Lack Of Peer Review Research Articles

Predatory conferences: a systematic scoping review

ObjectiveTo systematically map the scholarly literature on predatory conferences and describe the present state of research and the prevalent attitudes about these conferences.MethodsThis scoping review follows Preferred Reporting Items for...

Junk journals: Scientometrics vs Science

The social organization of the Russian scientific community is such that many established ethical standards conflict with the real research practice. Using exclusively scientometric approaches to assessing scientific achievements leads to the fact that the quantitative indicators of this assessment prevail over the true results of research activity. The paper aims to reveal organizational problems associated with the interaction with junk journals that result in ‘clogging’ and ‘emptying’ objective scientific knowledge about the modern world. The theoretical basis of the study includes scientometric approaches to evaluating publication activity. Statistical methods were used to analyse the development and spread of unscrupulous journals and junk scientific conferences; the methods of expert assessments and content analysis were also applied. The information base is the corpus of leading Russian and foreign researchers’ works on scientometric evaluation of publications and the use of special methods of bibliometric analysis. The multiplicity of fraud issues in science still unresolved and the palliative measures taken make it possible to assess the harmfulness of scientometric formalism from a new perspective. The main features of junk journals are identified: lack of peer review, international collaboration and target audience; multidisciplinarity; demand-based journal volumes; a short publication cycle, etc. In the article, we assess the dynamics and spread of such journals in Russian science, identify effective measures to counteract law-quality publications, such as retraction and a combination of altmetric and bibliometric methods for evaluating studies. Another focus of analysis is to describe the practice of junk conferences and provide criteria for their identification.

Association Between Hospital-Acquired Harm Outcomes and Membership in a National Patient Safety Collaborative

Hospital engagement networks supported by the US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Partnership for Patients program have reported significant reductions in hospital-acquired harm, but methodological limitations and lack of peer review have led to persistent questions about the effectiveness of this approach. To evaluate associations between membership in Children's Hospitals' Solutions for Patient Safety (SPS), a federally funded hospital engagement network, and hospital-acquired harm using standardized definitions and secular trend adjustment. This prospective hospital cohort study included 99 children's hospitals. Using interrupted time series analyses with staggered intervention introduction, immediate and postimplementation changes in hospital-acquired harm rates were analyzed, with adjustment for preexisting secular trends. Outcomes were further evaluated by early-adopting (n = 73) and late-adopting (n = 26) cohorts. Hospitals implemented harm prevention bundles, reported outcomes and bundle compliance using standard definitions to the network monthly, participated in learning events, and implemented a broad safety culture program. Hospitals received regular reports on their comparative performance. Outcomes for 8 hospital-acquired conditions were evaluated over 1 year before and 3 years after intervention. In total, 99 hospitals met the inclusion criteria and were included in the analysis. A total of 73 were considered part of the early-adopting cohort (joined between 2012-2013) and 26 were considered part of the late-adopting cohort (joined between 2014-2016). A total of 42 hospitals were freestanding children's hospitals, and 57 were children's hospitals within hospital or health systems. The implementation of SPS was associated with an improvement in hospital-acquired condition rates in 3 of the 8 conditions after accounting for secular trends. Membership in the SPS was associated with an immediate reduction in central catheter-associated bloodstream infections (coefficient = -0.152; 95% CI, -0.213 to -0.019) and falls of moderate or greater severity (coefficient = -0.331; 95% CI, -0.594 to -0.069). The implementation of the SPS was associated with a reduction in the monthly rate of adverse drug events (coefficient = -0.021; 95% CI, -0.034 to -0.008) in the post-SPS period. The study team observed larger decreases for the early-adopting cohort compared with the late-adopting cohort. Through the application of rigorous methods (standard definitions and longitudinal time series analysis with adjustment for secular trends), this study provides a more thorough analysis of the association between the Partnership for Patients hospital engagement network model and reductions in hospital-acquired conditions. These findings strengthen previous claims of an association between this model and improvement. However, inconsistent observations across hospital-acquired conditions when adjusted for secular trends suggests that some caution regarding attributing all effects observed to this model is warranted.

Barriers And Facilitators To Write Good Quality MCQS For Dental Assessments: A Qualitative Case Study.

To explore barriers and facilitators to write good quality items for undergraduate dental assessments. A qualitative case study was conducted from Feb-April 2021. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of eighteen item writers from a public-sector dental institute of Rawalpindi, Pakistan. The data were transcribed verbatim and thematically analyzed to extract themes regarding barriers and facilitators to write good quality items. All quality assurance procedures of qualitative research were ensured during the research process.. Five themes related to barriers and three themes related to facilitators to write good quality items emerged from the data. The participants reported more barriers such as lack of frequent training and lack of peer review and feedback. Other barriers were demotivation due to lack of acknowledgement or monetary incentives, lack of content and construct expertise, clinical workload, and contextual barriers such as lack of internet facility, outdated library, and lack of place and time allocation for item construction. Facilitators were availability of peer review, feedback from post-hoc analysis, motivation due to the senior designation, clinical experience, and ample time for basic sciences faculty. Frequent item writing training, strong peer review process, pre-exam item vetting by the dental education department, and institutional improvements such as striving for content experts, time and place allocation for item construction, internet facility, updated library, and equal distribution of workload among faculty could enhance the quality of items. Moreover, ways to inculcate motivation among item writers such as appreciation or monetary incentives could be used to improve the quality of undergraduate assessments.

Caution, Preprint! Brief Explanations Allow Nonscientists to Differentiate Between Preprints and Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles

A growing number of psychological research findings are initially published as preprints. Preprints are not peer reviewed and thus did not undergo the established scientific quality-control process. Many researchers hence worry that these preprints reach nonscientists, such as practitioners, journalists, and policymakers, who might be unable to differentiate them from the peer-reviewed literature. Across five studies in Germany and the United States, we investigated whether this concern is warranted and whether this problem can be solved by providing nonscientists with a brief explanation of preprints and the peer-review process. Studies 1 and 2 showed that without an explanation, nonscientists perceive research findings published as preprints as equally credible as findings published as peer-reviewed articles. However, an explanation of the peer-review process reduces the credibility of preprints (Studies 3 and 4). In Study 5, we developed and tested a shortened version of this explanation, which we recommend adding to preprints. This explanation again allowed nonscientists to differentiate between preprints and the peer-reviewed literature. In sum, our research demonstrates that even a short explanation of the concept of preprints and their lack of peer review allows nonscientists who evaluate scientific findings to adjust their credibility perception accordingly. This would allow harvesting the benefits of preprints, such as faster and more accessible science communication, while reducing concerns about public overconfidence in the presented findings.

Current Status of Podcasts in Orthopaedic Surgery Practice and Education.

Within orthopaedic surgery, podcasts are a popular medium for sharing information. The purpose of this Training Room feature was to identify the number, type, longevity, popularity, and advantages and disadvantages of orthopaedic surgery podcasts and to better understand the role of podcasts in our field by interviewing key leaders in orthopaedic surgery who host their own podcast. We identified 102 unique orthopaedic podcasts. The number of active podcasts grew from 5 in 2016 to 67 in 2021, which represents an increase of 1,340%. Podcasts offer the advantages of easy access to knowledge and opportunity for multitasking. They come with the disadvantages of lack of visualization in a field that relies heavily on diagrams, photographs, videos, and radiographs and lack of peer review, which means false information may be propagated. We anticipate an increase in the number and popularity of orthopaedic surgery podcasts in the coming years.

Nigerian Academics Patronizing Predatory Journals

This study examines why Nigerian academics are patronizing predatory publishers and the implications of this for scholarly communication in Nigeria. The study pursued a qualitative method of face-to-face interviews to collect data from twenty-five academics from five universities in South West Nigeria. Five research questions guided the collection and analysis of data. The results confirmed that Nigerian academics are patronizing predatory journals. These journals are characterized by rapid publication, article-processing fees, a lack of peer review, and aggressive advertisement that cajoles authors into publishing with them. The reasons why Nigerian academics patronize predatory journals include desperation at the thought of missing out on promotion, long waits for reviews from reputable journals, deficient information literacy, and inadequate knowledge of the journals in their specific subject area. The findings also confirmed that younger, newly recruited, and inexperienced Nigerian academics are those most likely to patronize predatory journals. The implications of this practice are that Nigerian academics will concentrate less on conducting quality research and that researchers elsewhere in the world will lose trust in the ability of Nigerian academics to conduct quality research. The study ends with recommendations for ameliorating the situation: measures such as putting a solid orientation and mentorship program in place for younger academics, formulating institutional policies for scholarly publication, and creating standard accredited lists of journals that restrict where Nigerian academics can publish.

Early in the epidemic: impact of preprints on global discourse about COVID-19 transmissibility

Early in the epidemic: impact of preprints on global discourse about COVID-19 transmissibility

Student and Instructor Generated Open Educational Resources Compare Favorably to a Traditional Textbook

AbstractOpen Educational Resources (OER) are freely available materials that can be used in courses and modified by instructors. We developed an online OER silviculture textbook (OT). Some sections of OT were developed by the instructor, whereas others were developed by students enrolled in a silviculture course and subsequently edited by the instructor. As a preliminary examination of the effectiveness and student preference of OT, we administered a knowledge assessment and survey to both freshman and junior-level forestry students. We compared OT to a highly respected textbook in the field, The Practice of Silviculture, 9th Edition (Smith et al. 1997). Based on this study, both resources performed similarly and were similarly preferred by students. Although there are a number of limitations to this preliminary study (small sample size, only conducted at a single university, formatting both sources as paper copies) and to OER (time-consuming to create, lack of funding, lack of peer review), our results support further exploration of OER for use in forestry courses.

Without a body of evidence and peer review, taxonomic changes in Liolaemidae and Tropiduridae (Squamata) must be rejected.

In his recent self-published book "Reptiles en Chile", Diego Demangel Miranda presented 13 taxonomic changes for liolaemid and tropidurid lizards. While these could be considered validly published according to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, we show that these taxonomic propositions lack the necessary scientific rigor in terms of replicability, specimen work, lack of peer review and that they do not follow best practices accepted by the herpetological community. Therefore, we hereby invalidate all 13 taxonomic changes proposed in this book, leaving the taxonomy unaffected. Finally, we call attention to the potentially negative consequences of using these taxonomic changes in conservation and environmental impact studies as incorrect decisions might be taken in relation to the species involved.

Social Media in Surgical Training: Opportunities and Risks

Surgeon engagement with social media is growing rapidly. Innovative applications in diverse fields of health care are increasingly available. The aim of this review is to explore the current and future applications of social media in surgical training. In addition, risks and barriers of social media engagement are analyzed, and recommendations for professional social media use amongst trainers and trainees are suggested. The published, peer-reviewed literature on social media in medicine, surgery and surgical training was reviewed. MESH terms including "social media", "education", "surgical training" and "web applications" were used. Different social media surgical applications are already widely available but limited in use in the trainee's curriculum. E-learning modalities, podcasts, live surgery platforms and microblogs are used for teaching purposes. Social media enables global research collaboratives and can play a role in patient recruitment for clinical trials. The growing importance of networking is emphasized by the increased use of LinkedIn, Facebook, Sermo and other networking platforms. Risks of social media use, such as lack of peer review and the lack of source confirmation, must be considered. Governing surgeon's and trainee's associations should consider adopting and sharing their guidelines for standards of social media use. Surgical training is changing rapidly and as such, social media presents tremendous opportunities for teaching, training, research and networking. Awareness must be raised on the risks of social media use.

Germline Engineering and Human Rights

With the ever-increasing range of medical technologies at our disposal to mediate the processes of life, from conception to death, comes an ever-increasing number of decision points about human control of fate. And as we debate altering our fate—whether dictated by a deity or by chance—the discussion frequently devolves into a question of whether we may alter not only our own fate, but also that of our children. The advent of genome editing, whether by older methods or the newer, often more easily used methods employing CRISPR, has only made debating the controversial possibility of heritable “germline” editing more urgent. The advent of genome editing, whether by older methods or the newer, often more easily used methods employing CRISPR, has only made debating the controversial possibility of heritable “germline” editing more urgent. On the eve of the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing, held at the end of November 2018 in Hong Kong, a startling and disturbing story began circulating - a Chinese researcher announced the first births of children whose genomes had been edited at the embryonic stage. The work (assuming the claim can be verified) suffered from myriad problems, beginning with the lack of a compelling medical need, and including inadequate preclinical research, lack of peer review, flawed subject recruitment and consent procedures, and an apparent disregard for both formal and informal rules governing genetic manipulation of embryos. The summit's organizing committee issued a statement, distinguishing this experiment from what would be a responsible translational pathway forward. But not surprisingly, others around the world immediately called for a global, enforceable prohibition on such genetic engineering. On the occasion of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR)’s seventieth anniversary, this essay argues that the current human rights law on germline editing misunderstands both the mechanisms of genetics and the moral basis for human rights, suggesting a more nuanced approach as we move forward and keep pace with new gene-editing technologies.

Online learning resources: a creator’s perspective

For the last two decades, computers and the internet have been central to education. They are essential tools which allow educators to be creative and collaborative with their teaching, and to enable students an instant and ‘always-on’ access to content (Fig. 1). As a learning tool they are indispensable and at times frustrating, but increasingly they will provide the greater proportion of students’ total quantum of learning. With changes in the way information is accessed and courses are delivered, as well as the omnipresent nature of the internet, education bodies need to be cognisant of newer ways to deliver information, and the ways in which contemporary technologies may be used to address some of the difficulties the modern surgical trainee faces in gaining knowledge and proficiency. Fig. 1 Access to online resources has changed dramatically over the last 20 years. While the benefits of digital education are clear, there are a number of prominent potential issues: 1. Inconsistent content with a lack of peer review. 2. Excess volume of content, making it hard to distinguish which will provide the ‘best’ resources. 3. Content which is made inaccessible due to cost. 4. Content which is made inaccessible by institutional firewalls or by platform incompatibility. 5. Confusion and consternation over the risk of infringing copyright. These issues are in varying stages of resolution, but each provides a potential bar to the delivery of consistent, quality education. However, the trend in each is very much towards improvement. The modern internet is based on the early protocols devised by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 to communicate between academic institutions. From the mid-1990s onwards, personal access to the internet has increased exponentially to become an almost universal tool for learning. Access to the internet for students has been essential for more than two decades, and its uses have increased in parallel with its …

TF-6 The Use of Social Media in Emergency Medical Resident Education

The explosion of the use of social media in the last few years, since the widespread adoption of the Internet, has dominated the delivery of news and information. Over the last several years educational resources have risen in quality and quantity. It is becoming a more widely used, well written and some are peer reviewed. There is so much knowledge out there that not including this in our routine academic curriculum seems short sighted. Many residents and medical students already use apps and their smart phones on a routine basis in the emergency department. The goal of this project is to expose the residents to free online access resources in an effort to help them incorporate these resources as a fundamental part of their education. These social media sources also need to be critically analyzed, which many of them are not, for accuracy and therefore another goal will be to illustrate that these are not medical resources that can be used without rigorous verification and research to their validity. Also to illustrate the ways our smart phones, tablets and computers can be used to enhance their learning experience. The curriculum is weekly online meetings. These will be a combination of video and audio software. Emphasis will be on using several software programs in an effort to increase a variety of platforms. These will be determined by the number of attendees and subject matter to be covered that month. The resource pool will include podcasts, Web sites, online literature reviews, blogs, apps, Twitter feeds, and app reviews. Emergency medicine faculty and residents will lead these sessions. There will be links and handouts provided of all the resources covered. This is an ongoing monthly meeting that will expose the residents to the wealth of information in social media. Also we hope to encourage discussion about the lack of peer review and validity of the resources. This ongoing project will give the residents a better means of accessing this information as well as helping them to critically analyze the data. This venue for information will not diminish in scope or quantity and it is our job to ensure that our residents use this information correctly.

IPhone Applications for Eye Care Professionals: A Review of Current Capabilities and Concerns

To quantitatively review and categorize the eye care-related iPhone(®) (Apple(®), Cupertino, CA) applications ("apps") currently available, evaluate qualified professional involvement in app development, and suggest future needs in this emerging area of mobile health. The Apple iTunes(®) store was searched for iPhone eye care-themed apps using the general terms "ophthalmology," "ophthalmologist," "optometry," "optometrist," "eye care," and "ocular," in addition to terms based on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's common eye conditions. Data collected from each app included publication date, target audience, category of app, estimated number of downloads, average user rating, and documented involvement of qualified professionals. In total, 182 apps were identified. The majority of apps lacked community user ratings and had 3,000 or fewer downloads (84% and 69%, respectively). Consistent with other medical specialties, only 37% of apps had documented qualified professional involvement in their development. When stratified by intended audience, 52% and 44% of apps designed for ophthalmologists and optometrists, respectively, had professional input, compared with 31% for non-eye care clinicians and 21% for the general public. Smartphone apps are likely to become of increasingly greater relevance to the modern eye care professional with tremendous versatility in daily practice. However, despite the rapid emergence of eye care apps, a low level of qualified professional involvement in app development and a lack of peer review after publishing remain. There is a clear need for evidence-based principles and standards of app development to be adopted in this emerging area.

Defending the boundaries of science: AIDS denialism, peer review and the Medical Hypotheses saga

This paper explores the boundary work undertaken by HIV scientists and activists against the journal Medical Hypotheses over its lack of peer review. Their action was sparked by the publication of an article by Peter Duesberg claiming that HIV does not cause AIDS and that antiretrovirals do more harm than good. Precisely because such 'AIDS denialism' can undermine HIV prevention and treatment interventions, as was demonstrably the case in South Africa under President Mbeki, the episode raised questions about when, in the interests of public health, the boundaries of legitimate scientific debate may be drawn to exclude unreasonable and unscholarly arguments. The paper argues that normative concerns motivated the complaints which resulted in the publisher withdrawing Duesberg's paper and imposing editorial policy changes on Medical Hypotheses. Concerns were raised about the implications for academic freedom of this boundary work in defence of peer review as a core practice in science. The paper concludes, however, that Duesberg's freedom to write what he likes remains intact, but that if he wants his work to carry the imprimatur of science, he now has to subject it to peer review.

Black and White Literature, Grey Scholars

Two key reasons are most often cited for the low impact of grey literature sources in archaeology, difficulties with access and lack of peer review. Seymour (this volume) has examined the constitution of grey literature and discussed themes surrounding accessibility. Although peer review is an important topic that deserves careful consideration, for the present discussion it is sufficient to state that the vast bulk of archaeology’s grey literature, the reports resulting from Cultural Resource Management (CRM) projects, receives several levels of careful, often expert review before acceptance as the basis for development project approvals. Without minimizing the importance of access to the grey literature or disparaging important efforts to improve it, then, this paper focuses on a separate issue, the discourse surrounding grey literature in archaeology and the hegemony it supports. I offer a manifesto, rather than a scientifically dispassionate account, because the current situation requires change, not study.

A longitudinal study of scholars attitudes and behaviors toward open‐access journal publishing

AbstractThis research applies statistical time series analysis to examine the changing pattern of scholars' attitudes toward open‐access (OA) journal publishing from the early 1990s. By synthesizing survey results in existing studies, this research focuses on representative aspects of the attitudes and behaviors recorded through the years. It finds that although an increase in the publishing and awareness rates of scholars with regard to OA journals has been observed, scholars have been consistently concerned with the low prestige of such journals and their lack of peer review, which is not the case in practice. It is hoped that the findings will provide useful information for the improvement of OA advocacy.

Case Studies in Abandoned Empiricism and the Lack of Peer Review at the Federal Communications Commission

In far too many instances, the Federal Communications Commission ('FCC') engages in results-driven decision making that accrues political dividends at the expense of the public interest. Remarkably, the Commission has used questionable and unverifiable statistics to confirm both the need for greater regulation, but also its abandonment. In the former, a former Chairman of the FCC insisted that data, not even compiled by Commission staff, proved that the cable television market had become so concentrated as to meet a Congressionally legislated trigger for heightened regulatory scrutiny. But in the latter, the FCC has used its statistics to support the conclusion that such ample facilities-based competition exists in broadcast, broadband and wireless markets that the Commission can further reduce ownership caps, approve multi-billion dollar, market concentrating mergers, and claim that the United States continues to benefit from best in class access to telecommunications services. In far too few instances, normal governmental checks and balances do not detect and reverse instances where the FCC has deliberately or inadvertently failed to compile a credible record. Many reviewing courts gladly defer to the FCC’s 'expertise' rather than appear to second guess, or to legislate from the bench in highly technical matters. One court accepted the FCC’s arguments that data about commercial ventures’ decisions not to provide broadband service in specific localities constituted a business trade secret qualifying from protection from public disclosure instead of identifying areas of market failure requiring heightened scrutiny in view of the legislative goal of achieving universal access to basic and advanced telecommunications services. Too often, the FCC reaches policy conclusions based on statistical interpretations that do not make sense, and do not have corroboration through peer review. For example, the FCC first concluded that per channel, 'ala carte' access to cable television programming would not save consumers’ money as an alternative to having to acquire a bundle of channels. However, the Commission quickly subsequently reversed itself with limited explanation for its change in findings. The Commission also erected a media diversity index to support relaxation of a cap on media ownership that a reviewing court rejected based on its lack of supporting evidence. Only after a stinging judicial rebuke did the FCC think to subject its statistical analysis and modeling to external review from unaffiliated experts, rather than simply rely on the research and findings sponsored by stakeholders with a financial interest in the outcome of the Commission’s decision. This paper will identify several instances where the FCC could have used empirical research and peer review to achieve a true sense of the marketplace. The paper will suggest ways the Commission could have avoided judicial reversal and public ridicule if it had embraced accepted social scientific practices, including peer review.

Resistance to Nuclear Waste Disposal: Credentialed Experts, Public Opposition and their Shared Lines of Critique

This article asks the question whether, in regard to controversial technical decision-making, lay public groups advance different kinds of resistance than credentialed experts. This question is explored via a case-study analysis of one of Canada's major public controversies of the past quarter century—nuclear waste disposal. Having arrived on the policy radar in 1977, nuclear waste remained an internal government/nuclear industry matter until terms of reference for a public inquiry were announced in 1989. Several access points for public input followed that announcement: scoping sessions in 1990, comments received during 1994-96 on an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) prepared by Atomic Energy Canada Limited (AECL), nation-wide public hearings in 1996-97, and ongoing public consultation since 2002. This article focuses on the comments on the EIS, and discusses several lines of shared resistance: the expert judgment of AECL was disputed, the lack of peer review was criticized, accusations of unreliability were made, and general deficiencies in the EIS were attributed to narrow terms of reference and poor institutional culture. This article recommends the use of a dramaturgical approach to technical texts, and reveals the assumptions framing the dualist notion that one can unambiguously separate technical and social criticisms of technical projects.