The Edinburgh Open Science Initiative keeps an eye on changes in the fields of Open Science, FAIR data principles, and others, the past 2 weeks, and has a section in the CVS newsletter to direct any interested parties to important updates. This issue, we’d like to highlight:
- The League of European Research Universities (LERU), of which Edinburgh is a member, has recently published a report on promoting a culture of research integrity at universities, including recommendations for implementation. Worth a read for sure!
- One criticism of pre-prints is that they’ve not been peer reviewed, and may therefore their findings may not have been thoroughly scrutinised. To help with this, the platform Reviewcommons.org was launched in December to provide independent peer reviews prior to journal submission, and the first article to have this has now been posted to BioRxiv.
- Researchers in the Netherlands in the field of Psychology looked at journals which decided whether or not to published based on registered report (assessing it based on the question and methodology before the results are known). They compared these to studies published without a registered report, and found that when doing this, ‘positive’ results fell from 96% in non-preregistered studies to 44% in preregistered studies. This supports the suggestion that publishing based on preregistered reports could tackle publication bias.
The best way to get more numerous and more regular updates is to follow EOSI on Twitter, as they retweet relevant messages, highlight useful articles, and share pertinent information & opportunities through this account. Additionally, as a new group they’re still growing. If you’re interested in getting involved then please send an email to Eleanor McKay at eleanor.mckay@ed.ac.uk, or message them on Twitter.
Edinburgh Open Research Initiative 