Celebrating the inaugural Peer Review Week
September saw the launch of the first Peer Review Week aimed at underlining the importance of peer review. Various organizations got involved including Sense About Science, Publons, ORCID and F1000.
Here at BioMed Central we also had a lot of activity during the week, kicking off with a guest post from two of the co-Editors-in-Chief of our new title, Research Integrity and Peer Review who discussed the need for such a journal. We also had views on innovations in peer review from Kathryn Maitland – Editorial Board Member for BMC Medicine, and Buzz Baum – Editorial Board Member for BMC Biology. With almost perfect timing, our Research Integrity Group had a research article published in BMJ Open in which they investigated several factors that can influence peer review. Co-author on the study and medical editor, Maria Kowalczuk, gave a summary of the study on the BioMed Central blog.
Recognizing work of individual authors through Author Contributorship Badges
To receive credit for their work, researchers must publish. However, the traditional author list on scientific research articles provides little clarification as to who actually did what on the project. Conventions around author order often mean that key contributors to research are either left off the author list entirely, or given a position that provides no real “credit” in the grant-awarding/career ladder ecosystem.
The introduction of Author Contributorship Badges is an effort to solve this problem by crediting authors for the specific ways in which they contributed to a study. For example, it might distinguish whether the author drafted the copy, verified the results or curated the data for the project. A visual badge which illustrates their full contribution will be made available on the article page and on the ORCID site. As part of a pilot to measure of take up of these badges will be initially only be available on articles published inGigaScience, more information is available here.
What does a giraffe sound like?
In his blog, Executive Editor of BMC Research Notes – Chris Foote, describes new research which sheds light on the longstanding puzzle on whether giraffes communicate vocally. Researchers analyzed hours of audio, searching for acoustic structures that resembled possible communications. The study of giraffes in European zoos presents the best evidenceyet that they do communicate vocally – by humming. The blog post caught the interest of New Scientist, with their article receiving 300,000 article accesses in just a couple of days, and led to further coverage in Science, Wired,Huffington Post and CBS News.
Defining sepsis to canine inbreeding – a round-up of our blogs
There was some varied content posted on ourblog network in September. A wide range of topics were covered, including a quiz to on whether you know Alzheimer’s fact from fiction and how those that drink more alcohol are likely to self-rate their health as better than those who drink less alcohol.
There was also an interesting post aboutdefining sepsis, a not yet fully characterized syndrome affecting millions of people worldwide. Following on from research published in Canine Genetics and Epidemiology, we found out what impact inbreeding has had on the genetic diversity of domestic dogs. Finally to finish off this round-up, a guest post from Shaun Treweek discussed current randomization methods and preventing selection bias in future trials.
BioMed Central in the News
News of an extinct monster-like predator that swam the seas in ancient times generated a lot of interest in the media. The article published in BMC Evolutionary Biology described a fossil of a previously unknown species of ‘sea scorpion’, measuring over 1.5 meters long, that was discovered in Iowa, USA.
Dating back 460 million years, it is the oldest known species of eurypterid (sea scorpion) The authors named the new speciesPentecopterus decorahensis after the ‘penteconter’ – an ancient Greek warship that the species resembles in outline and parallels in its predatory behavior.
It was covered by the international press, reported in The Times in UK, Scientific American in US, SVT in Sweden, and DerStandard.at in Austria, to name but a few.
Research published in the Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation showed that a man with complete paralysis in both legs (paraplegia) due to spinal cord injury was able to walk again using his own brain power.
The preliminary proof-of-concept study shows that it is possible to use direct brain control to get a person’s legs to walk again. The participant, who had been paralyzed for five years, walked along a 3.66m long course using an electroencephalogram (EEG) based system. The system takes electrical signals from the participant’s brain, which then travel down to electrodes placed around his knees to create movement.
This ground-breaking research made headlines around the world. The researchers and study participant were interview on BBC and Sky News, and the research reported byNew Scientist and ABC News in the US, The Times in UK, and Le Figaro in France.
Out and about for Open Access Week
It is Open Access Week this week and BioMed Central staff will be out and about, so please come and see us if we are in a location near you. Johanna Kuhn will be talking open access at Université de Blaise Pascale a Clermont-Ferrand, France; Natalia Timiraos will give an overview of 15 years of open access publishing at Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany; and Bob Schatz will be taking an in-depth look at open access at the University of South Carolina, USA. There will also be a number of speakers from BioMed Central and other Springer Nature companies at the Springer Nature Open Research Day in Beijing.
Our colleagues at Nature Publishing Group will also be celebrating Open Access Week by hosting a one day conference at their London campus: “Publishing Better Science through Better Data” taking place on October 23. With speakers from leading journals, research organizations, funding agencies and technology providers, the conference will explore the practical implications of data sharing policies for researchers – including advice on publishing and advancing careers, as well as discussions of emerging tools and resources available.
BioMed Central on the road
American Society of Anesthesiologists
San Diego, USA
24 – 28 October
American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists
Orlando, USA
25 – 29 October
American College of Rheumatology annual meeting
San Francisco, USA
6 – 11 November
Supplements
BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth published a collection of articles on ‘Every Woman, Every Newborn’.
BMC Medical Genomics and BMC Systems Biology published articles from the IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine (BIBM 2014).
BMC Pharmacology & Toxicologypublished abstracts from the 7th International Conference on cGMP Generators, Effectors and Therapeutic Implications.
Hereditary Cancer in Clinical Practicepublished abstracts from the Annual Conference on Hereditary Cancers 2013.
Scandinavia Journal of Trauma, Resuscitation & Emergency Medicinepublished abstracts from London Trauma Conference 2014.
BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making published a collection of articles on ‘Multidimensional, multidiscipline and shared decision making in healthcare and eHealth.
Extreme Physiology and Medicinepublished abstracts from the 16th International Conference on Environmental Ergonomics (ICEE XV).
BMC Oral Health published articles from Prevention in practice - making it happen.
Archives of Public Health published abstracts from the Methods in Epidemiology Symposium.
Fluids and Barriers of the CNS published abstracts from Hydrocephalus 2015.
BioMed Central is an open access publisher of science, technology and medicine. We have 286 open access, online, peer-reviewed journals. Find out which are relevant to you and your research here.
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