Abstract
Although peer review is considered one of the main pillars of modern science, experimental methods and protocols seem to be not a rigorous subject of this process in many papers. Commercial equipment, test kits, labeling kits, previously published concepts, and standard protocols are often considered to be not worth a detailed description or validation. Even more disturbing is the extremely biased citation behavior in this context, which sometimes leads to surrogate citations to avoid low-impact journals, preprints, or to indicate traditional practices. This article describes some of these surprising habits and suggests some measures to avoid the most unpleasant effects, which in the long term may undermine the credibility of science as a whole.
Highlights
These protocol gaps are sometimes hidden in the use of equipment, compounds, or reagents, which are not described in the literature or are not commercially available
Literature citations are given in these instruction sheets. Most often, these citations do not point to a primary publication or a validation of the method and only show the use of the respective commercial product
Many authors might understand this advice as a request to delete citations of protocol documents mentioned above and replace them with articles from high-impact journals [5] to improve the chance of the manuscript being accepted
Summary
An editorial article with the title “The method comes first” was published [1], which opened the discussion whether a new protocol may be published separately after a discovery paper. The fact that a new method was eventually not published in a peerreviewed journal was criticized. It is very important that these questions are raised. When you think twice about this issue, it is evident that this may be only the tip of the iceberg and that some fundamental questions remain, which are briefly discussed here. A few preliminary recommendations are given, which might show ways for improvement. Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations
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