Journalology roundup #7

Scooped by a blog. A then PhD student Reed Cartwright came up with the same hypothesis on his blog as an accepted paper in Plant Cell, so the author offered him co-authorship on the paper. A nice feel-good story, but by Reed's admission "There are maybe three sentences in the published paper that I had anything to do with". I might be a spoil-sport, but I think that an acknowledgement would have made more sense! Reed's blog is here.

Physician-Industry Relationships. "Most physicians (94%) reported some type of relationship with the pharmaceutical industry, and most of these relationships involved receiving food in the workplace (83%) or receiving drug samples (78%). More than one third of the respondents (35%) received reimbursement for costs associated with professional meetings or continuing medical education, and more than one quarter (28%) received payments for consulting, giving lectures, or enrolling patients in trials".

The Scientist's take on the Shelley Batts figure reuse affair.

Characteristics Associated with Citation Rate of the Medical Literature. "Large trials, with group authorship, industry-funded, with industry-favoring results, in oncology or cardiology were associated with greater subsequent citations". This is the kind of journalology research I love to see!

Open Access & Science Publishing. Results of a Study on Researchers’ Acceptance and Use of Open Access Publishing

In the eye of the Open Access storm. "Publisher Matthew Cockerill is one of the father figures of open access. So, exactly how open is he?". A profile of our Dear Leader.