[ECOLOG-L] Initiate a new habit in transparent, rigorous science
Hello Ecologgers! In a time when there is increasing concern about the rigor of published research from both academic and public sectors, we owe it to our communities to take every reasonable step to increase the transparency and replicability of our research. Preregistration specifies in advance how a study will be conducted and its data analyzed in a time stamped, read-only format. Preregistration clarifies the easy-to-blur distinction between confirmatory (hypothesis testing) research and exploratory (hypothesis generating) research. Both processes are crucial for science to advance: exploratory research finds the unexpected, and confirmatory research places the highest standard of rigor on the inferences. Unintentionally presenting exploratory research as confirmatory (by, for example, tweaking analyses as data come in) removes the inferential value of most common statistical tests. We want to initiate preregistration as a habit before every data collection effort, to simply add clarity to what (if any) a-priori hypotheses existed before seeing the data. Toward that end, the Preregistration Challenge ( https://cos.io/prereg) is a competition to reward 1,000 researchers with $1,000 prizes for publishing the results of preregistered work. Please consider starting your preregistration today for your next project, and please contact me with questions or comments. Studies must be published in journals that are taking concrete steps toward reducing the replication crisis. Currently, that list includes 700 journals (see the 20 ecology journals below). If you're a journal editor and want to see your journal on that list, please see here (https://cos.io/getlisted/) or contact me. Sincerely, David Mellor David Mellor, PhD <https://osf.io/qthsf/> Project Manager, Journal and Funder Initiatives <https://cos.io/top> Center for Open Science <https://cos.io/> (434) 352-1066, @EvoMellor <https://twitter.com/@EvoMellor>, Skype: evomellor Are you ready to take the Prereg Challenge <https://cos.io/prereg>? American Journal of Botany Applications in Plant Sciences Biotropica Collabra Conservation Biology Ecology and Evolution Ecology Letters Evolution Journal of Evolutionary Biology Movement Ecology Nature Nature Ecology & Evolution Oikos Systematic Botany The Auk: Ornithological Advances BMC Ecology PLoS ONE PLoS Biology PLoS Computational Biology PLoS Medicine
Re: [ECOLOG-L] promoting Ecology course
Hello Kay, My first job out of grad school (ecology and evolution) was advising biology majors at a large public university. The vast majority were pre-med or otherwise health focused. They had a requirement to take at least one ecology course, and for those that were focused on health careers, this was often their only ecology course. However, several of the ecology courses did have a health-related course title (parasites, medicine, disease, physiology, etc) and were often extremely popular among bio majors (some would say too popular given the ratio of seats to students in many public universities). This could suggest either a slight refocus of an existing course, or perhaps a new ecology course that could very easily teach many core ecology concepts with health related examples. I think many people on this list serv would agree that knowledge of some core concepts in ecology and evolution would be very useful among healthcare professionals, so I think this is a reasonable action to consider. Good luck! Best, David David Mellor <https://osf.io/qthsf/> Center for Open Science <http://centerforopenscience.org/> @EvoMellor <https://twitter.com/EvoMellor> On Mon, Feb 1, 2016 at 11:23 AM, Kay Shenoy <kay.yellowt...@gmail.com> wrote: > Does anybody have ideas on how to promote Ecology among Biology > undergraduates? We are finding that Biology majors are increasingly > focused on health-care fields; many students consider Ecology > “unimportant” for their future careers, and it is not addressed in the > MCAT exams, so they give it a low priority. How does one increase > enrollment in Ecology courses, and particularly in schools that do not > have dedicated Ecology departments? Any thoughts would be welcome! >
Re: [ECOLOG-L] fabricated reviews lead to retractions of papers
It is. I don't know the history of how or why that practice came about, or how guilty Biomed Central was of it relative to other publishers. I expect that as workloads for editors increased, it was requested by editors as a way for them to more easily find reviewers. I think this peer-reviewer fraud ring ( http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/11/science/science-journal-pulls-60-papers-in-peer-review-fraud.html) also rigged the system based on fake reviewers. Biomed Central is barring the use of such suggested reviewers from their automated submission process, but there is nothing preventing an author from continuing to suggest a reviewer in a cover letter to the editor. On Fri, Mar 27, 2015 at 4:44 PM, Martin Meiss mme...@gmail.com wrote: I thought that editors of scholarly journals only used reviewers that they know by reputation. The suggested reviewer feature sounds like picking a name out of a hat. 2015-03-27 15:51 GMT-04:00 David Mellor mellor.da...@gmail.com: It appears to be an issue with fraudulent “translation services” that pose on behalf of the foreign language researcher and use the “suggested reviewer” feature in the submission process to mislead editors into contacting reviewers who aren’t who they claim to be. The BMC blog post http://blogs.biomedcentral.com/bmcblog/2015/03/26/ manipulation-peer-review/ explains the fraud. My insight is that this could be happening elsewhere, and that BMC is doing the right thing to bring it to light, given the potential tarnish it creates. David Mellor Center for Open Science http://centerforopenscience.org (434) 352-1066 @EvoMellor On Mar 27, 2015, at 2:29 PM, Martin Meiss mme...@gmail.com wrote: I wonder if part of the problem is that one publisher, BioMed Central, http://www.biomedcentral.com/about puts out 277 journals. That seems like a lot of concentration of power. Martin M. Meiss 2015-03-27 12:46 GMT-04:00 David Inouye ino...@umd.edu: I hope this hasn't been an issue in ecology. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/03/ 27/fabricated-peer-reviews-prompt-scientific-journal-to- retract-43-papers-systematic-scheme-may-affect-other-journals/
Re: [ECOLOG-L] fabricated reviews lead to retractions of papers
It appears to be an issue with fraudulent “translation services” that pose on behalf of the foreign language researcher and use the “suggested reviewer” feature in the submission process to mislead editors into contacting reviewers who aren’t who they claim to be. The BMC blog post http://blogs.biomedcentral.com/bmcblog/2015/03/26/manipulation-peer-review/ http://blogs.biomedcentral.com/bmcblog/2015/03/26/manipulation-peer-review/ explains the fraud. My insight is that this could be happening elsewhere, and that BMC is doing the right thing to bring it to light, given the potential tarnish it creates. David Mellor Center for Open Science http://centerforopenscience.org/ (434) 352-1066 @EvoMellor On Mar 27, 2015, at 2:29 PM, Martin Meiss mme...@gmail.com wrote: I wonder if part of the problem is that one publisher, BioMed Central, http://www.biomedcentral.com/about puts out 277 journals. That seems like a lot of concentration of power. Martin M. Meiss 2015-03-27 12:46 GMT-04:00 David Inouye ino...@umd.edu: I hope this hasn't been an issue in ecology. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/03/ 27/fabricated-peer-reviews-prompt-scientific-journal-to- retract-43-papers-systematic-scheme-may-affect-other-journals/
