First-authored Papers Research Articles

Double-blind review favours increased representation of female authors

Double-blind peer review, in which neither author nor reviewer identity are revealed, is rarely practised in ecology or evolution journals. However, in 2001, double-blind review was introduced by the journal Behavioral Ecology. Following this policy change, there was a significant increase in female first-authored papers, a pattern not observed in a very similar journal that provides reviewers with author information. No negative effects could be identified, suggesting that double-blind review should be considered by other journals.

Amersham Biosciences & Science Prize. AMPA receptor dynamics and synaptic plasticity.

[Song-Hai Shi][1] was born in a small Chinese village in 1973 and attended Tsinghua University in Beijing from 1991 to 1996. Accepted into the Department of Biological Sciences and Biotechnology, Dr. Shi studied mathematics, physics, and chemistry as well as experimental biology. He then came to the United States to pursue graduate training in the Joint Genetics Program at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) and the State University of New York, Stony Brook. Working with Roberto Malinow at CSHL, Dr. Shi investigated the mechanisms of long-term potentiation. His research on the synaptic regulation of AMPA receptors in hippocampal pyramidal neurons was published in two first-author papers in Science and one in Cell . After receiving his Ph.D., Dr. Shi joined Dr. Yuh Nung Jan's laboratory in May 2001 to pursue postdoctoral work at the University of California, San Francisco. [1]: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/294/5548/1851

Amersham Biosciences & Science Prize. 2001 grand prize winner.

Song-Hai Shi was born in a small Chinese village in 1973 and attended Tsinghua University in Beijing from 1991 to 1996. Accepted into the Department of Biological Sciences and Biotechnology, Dr. Shi studied mathematics, physics, and chemistry as well as experimental biology. He then came to the United States to pursue graduate training in the Joint Genetics Program at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) and the State University of New York, Stony Brook. Working with Roberto Malinow at CSHL, Dr. Shi investigated the mechanisms of long-term potentiation. His research on the synaptic regulation of AMPA receptors in hippocampal pyramidal neurons was published in two first-author papers in Science and one in Cell. After receiving his Ph.D., Dr. Shi joined Dr. Yuh Nung Jan's laboratory in May 2001 to pursue postdoctoral work at the University of California, San Francisco.

Searching for discrimination. Are women treated fairly in the EMBO postdoctoral fellowship scheme?

The publication of the Swedish Medical Research Council's analysis of its grant selection scheme (Wenneras and Wold, 1997) came as a wake‐up call for many other funding agencies in the life sciences. As it showed an inherent discrimination against women applicants, many of those responsible for giving grants to young scientists became worried. It was indeed appalling to read that women in the Swedish system needed 2.5 times more publications to be successful, but the question was asked whether this was an isolated case? Furthermore, how would other funding programmes fare if subjected to the same scrutiny as the Swedish Medical Research Council? > When the success rate is calculated for the spring and autumn session for the years 1996–2001, the female applicants were, on average, 20% less successful than the males Such questions triggered an analysis of the EMBO Long Term Fellowship granting scheme in order to find out whether there is any similar discrimination within this programme. The troubling outcome was that, at face value, there does seem to be a bias. Further analysis of the data, however, could also point to a slightly lower quality of the female applicants when judged by certain criteria. Figure 1 illustrates the potential problem. When the success rate is calculated for the spring and autumn session for the years 1996–2001, the female applicants were, on average, 20% less successful than the males. Such a consistent result suggests that there may be a systematic bias against women scientists in the decision‐making process. Figure 1. Percentage of accepted …

WHAT FRACTION OF ASTRONOMERS BECOME RELATIVELY INACTIVE IN RESEARCH AFTER RECEIVING TENURE?

ABSTRACT We ask how many astronomers publish substantially fewer papers after receiving tenure than before and what are their characteristics that would have allowed us to predict their decreased productivity? This is answered by a study of 214 tenured astronomers at 17 of the major astronomical centers in the U.S. It is reassuring that 48% of the astronomers published more papers per year after receiving tenure than before and 33% published between half and the same number of papers per year as before tenure. Only 19% published less than half as many papers per year after tenure than before; among those, 1.8% published no first-author papers after receiving tenure, even though that occurred several decades ago in some cases. However the pre-tenure rates of publication and the current citations to those papers were not significantly different for the 19% less active researchers than for the remaining 81%. We found no numerical characteristics that allow one to predict who will become relatively inactive in research after receiving tenure. Those 19% do not favor any specific decade when they received tenure (1960s, 1970s, or 1980s) and they are well distributed among the 17 institutions. A few have heavy administrative responsibilities, but some others with at least as heavy responsibilities are among the most productive researchers after tenure. The 17 institutions averaged a constant number of new tenure assignments per year during 1970-1995.

Neurosurgeons and ideas before their time

As a complementary inquiry to previous studies on citation analysis in neurosurgery, a group of ideas before their time has been arbitrarily selected by the author from 3792 first-authored papers written between 1897 and 1980 by 50 of the first American neurosurgeons. There were eight neurosurgeons who proposed 12 original theories or procedures whose importance was not recognized at the time of publication. Although the value of these ideas was not initially judged to be significant, these concepts became a part of the intellectual consensus of neurosurgery or related disciplines after varying periods of time. Technical constraints constituted the most important reason for delayed recognition of these innovative and creative ideas. Other factors were an unsuitable medium of communication, fixed scientific attitudes, prestige of previous authors, incomplete literature review by later authors, and a failure to verify observations by other investigators. The question is raised as to whether these factors might continue to affect present and future clinical investigation and laboratory research in neurosurgery.