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10 août 2021

Replication and trustworthiness

Authors : Rik Peels, Lex Bouter

This paper explores various relations that exist between replication and trustworthiness. After defining “trust”, “trustworthiness”, “replicability”, “replication study”, and “successful replication”, we consider, respectively, how trustworthiness relates to each of the three main kinds of replication: reproductions, direct replications, and conceptual replications.

Subsequently, we explore how trustworthiness relates to the intentionality of a replication. After that, we discuss whether the trustworthiness of research findings depends merely on evidential considerations or also on what is at stake.

We conclude by adding replication to the other issues that should be considered in assessing the trustworthiness of research findings: (1) the likelihood of the findings before the primary study was done (that is, the prior probability of the findings), (2) the study size and the methodological quality of the primary study, (3) the number of replications that were performed and the quality and consistency of their aggregated findings, and (4) what is at stake.

URL : Replication and trustworthiness

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2021.1963708

10 août 2021

Invisible science: publication of negative research results

Authors : Luis Fernando Sayão, Luana Farias Sales, Carla Beatriz Marques Felipe

An important part of scientific research activities yield negative results – non-confirmatory and null data, inconclusive experiments, unexpected data. These results permeate the entire research cycle and constitute an important part of the full scientific knowledge flow generation.

However, despite the acknowledgment that it is the non-confirmatory findings that result in the rejection of consolidated hypotheses that drive the progress of science, most of these investigation routes are not documented.

Growing competition for resources, tenure, and impact publications induces researchers to produce “positive” results that are more likely to be published, interfering with the principles of science reproducibility and self-correction and in the scientific communication cycle.

This study aims to review negative results incorporation in the traditional academic publication cycle. It also seeks to identify and systematize the main barriers that prevent researchers from publishing negative results.

This exploratory study is based methodologically on the scarce literature on the subject. It confirms the initial assumption that few scientific journals accept, edit special issues or are dedicated to the publication of negative results.

URL : Invisible science: publication of negative research results

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1590/2318-0889202133e200009

9 août 2021

Pricing Research: State of the Art and Future Opportunities

Authors : Aliomar Lino Mattos, José Carlos Tiomatsu Oyadomari, Fernando Nascimento Zatta

The most commonly used pricing approaches adopted by companies worldwide are based on costs, customer value, and competition. The purpose of the present study is to review the current status of publications on pricing globally with the addition of Brazilian literature, identify the most cited authors and highest publishing institutions, and outline further research opportunities.

To this end, we use the bibliometric method to analyze relevant publications from the following four databases: Web of Science, Emerald, Elsevier, and Spell. A total of 286 papers from 195 periodicals and 31 journals (primarily from marketing, accounting, economics, and production engineering) are reviewed.

The findings show that pricing is a complex and multifaceted topic involving far more than merely establishing selling prices, and that pricing managers face substantial challenges. The results also reveal that the cost-based pricing approach is superior to the perceived customer-value-based and the competition-based approaches.

Finally, the findings show that pricing remains an underresearched topic, and is thus a fertile ground for further investigation.

URL : Pricing Research: State of the Art and Future Opportunities

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1177%2F21582440211032168

8 août 2021

A qualitative and quantitative analysis of open citations to retracted articles: the Wakefield 1998 et al.’s case

Authors : Ivan Heibi, Silvio Peroni

In this article, we show the results of a quantitative and qualitative analysis of open citations on a popular and highly cited retracted paper: “Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis and pervasive developmental disorder in children” by Wakefield et al., published in 1998.

The main purpose of our study is to understand the behavior of the publications citing one retracted article and the characteristics of the citations the retracted article accumulated over time. Our analysis is based on a methodology which illustrates how we gathered the data, extracted the topics of the citing articles and visualized the results.

The data and services used are all open and free to foster the reproducibility of the analysis. The outcomes concerned the analysis of the entities citing Wakefield et al.’s article and their related in-text citations. We observed a constant increasing number of citations in the last 20 years, accompanied with a constant increment in the percentage of those acknowledging its retraction.

Citing articles have started either discussing or dealing with the retraction of Wakefield et al.’s article even before its full retraction happened in 2010. Articles in the social sciences domain citing the Wakefield et al.’s one were among those that have mostly discussed its retraction.

In addition, when observing the in-text citations, we noticed that a large number of the citations received by Wakefield et al.’s article has focused on general discussions without recalling strictly medical details, especially after the full retraction.

Medical studies did not hesitate in acknowledging the retraction of the Wakefield et al.’s article and often provided strong negative statements on it.

URL : A qualitative and quantitative analysis of open citations to retracted articles: the Wakefield 1998 et al.’s case

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-021-04097-5

8 août 2021

The Use of Twitter by Medical Journals: Systematic Review of the Literature

Authors : Natalie Erskine, Sharief Hendricks

Background

Medical journals use Twitter to engage and disseminate their research articles and implement a range of strategies to maximize reach and impact.

Objective

This study aims to systematically review the literature to synthesize and describe the different Twitter strategies used by medical journals and their effectiveness on journal impact and readership metrics.

Methods

A systematic search of the literature before February 2020 in four electronic databases (PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and ScienceDirect) was conducted. Articles were reviewed using the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses) guidelines.

Results

The search identified 44 original research studies that evaluated Twitter strategies implemented by medical journals and analyzed the relationship between Twitter metrics and alternative and citation-based metrics. The key findings suggest that promoting publications on Twitter improves citation-based and alternative metrics for academic medical journals.

Moreover, implementing different Twitter strategies maximizes the amount of attention that publications and journals receive. The four key Twitter strategies implemented by many medical journals are tweeting the title and link of the article, infographics, podcasts, and hosting monthly internet-based journal clubs. Each strategy was successful in promoting the publications. However, different metrics were used to measure success.

Conclusions

Four key Twitter strategies are implemented by medical journals: tweeting the title and link of the article, infographics, podcasts, and hosting monthly internet-based journal clubs. In this review, each strategy was successful in promoting publications but used different metrics to measure success.

Thus, it is difficult to conclude which strategy is most effective. In addition, the four strategies have different costs and effects on dissemination and readership. We recommend that journals and researchers incorporate a combination of Twitter strategies to maximize research impact and capture audiences with a variety of learning methods.

URL : The Use of Twitter by Medical Journals: Systematic Review of the Literature

DOI : https://doi.org/10.2196/26378

8 août 2021

Gender differences in scientific careers: A large-scale bibliometric analysis

Authors : Hanjo Boekhout, Inge van der Weijden, Ludo Waltman

We present a large-scale bibliometric analysis of gender differences in scientific careers, covering all scientific disciplines and a large number of countries worldwide. We take a longitudinal perspective in which we trace the publication careers of almost six million male and female researchers in the period 1996-2018.

Our analysis reveals an increasing trend in the percentage of women starting a career as publishing researcher, from 33% in 2000 to about 40% in recent years. Looking at cohorts of male and female researchers that started their publication career in the same year, we find that women seem to be somewhat less likely to continue their career as publishing researcher than men, but the difference is small.

We also observe that men produce on average between 15% and 20% more publications than women. Moreover, in biomedical disciplines, men are about 25% more likely than women to be last author of a publication, suggesting that men tend to have more senior roles than women.

Compared with cross-sectional studies, our longitudinal analysis has the advantage of providing a more in-depth understanding of gender imbalances among authors of scientific publications.

URL : https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.12624