vast majority of academic journals have no issue with preprints.

Situations like Gerber’s aren’t common because blind reviewers aren’t typically googling paper titles, she added. But academics as a group remain “woefully ignorant about open access, scholarly communication and the way the landscape of knowledge production is changing in the digital era.”

Overestimation of results

Abstract ‘Spin’

Study says authors exaggerate their findings in paper abstracts, and that's a problem when readers take them at face value.

 

By Colleen Flaherty

Getty Images

We’ve all been told not to judge a book by its cover. But we shouldn’t be judging academic studies by their abstracts, either, according to a new paper in BMJ Evidence-Based Medicine. The study -- which found exaggerated claims in more than half of paper abstracts analyzed -- pertains to psychology and psychiatry research. It notes that “spin” is troublesome in those fields because it can impact clinical care decisions. But the authors say that this kind of exaggeration happens in other fields, too.

“Researchers are encouraged to conduct studies and report findings according to the highest ethical standards,” the paper says, meaning “reporting results completely, in accordance with a protocol that outlines primary and secondary endpoints and prespecified subgroups and statistical analyses.”

Yet authors are free to choose “how to report or interpret study results.” And in an abstract, in particular, they may include “only the results they want to highlight or the conclusions they wish to draw.”

In a word: spin.

Based on the idea that randomized controlled trials often inform how patients are treated, researchers used PubMed to find these kinds of studies. Their sample included those published from 2012-17 in well-regarded psychology and psychiatry journals: JAMA Psychiatry, American Journal of Psychiatry, Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, Psychological Medicine, British Journal of Psychiatry and Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

Crucially, they analyzed only trials with results that were not statistically significant, and therefore were susceptible to spin -- 116 in all.

Evidence of spin included focusing only on statistically significant results, interpreting nonsignificant results or equivalent, using favorable rhetoric with regard to the nonsignificant results and declaring that an intervention was beneficial despite its statistical insignificance.

How often did articles’ abstracts exaggerate the actual findings? More than half the time, or 56 percent. Spin happened in 2 percent of titles, 21 percent of abstract results sections and 49 percent of abstract conclusion sections. Fifteen percent of abstracts had spin in both their results and conclusion sections.

Spin was more common in studies that compared a proposed treatment with typical care or placebo than in other kinds of studies. But industry funding was not associated with a greater likelihood of exaggeration, as just 10 of 65 spun trials had any of this kind of funding.

The study notes several limitations, including that looking for spin is inherently subjective work. But it says that it’s important to guard against spin because researchers have an ethical obligation to honestly and clearly report their results and because spinning an abstract “may mislead physicians who are attempting to draw conclusions about a treatment for patients.” Physicians read only an article abstract, versus the entire article, a majority of the time, it says, citing prior research on the matter, and many editorial decisions are based on the abstract alone. Positive results are also more likely to be published in the first place, the paper notes, citing one study that found 15 percent of peer reviewers asked authors to spin their manuscripts.

What’s to be done? Journal editors may consider inviting reviewers to comment on the presence of spin, the article suggests.

Reporting guidelines also are used by several journals already to “ensure accurate and transparent reporting of clinical trial results, and the use of such guidelines improves trial reporting,” the paper says. While the recent Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials on abstracts don’t contain language discouraging spin, it says, “research reporting could be improved by discouraging spin in abstracts.”

Lead author Sam Jellison, a medical student at Oklahoma State University, underscored that his paper is not the first to explore academic spin. Yet making more readers “aware of what spin is might be the first and largest step to take to fight this problem,” he said. Jellison said that the existing literature suggests spin is not unique to psychology and psychiatry, and that those fields are actually “middle of the road” in terms of prevalence.

Philip Cohen, a professor of sociology at the University of Maryland at College Park who blogs about research, pointed out that reviewers already look at abstracts as part of their process, so in addition to the journal editor, "reviewers should be able to see if the abstract is overstating the findings.”

Still, a common way that sociologists inflate research findings in general is to mention those that are not statistically significant while downplaying the lack of significance, attributing it to a small sample or using phrases such as “does not reach statistical significance,” he said, “as if the effect is just trying but can't quite get there.”

Beyond questions of spin, Cohen said there is surely a problem with “people only publishing, or journals only accepting, dramatic findings,” he said. So the greatest source of exaggeration is probably in what gets published at all, with null findings or those that contradict existing positive results never seeing the light of day -- what Cohen noted has been called the "file drawer" problem.

While psychology isn't alone in the spin room, the field has had its share of data integrity and public perception problems. A landmark study in 2015, for example, found that most psychology studies don’t yield reproducible results.

Brian Nosek, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and lead author on the reproducibility study, said that spin involves two “connected problems,” neither of which is easy to solve. Authors are “incentivized to present their findings in the best possible light for publishability and impact, and readers often don't read the paper.”

As an author, he said, “even if I want to avoid spin,” it’s “entirely reasonable for me to try make the narrative of my title and abstract as engaging as possible so that people will read the paper.” And at the same time, it’s “very difficult to capture the complexity of almost any research finding in a phrase or short abstract.” It’s really a “skill” to present “complex findings briefly without losing accuracy.”

As a reader, Nosek continued, “even if I want to make the best possible decisions based on research evidence, I don't have time to read and evaluate everything deeply." In some cases, he said, "I need to be able to trust that the information conveyed briefly is accurate and actionable.”

Ultimately, when “decisions are important, we should have higher expectations of readers to gather the information necessary to make good decisions,” he said. “But we need to recognize pragmatic realities and develop better tools for readers to calibrate the confidence in the claims they see in brief, and provide cues prompting them to dig more deeply when the evidence is uncertain.”

It’s also “in our collective interest to provide authors more training in communicating their findings in abstracts and press releases," Nosek added.

Animals for scientific research

What using animals for scientific research taught me about myself

By Justin Chen

Frog eggs, one of which is fertilized. Science Source

When I looked for the deeper meaning of existence, I found that I was too skeptical for heaven and hell, for deities and spirits. Sometimes, I thought about astrophysics — roiling energy, dark matter, the multiple dimensions of an expanding universe — but it was all too vast and distant. The closest I ever got to a mystical experience was working with animals as a molecular biologist.

As a biologist, I performed experiments on flatworms, sea urchins, zebrafish, frogs, opossums, and mice. These studies required the careful administration of life and death: I merged sperm with eggs and observed early embryos when they were just three layers of tissues flattened together. At certain times, I preserved animals in formaldehyde and bathed them in chemicals that turned their bodies transparent.

In the lab, life and death were demythologized. Instead of some immense, cosmic force, they shrank into something tangible that could be contained in a Petri dish or studied under a microscope.

Watching generations of animals flash in and out of existence, I also felt time compressing. I cared for zebrafish embryos that, in a matter of days, transformed from balls of cells to larvae that roamed their tanks searching for food.

As a scientist, my job was to observe life and death objectively. But the work also made me feel part of a larger order. I could experience a different version of life and death than I did in the outside world – not as personal or intense but just as strange and profound.

·Life·

When I was a graduate student, I typically began my weeks attempting to unite sperm and egg.

The process was not entirely natural. First, I coaxed female frogs to lay eggs by holding them over a Petri dish and massaging their bottoms with my pointer and middle fingers. The movement was meant to imitate the squeezing motion a male makes with his legs during mating. Once the eggs were laid, I ran a sliver of testicle over them — the organ having been separated from its euthanized owner — and waited.

With frogs, you can witness the moment of fertilization.

Their eggs have two hemispheres — one white and yolky, the other pigmented and cherry brown. Before the sperm arrive, the eggs lie every which way, tiling the bottom of the dish in a mix of white and brown. After fertilization, the eggs turn — their molecular machinery grinding into action – so that they all face pigmented side up.

Seeing a dish of brown eggs may not sound dramatic, but it felt as if some spirit or vital force was speaking directly to me through these changing colors. It was all so simple, as if life was being summoned with the flip of a switch.

“Oh that,” a senior graduate student commented after I had been staring at the eggs for several minutes. “It gets old after a while.”

But for me it never did. Through winter storms silently subduing Boston outside the laboratory windows, the rise and fall of my romantic relationship, the years congealing together, I continued to stare. I felt the same existential solemnness as I did when watching the sun set or getting lost in a melody.

It’s all here, the eggs seemed to say.

Sometimes the eggs never fertilized. I waited for hours, walking away and returning, staring and willing them to turn. I sat in a room filled with microscopes, bottles of colored solutions, and shelves packed with scientific notebooks. Beyond the walls, I was surrounded on all sides by other laboratories each aglow with the green and red lights of precisely calibrated equipment. And yet, here I was sitting like a witch next to her cauldron, dependent on this fickle mixing of flesh.

The summers were especially difficult — the eggs coming out of the frogs in long, stringy clumps. Most of them were either gray or the chalky white of dead cells. Bursting upon the surface tension of the buffer, they clouded the Petri dish.

“It’s terrible here, too,” a researcher in England told me. “Somehow, the frogs must be sensing the seasons change.”

I walked down to the frog room, located in the core of the research institute, to investigate. It was cool but damp and filled with the sound of trickling water. The animals lived in plastic tanks the size of bathtubs. I peered down at them. Their skin was a mix of pea and navy green melded in repetitive globular patterns. Lying underwater, perfectly still and unblinking, they didn’t seem to notice me at all.

The frogs looked emotionless, alien, and prehistoric. They were from Wisconsin — born in a laboratory facility specializing in animal husbandry and at least five generations removed from any wild-caught frogs originating in sub-Saharan Africa. Most likely they had never been outside, seen a tree, or sat in the mud. Their lives were climate controlled and illuminated by lights that switched on and off at the same time each day. And yet, in their meditative trance, they had become the perfect receiver of a wave or a particle, something that spoke to the cadence of the tides or tilt of the earth, something that said: summer.

·Death·

Precise and preplanned, largely stripped of emotional attachment, the death of a laboratory animal is unlike most other deaths. Even now, I am not sure what to call it. My undergraduate adviser, who ran an opossum laboratory, argued against the commonly used term “euthanize” because it had the connotation of a merciful death, one that relieves pain and suffering. She preferred to say “sacrifice.”

My adviser was intelligent and irreverent. She had a habit of laughing uncontrollably at jokes and then looking around while covering her mouth. And yet, her mood transformed completely when sacrificing her animals. Like many scientists, she had a way of summoning a grim focus, as if she were becoming an alter ego.

“Hello, it’s me, Yolanda,” she said while reaching her hand into the cage, “the bad Yolanda.”

After an internship studying obese mice at the National Institutes of Health, I thought of my own term: “disembody.” The act of killing the animal was so terrible that, in my mind, I had to transform the mouse into a series of abstract shapes and colors, something other than a body.

I, too, disengaged. Rising up out of myself, I watched the scissors in my hand press into the lower abdomen of the anesthetized mouse, with just enough pressure to crease the skin but not break through. Poised on this delicate balance, I felt like a skater inching out over thin ice. When the blades plunged through, my anxiety dissipated, replaced by a steely concentration.

At the NIH, my goal was to compare the brain structure of normal and obese mice. This type of analysis requires “fixing” the brain, or chemically preserving it against decomposition. The best way to do so is to inject formaldehyde into the heart, where it travels through the circulatory system and saturates the depths of the brain.

Opening the mouse, I found a tender world with its own logic, shapes, and colors. Everything fit together perfectly, each organ tucked into place as though in a well-packed suitcase. There were barely any corners or hard edges — mainly curves, bulges, and loops. I had never seen such glistening colors before: the reddish-brown liver, the yellow intestine, everything else mostly a deep beet red. The pockets of deoxygenated blood, almost black, made the body dark and vibrant. It glowed dimly, like stained glass in the evening.

An animal’s innards are so different from its outside and yet exactly as they appear in anatomy text books. That something can be so well-described and still surprise makes it all the stranger.

Using forceps, I cracked open the ribcage to reveal a heart beating so hard that it seemed to bubble like the surface of boiling water. As I readied the syringe, the mouse shimmered before me: a system of perfectly calibrated organs, splotches of colors swimming together, billions of cells that just happened to be in the shape of a mouse. I pressed down, feeling the sigh of the syringe beneath me, and everything solidified into the mouse once more.

After each experiment, I became giddy with relief. Slumped back in my chair, I felt each breath filling my lungs before branching out into my arms and fingers. My whole body tingled. It felt luxurious.

Perfusing mice revealed the distance between thought and feeling. I could rationally justify killing mice for research but reasoning never calmed my squeamishness — at best it helped me tolerate the dread and remorse. I made a vow to never work with mammals in the future. It was the first time I had weighed my feelings in a scientific context.

Near the end of my internship, my boss, a middle-aged staff scientist, told me a story. A few years before, the custodian had found a mouse in our hallway. By its ear tag, my boss identified it as one of his animals. The mouse had escaped its cage, snuck past multiple doors, and ridden the elevator up to our floor.

“What do you think it wanted?” I asked, half jokingly.

“Revenge,” he said.

·Afterward·

When I was a scientist, I was surrounded by the churning of life — generations of animals rushing into existence and dying. Some days, I saw myself in that churning. It was calming. Instead of being only myself, I was playing a role. All my defining traits – introversion, a streak of nonconformity, the desire to experience the world through writing – would recur in others after me.

After completing my dissertation, I joined a nonprofit’s communication team and acclimated to office life: rows of white desks with a standing desk connected to a treadmill in the corner, drafts of press releases and annual reports, inside jokes with co-workers. Some mornings, I feel a disappointed relief to be so far from animals. Mostly, though, I am content to let the intensity of the experience fade. I settle into the illusion of stasis. Time passes but nothing seems to change.

Occasionally I stumble across an exception, reminders of a larger timescale. After the dentist frowns, I ask about cavities. “Oh, nothing to worry about,” she replies cheerfully, “it’s just incipient decay.” There are more serious events: A friend’s sister has a baby; another friend visits her grandfather in hospice; a car runs into a biker near my apartment.

On a brittle winter night, six months after my last experiment, I came home to find a dead mouse at the base of my bed. The body seemed like a mirage. Kneeling down, I observed the long curve of its front teeth and prodded its head with my pinky finger. The smallness of the death allowed me to linger over it and, for a moment, I’m drawn back into the churning with equal parts dread and nostalgia: memories of the animals I’ve killed. The essence of summer nudging the biochemistry of frogs – biology as involuntary clockwork.

I’m not sure how long I spent with the mouse. I heard gusts of wind outside my window and my housemate on the phone below me. After a few minutes, I placed the body in a plastic bag and disposed of it in the trash can behind the house.

After that, over a period of days and weeks, my mind would wander. I’m 30, almost the age of my father when I was born. Stitching the second half of his life onto mine, I divine the future — friends marrying and considering children, the struggle between my parents and me to understand each other, the stories I want to tell, the person I want to become — and I will think to myself: If only we had more time.

* Justin Chen is an external affairs associate at OpenBiome and a former AAAS mass media fellow at STAT.

Academic writing

The Ultimate Academic Writing Guide (Inspired by 37 Top Universities)

 

 

 

Introduction

Academic writing can take many forms, depending on your assignment and topic. Writing a book report is, obviously, different from writing a journal article; writing a thesis is different from writing a lab report. Although they're all classified as forms of academic writing, they vary in structure, tone, style, and organization.

Academic writing also varies within the assignment type and can be dictated by your discipline and topic. For instance, an English literature thesis on War and Peace will have a different tone and structure from a civil engineering thesis on the Non-Linear Analysis of Jack-Up Structures Subjected to Random Waves.

If you want to learn about a specific type of academic writing, you can find assignment-specific guides here:

• Essays
• Book Reports
• Lab Reports
• Literature Reviews
• Grant Proposals
• Theses and Dissertations

Even though different paper formats require you to follow different guidelines, there are common conventions that are applicable to all forms of academic writing, regardless of content or document type.

We combed the academic resources sections of the websites of 37 top universities from around the world and developed this writing guide based on the advice that was common throughout the guides. No matter your topic, the length of your paper, or your academic level, these academic writing guidelines will not steer you wrong.

You can read our summarized version below or download the list of links to all 37 guides. If you're really serious about improving your academic writing, you can even do both.

 

The Guide

Before we get down to basics in this academic writing guide, it's important to keep in mind that above all, you should follow—to the letter—the rules laid out by your professor or by the journal to which you're submitting. Obey word counts and font requirements, and include any necessary analysis or sections requested. When it comes to academic writing, you can't go wrong if you do what you're asked to do.

In addition to the instructions you're given by a professor or journal, here are five rules you should always obey when doing any kind of academic writing.

1. Write for your audience.

In most cases, you will be writing for your peers and superiors in your field of study. This should dictate the tone and language you use.

The tone of your writing will reflect how you want your writing to be perceived. Typically, with anything that is fact-based, you will want to assume a respectful and professional tone.

Since you are writing for experts in your industry, it is appropriate to use technical terms and jargon. However, don't get carried away by academese. If you can say something clearly and simply using small words, do so; don't be tempted to throw in longer or more complicated words in an attempt to sound smarter.

If you think your paper will be read by people who are not in your industry, be sure to define complex words and ideas on first use.

To solidify your authority on the subject, it's also important to incorporate strong, affirmative language. For example:

• "Based on the facts outlined above, the subject might change based on the variables."
• "Based on the facts outlined above, the subject will change based on the variables."

The word "will" holds a lot more power than the word "might." Naturally, you should not overstate the results of your research, but if your assignment requires you to draw conclusions, use words that show your confidence in your research and analysis.

Do not use swear words or slang, as they are not appropriate in any academic writing.

2. Be obvious.

Unless you are submitting a novel, your assignments shouldn't include plot twists or surprise endings. Make your point or argument obvious right from the beginning. The reader should not have to guess at what you are saying.

This can be done by presenting your thesis statement clearly in one or two sentences within the first paragraph or so of your assignment. The exact placement of a thesis statement will vary from assignment to assignment, but telling your reader what you plan to explain or prove will give them a frame of reference for the rest of the paper.

Remember that you may have spent weeks, months, or even years trying to better understand your topic; even if your readers have a background in the subject, they are trying to understand your argument for the very first time. Sometimes, what seems obvious to you is a concept you must explain to your audience before they can grasp your broader point.

Don't forget to download the full list of 37 academic writing guides!

3. Edit and proofread.

As the first two sections noted, clarity is extremely important in academic writing. In addition to focusing on clarity in terms of your word choice and overall argument, you must be sure to use correct grammar and spelling, as even minor errors can cause confusion. This is even more vital if your report will be used as a resource in your industry.

Whether you edit the document yourself, enlist the help of a friend or colleague, or get advice from a professional editor, reviewing your work thoroughly will minimize the risk of grammar errors that can lose you points, grade levels, or professional credibility. 

4. Don't underestimate the value of presentation.

Adhere to the submission guidelines outlined by your professor or the journal you are submitting to, but always ensure that your work is formatted in the cleanest way possible. 

Use an appropriate font in a conventional size (usually 11 or 12 point), and leave sufficient white space after headings and around tables and figures. If you are writing in report format, be sure to categorize your headings in a table of contents so that information can be found easily. Headlines often make it easier to organize information, and it is easier for the reader to gather what you are trying to say.

5. Whatever you do, cite well.

Although your assignment, discipline, and style guide will affect the format in which you cite your information, it is absolutely vital that you cite all quotes, ideas, and references used in your work. This is one of the most fundamental aspects of academic writing, as it demonstrates your ability to engage with and build upon the work of others in your field.

Check your professor's guidelines or the instructions for submitting to a journal to find out what style guide or style of citation to use (e.g., footnotes, a bibliography, or a works cited page). If none is given, you can either query your teacher or pick the one that makes the most sense to you. Under no circumstances should you use other people's thoughts and ideas without providing some form of citation.

Conclusion

Academic writing can be overwhelming, but by following these tips and guides, you can spend less time worrying about how to write and more time focusing on what to write. For more great academic writing tips, be sure to download the full list of academic writing guides from 37 top universities.

 

Futuro da CT&I no Brasil

Coletiva de imprensa marca lançamento de documento da ABC aos presidenciáveis

Como faz a cada quatro anos, a Academia Brasileira de Ciências (ABC) apresenta propostas para as áreas de Ciência, Tecnologia e Inovação (CT&I) aos candidatos à Presidência da República.

Através desta ação, a ABC busca demonstrar aos candidatos que o desenvolvimento econômico e social do Brasil só será sustentado e sustentável se incorporar, na agenda nacional, CT&I como política de Estado.

A economia brasileira precisa agregar valor à produção nacional, reverendo o processo de desindustrialização ocorrido nos últimos anos, de modo a facilitar a inserção competitiva do país no mercado global.

É urgente que os políticos brasileiros entendam a importância das pautas da ciência para o desenvolvimento do país e que a sociedade brasileira tenha também essa compreensão.

Para tanto, a ABC elaborou um documento que será entregue em mãos aos candidatos à Presidência do Brasil e, posteriormente, a deputados e senadores.

A mídia é uma das forças que pode desempenhar um papel fundamental nesse processo. Por isso, a ABC está promovendo uma coletiva de imprensa para apresentar este documento aos principais veículos de mídia do país. O presidente da ABC, Luiz Davidovich , e o vice-presidente, João Fernando Gomes de Oliveira , assim como outros cientistas de excelência, coautores do documento, apresentarão as propostas durante a Reunião Magna da ABC (https://goo.gl/FNRFBP). Após a apresentação, todos estarão disponíveis para entrevistas.

O documento está disponível em https://goo.gl/i5WY87

Os jornalistas interessados devem enviar seus dados para ascom@abc.org.br até a 3ª feira, 8 de maio de 2018, às 16h.
Serviço

Evento: COLETIVA DE IMPRENSA SOBRE O DOCUMENTO DA ABC AOS CANDIDATOS À PRESIDÊNCIA DO BRASIL Data e hora: 4ª feira, 9 de maio de 2018, 10 às 12h Local: Museu do Amanhã – sala Observatório do Amanhã Inscrições: e-mail para ascom@abc.org.br com nome, função, veículo de mídia, CPF e e-mail. Mais informações: 21 3907-8126 / ascom@abc.org.br

Predatory journals and publishers

Site mostra que pós-graduação brasileira publica em 485 periódicos predatórios

Lançado neste mês por três professores, Preda Qualis detecta revistas acadêmicas acusadas de não seguirem padrões científicos

MAURÍCIO TUFFANI,

Imagem: Preda Qualis.

 

Pelo menos 485 periódicos acusados de recorrer a más práticas editoriais são usados no Brasil por professores, pesquisadores e pós-graduandos, registra o site Preda Qualis, lançado neste mês por três docentes da USP, Unesp e UFABC. Essas publicações estão na plataforma de dados online Qualis Periódicos, do governo federal, que reúne e classifica cerca de 26,5 mil títulos e serve para orientar pesquisadores, professores e pós-graduandos a escolher de revistas acadêmicas para publicar seus trabalhos.

O objetivo do Preda Qualis, afirmam os autores da iniciativa, é “contribuir para o aperfeiçoamento dos critérios de avaliação dos programas de pós-gradução e do sistema Qualis”, que integra as atividades de avaliação da pós-graduação brasileira pela Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (Capes), do Ministério da Educação.

Dos 485 periódicos “potencialmente predatórios”, 67% foram classificados nos estratos A e B do Qualis, em vez de serem listados no nível C, destinado a publicações consideradas inadequadas, afirmam os autores da iniciativa, Paulo Inácio Prado, do Instituto de Biociências da USP, Roberto André Kraenkel, do Instituto de Física Teórica da Unesp, e Renato Mendes Coutinho, do Centro de Matemática, Computação e Cognição da UFABC.

Embora considerem “baixa” a proporção de periódicos predatórios do Qualis – os 485 títulos detectados correspondem a 1,8% dos 26.477 registrados na plataforma –, os criadores do novo site entendem que “há uma grande vulnerabilidade do sistema de avaliação da CAPES à invasão por este tipo de publicação”.

Ponderações

Logo no início de sua apresentação, os criadores do Preda Qualis advertem que sua lista de títulos potencialmente predatórios “não é uma palavra final e está em constante revisão, devendo ser usada como subsídio para avaliações caso a caso e a critério dos autores e instituições”. E acrescenta:

O fato de um artigo ser publicado em uma revista potencialmente predatória não significa que este artigo seja de má qualidade. Um dos prejuízos causados pelos periódicos predatórios é justamente potencialmente afetar a credibilidade de tais artigos.

O Preda Qualis, está aberto para sugestões de leitores, afirmam Prado, Kraenkel e Coutinho, que também pedem para serem informados sobre quaisquer problemas encontrados no site.

Os periódicos predatórios são revistas editadas por empresas que exploram sem rigor científico o modelo de publicação de artigos acadêmicos em acesso livre, que é mantido por meio da cobrança de taxas de autores ou pelo custeio por parte de instituições científicas.

Tanto no acesso livre como no modelo tradicional, mantido por assinaturas anuais ou pela cobrança por artigo baixado pela internet, os periódicos considerados “legítimos” demoram meses e até mais de um ano para analisar e aceitar artigos, ou rejeitá-los. Os publishers predatórios não só reduzem a poucas semanas o intervalo entre a apresentação e a aceitação de artigos, mas também são menos seletivos e rigorosos nesse processo.

“Quanto mais artigos eles aceitam e publicam, mais dinheiro eles fazem. A prática de autores que fazem pagamentos aos periódicos criou muita corrupção na publicação acadêmica”, afirmou para a Folha em 2015 o biblioteconomista Jeffrey Beall, professor da Universidade do Colorado em Denver, que lançou em 2011 sua lista de “potenciais, possíveis ou prováveis publishers predatórios” em seu blog Scholarly Open Access, desativado em janeiro deste ano.

‘Acontecimento auspicioso’

“Acho essa iniciativa excelente! Espero que seja bem sucedida. O Qualis efetivamente funciona como uma ‘lista branca’. Por isso, é uma grande responsabilidade ter certeza de que exclua periódicos predatórios”, afirmou Jeffrey Beall. “Esses cientistas estão efetivamente defendendo a ciência”, disse ele sobre os criadores do novo site.

“Acho que os autores estão oferecendo um ótimo serviço, ajudando o Qualis a melhorar”, afirmou Beall referindo-se ao Preda Qualis. “O número [detectado] 485, ou 1,8%, é pequeno, mas não demora para que pouco veneno arruine um poço”, acrescentou.

Para o geógrafo Marcos Pedlowski, da Universidade Estadual do Norte Fluminense (UENF), um dos raros pesquisadores brasileiros a se posicionar frequentemente sobre o problema dos predatórios, o lançamento do Preda Qualis é  um acontecimento auspicioso para a comunidade científica brasileira, pois no oferece uma primeira ferramenta para saber mais sobre esse tipo de publicação acadêmica.

“Alguns poderão dizer que este não seria o melhor momento para o lançamento deste tipo de ferramenta, na medida em que enfrentamos uma grave crise de financiamento que afeta a capacidade dos pesquisadores brasileiros de seguir publicando nos mesmos níveis da última década. Eu já penso que este é o melhor momento, na medida em que teremos como ter escolhas claras de onde não publicar pesquisas que custam bastante aos contribuintes brasileiros”, afirmou Pedlowski.

“Ao mesmo tempo, poderemos nos mover da falsa dicotomia entre quantidade e qualidade na publicação de artigos científicos para nos concentrar em publicar nas melhores revistas, sejam elas de editoras tradicionais ou de acesso aberto”, acrescentou.

“Minha expectativa é que os colegas que estão lançando o Preda Qualis não se desanimem com as eventuais críticas e mesmo oposição ao seu trabalho. É que os desafios que estão sendo postos no enfrentamento ao crescimento exponencial das revistas predatórias não podem esperar mais para serem atacados de frente”, disse o professor da UENF.

Quase nada a declarar

Questionada por Direto da Ciência por meio de sua assessoria de imprensa, a Capes laconicamente respondeu com a nota transcrita a seguir em sua íntegra.

São classificados no estrato C os periódicos predatórios identificados na maioria das áreas para que o título permaneça visível e dessa forma deixamos claramente sinalizado para os programas, que a produção publicada nesse tipo de periódico não será considerada.