Revisiting Alison Mudditt’s 2018 post on sexual harassment in our community. What has changed in the last three years, and what can we continue to do to eradicate this behavior for the next generation of women.
The post Revisiting: Breaking the Silence: the #MeToo Moment in Scholarly Communication appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.
To celebrate the launch of C4DISC’s Antiracism Toolkit for Organizations, Damita Snow and Jocelyn Dawson sat down with Laura Martin and Megan Seyler to share why they are excited about this toolkit and what they hope it will achieve.
The post Guest Post — Enabling your Organization to be Antiracist appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.
Calls for a monoculture of scholarly communication keep multiplying. But wouldn’t a continued diversity of models be healthier?
The post Pluralism vs. Monoculture in Scholarly Communication, Part 2 appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.
The crises that US universities are producing in cities are intensifying as fast as others they face. An interview with Davarian Baldwin, author of In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower.
The post What Universities Have Wrought: An Interview with Davarian Baldwin appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.
In today’s post, Angela Cochran revisits her call to provide more editorial scrutiny to journal article references. Several new automated tools now available will help editors determine whether references are appropriate for including in scholarly works.
The post Revisiting: Turning a Critical Eye on Reference Lists appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.
Michele Avissar of Research Square discusses the value of preprints for uncovering unethical and fraudulent research behaviors early in the publication process.
The post Guest Post — The 10,000-watt Bulb: How Preprints Shine a Light on Misconduct appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.
In today’s post, Alice Meadows talks to Laura Feetham of IOP Publishing about their work to improve peer review quality in the physical sciences through their ongoing peer review excellence program.
The post How One Society Is Supporting Peer Review Excellence in their Community: An Interview with Laura Feetham of IOP Publishing appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.
Today we revisit Geraldine Cochran’s 2018 post, which offers a chance to understand the differences between the words “diversity”, “inclusion”, and “equity”, and how that understanding can make our efforts toward progress more effective.
The post Revisiting: The Problem with Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity appeared first on The Scholarly Kitchen.
0000-0002-6370-4254 Research involving human participants needs to follow the highest standards. The respect for human life requires that this research is conducted not only rigorously and with utmost care, but that it also follows the
Since 2006, PLOS ONE has published >200,000 articles, providing an inclusive home for primary research spanning all scientific disciplines and representing researchers from around the globe. As reflected in the journal’s publication criteria and policies,
Since our debut in late 2006, PLOS ONE has strived to promote best practices in research reporting as a way to improve reproducibility in research. We have supported initiatives towards increased transparency, as well as
Ethics is a cornerstone of science, informing everything from how we design our experiments to what we do with the resulting data. Given the diverse nature of the research results published in PLOS ONE, no short and simple set of ethical guidelines can cover every situation. Thus, it is important for the journal to adapt and expand its ethical standards as the journal itself expands.
The field of paleontology, by its very nature, presents some special situations in ethics. Although the fossil subjects are long-dead, rendering matters of patient consent or laboratory animal care non-existent, other complicated concerns ranging from legalities to reproducibility must be taken into account. Any journal that hopes to be a major player in the study of fossils must confront these issues head-on.
As the volunteer section editor for paleontology at PLOS ONE, I am thrilled by the growth in the number of high-quality publications related to my field. I also want to make sure that all of these papers are held to the highest ethical standards, and many of my colleagues and I felt it was important to provide explicit ethical guidelines focused on paleontology. After extensive and thoughtful discussion with the journal’s internal editors and other interested parties, I am happy to announce that a specific set of editorial standards for paleontology submissions is now in place.
Critically, reproducible research in paleontology requires a long-term guarantee of accessibility and safety for fossils. This means that all fossils should be deposited in a permanent repository, such as a museum or university collection. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that collections owned by private individuals—no matter how noble their intentions—will be accessible in the long-term. In one notable recent case, the family of a fossil enthusiast sold off the bulk of his scientifically important collection after he died. Some of the specimens had even been published in the peer-reviewed literature, but there is now little guarantee that any of those fossils will be accessible in fifty years, or even five. Moreover, not everything that calls itself a museum is a permanent collection; some are little more than showroom floors for a commercial fossil business. Some of these fossils do end up in permanent museum collections, but until this happens, it is extremely hazardous to publish on the specimens. Reproducibility and accessibility are key, as reflected in the new policies.
Ethical consideration is also critical for fossil collection in the field. Stories abound of skeletons in the Gobi Desert being looted for the most marketable parts (such as skulls or claws), which then end up for auction in Europe or North America. In fact, one recent PLOS ONE paper discussed dinosaur skin impressions salvaged from the mess left by fossil poachers who carted off more enticing pieces. Legal loopholes often mean that the specimens can then be traded or sold elsewhere, often accompanied by official-looking paperwork that purports to legitimize the original export. This horrible practice drains the world of its historical heritage and destroys scientific information. Thus, the new ethics policy explicitly prohibits publication of specimens that were obtained without permission or legal export.
This is a great day for paleontology at PLOS ONE, helping to ensure the journal’s future as a trustworthy publication with the highest ethical standards. I challenge everyone—authors, editors, readers, and reviewers—to carry the torch forward into a better world.
About the Author: Dr. Andrew Farke is a vertebrate paleontologist and an academic editor at PLOS ONE. Andy also has his own blog, The Open Source Paleontologist, and can be found on Twitter @andyfarke.
Image: The fossil reptile Captorhinus (collection of Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology)