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First up for May at Absolutely Maybe - An Author Rights Perspective on Scientific Editors. My top 6 core rights for which editors have responsibility. Starting with the right to not have your manuscript made worse!
More for authors next: a quick checklist for Building a Great Scientific Abstract. It's the most-read part of an article - it should never be a rushed afterthought, be misleading, or spin results.
I was delighted to participate in the wonderful bi-annual Research Reproducibility Conference held by the Eccles Library at the University of Utah in June. As well as talking at the pre-conference reproducibility workshop, I participated in a panel on calling out non-reproducible science, with Ivan Oransky from Retraction Watch, and Ed Dudek from the University of Utah, moderated by Scott Aberegg. (It's on YouTube - our panel starts at 5 hours 54 minutes.)
The most influential trial of the Mediterranean diet was retracted, then republished - with a toned-down conclusion. My take: What Does the PREDIMED Trial Retraction & Reboot Mean for the Mediterranean Diet? And more, in an invited opinion at BMJ: A Mediterranean diet trial's retraction and republication leaves a trail of questions.
And a post at Absolutely Maybe: Can We Science Our Way Out of the Reproducibility Crisis?
All That Meta-Analysis Backlash! In which I disagree with another spate of articles dissing systematic reviews and meta-analyses as a research type.
And my less-than-hellishly-complicated tips for weeding out lower quality ones - Systematic Reviews & Meta-Analyses: A 5-Step Checkup.
This month I tackled a few arguments that frustrate me. The first is arguing that signing peer reviews is risky for early career researchers, so we shouldn't have fully open peer review. Posted at Absolutely Maybe, Signing critical peer reviews & the fear of retaliation: what should we do?
The second is the argument that author processing charges aren't a big barrier to open access publishing, because most open access journals don't have them: A Reality Check on Author Access to Open Access Publishing.
It was Black History Month - and one of my projects was a tweet thread, adding an African-American women scientist every day, each with a great photo. Scroll through these amazing women in the twitter thread or the blog post with a little more about each of them at Missing Sci Faces.
And at last, after a year of digging out information, photos, and over 150 PhDs pre-1975 - and writing or improving lots of Wikipedia pages along the way, I posted an extensive Wikipedia overview of African-Americans in mathematics. Read my post about it here at Absolutely Maybe - Black History Month: Mathematicians Powerful Stories.
And I live-blogged the ASAPbio meeting on peer review, supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and Wellcome Trust: Transparency, Recognition, & Innovation. It was my first visit to the pretty sumptuous HHMI campus in Chevy Chase (not far from the NIH in Bethesda). This is what tributes to the founder looks like when he was a movie producer:
This month was all about open access! My fifth annual open access roundup - Open Access 2017: A Year of Stand-Offs, Showdowns, & Funders' Own Journals.
And Principles, Open Access, & Everyday Choices at Absolutely Maybe.
