Webinar: “Retractions Are on the Rise….But Not Enough”

The number of retractions has increased significantly in recent years. Fraudulent research impacts all researchers, their institutions, and the journals that have accepted their manuscripts for publication. Join us for an historical overview and insights from our speakers about the cost of scientific fraud and the retraction process. 

In addition, there will be time for attendees to participate in an interactive Q&A session.

Date: Thursday, December 8, 2022
Time: 12:30 PM to 1:30 PM, EST
Location – Zoom Webinar – Register Now

Speakers:

Dr. Ivan Oransky, MD, Co-founder of Retraction Watch, Editor in Chief of Spectrum and distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University’s Arthur Carter Journalism Institute
Dr. Ivan Oransky was previously the President of the Association of Health Care Journalists and Vice President of editorial at Medscape. He has held editorial leadership positions at MedPage Today, Reuters Health, Scientific American and The Scientist. He is the recipient of the 2015 John P. McGovern Medal for excellence in biomedical communication from the American Medical Writers Association, and in 2017 was awarded an honorary doctorate in civil laws from The University of the South (Sewanee). In 2019, the judges for the John Maddox Prize, which promotes those who stand up for science in the face of hostility, gave him a commendation for his work at Retraction Watch.

Michael Streeter, Director of Research Integrity & Publishing Ethics at Wiley
Mike Streeter leads Wiley’s work in implementing best practices and policy for ethics and integrity in Wiley’s research portfolio; he champions quality and transparency in journals publishing.  He has worked in academic publishing for the last seventeen years and through that experience recognizes the value of close collaboration and communication with our communities.

New Preprint-related Developments at eLife

Since the COVID pandemic, preprint servers have become increasingly accepted within the publishing landscape, with even literature databases (like PubMed and Scopus) taking on the task of selectively indexing some of this new type of “not-yet-confirmed by peer-review” content. No doubt, since preprint servers are outlets for “the distribution of preprints that are complete but unpublished manuscripts describing health research”, this has been a big step for scholarly research database providers.

The increased popularity of preprints has also inspired both scholarly publishers and other research stakeholders to start re-imagining how the scientific research peer-reviewed publishing process in general might be improved now that preprints are often in the mix. For example, the publishers of the open access journal eLife, who have been actively trying to bring on the evolution of publishing by experimenting with new publishing processes/models since their inception 10 years ago, have made some noteworthy changes related to preprints over the last two years that are worth paying attention to.

In a rather radical move, in July 2021, eLife began ONLY reviewing manuscripts that had already been posted as preprints (on bioRxiv or medRxiv), deciding to “focus its editorial process on producing public reviews to be posted alongside the preprints”. Fast-forward 18 months, and starting in January 2023, the eLife editorial process will altogether “eliminate accept/reject decisions after peer review and instead provide readers with richer and more nuanced assessments of articles”, which they will call “eLife assessments”. In short, every preprint that is sent out for review by eLife editors will be published as a “Reviewed Preprint”, after which the authors may choose to undertake revisions and will be involved in deciding which manuscript version will become the final version of record (ie. the final published version that will be indexed in scholarly databases).

Note: These are just the “headline” highlights – to learn more in-depth details about eLife’s new publishing process, be sure to read:

Questions? Ask Us at the MSK Library!

MSK Library Hours: November 23-25

Please note, the MSK Library will have reduced hours for the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday:

-Wednesday, November 23: 8:30AM – 5:00PM
-Thursday, November 24: CLOSED
-Friday, November 25: 8:30AM – 5:00PM

We wish the MSK community a safe and restful holiday.