Journalology #130: Societal impact
SDG research drives policy; 10 years of CRediT; Y chromosomes and retractions
Hello fellow journalologists,
Many of you will be preparing to log off for Thanksgiving. I don’t fully appreciate the differences between this US celebration and the way we celebrate Christmas here in the UK. However, if you find yourself wanting to hide away from the family for a bit, this week’s newsletter contains plenty to keep you occupied.
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News headlines
SDG research has grown faster than the broader research market and is more likely to be used, cited, and downloaded, especially when published open access (OA). But the real question is, what impact does SDG research have beyond academia? While the UN’s 2030 Agenda calls for science to inform policy and deliver societal outcomes, there has been, until now, a paucity of evidence showing how published research is actually taken up in policy.
JB: I’m biased, because I was involved in the Springer Nature Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) initiative when it launched many years ago, but this report, which uses data from Overton, is as insightful as it is important. My two former colleagues, Nicola Jones and Ritu Dhand note:
By understanding the types of research that policymakers cite, we can begin to understand the role that we as publishers play in facilitating greater knowledge exchange.
They conclude:
This research-to-policy connection is greatest in health, environment, and social development. As these represent some of the most urgent global challenges, the role of scholarly research in informing action is promising. There is an undeniable opportunity here for publishers to prioritise visibility of research that can help accelerate progress towards the SDGs.
If you have an interest in the SDGs you need to read this report in full. However, here are the digests if you just want the key takeaways:
A ten-year drive to credit authors for their work — and why there’s still more to do
By 2024, CRediT information was included in nearly 850,000 publications (encompassing articles, preprints and conference papers) — around 22% of the 3.7 million publications recorded last year in Digital Science’s Dimensions, a database of scholarly publications. This level of uptake is remarkable, given that there have been no coordinated efforts or mandates from publishers and funders.
JB: I can’t quite believe that 10 years have passed since CRediT was first mooted in Nature. The 2018 PNAS paper, which had some highly influential editors as authors, was another milestone. If you haven’t heard of CRediT before, this extract from the abstract of the PNAS paper should help you to get up to speed:
In keeping with the growing movement in scientific publishing toward transparency in data and methods, we propose changes to journal authorship policies and procedures to provide insight into which author is responsible for which contributions, better assurance that the list is complete, and clearly articulated standards to justify earning authorship credit. To accomplish these goals, we recommend that journals adopt common and transparent standards for authorship, outline responsibilities for corresponding authors, adopt the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) (docs.casrai.org/CRediT) methodology for attributing contributions, include this information in article metadata, and require authors to use the ORCID persistent digital identifier (https://orcid.org).
Women seem to retract fewer papers than men — but why?
Women are under-represented in medical research generally, but they are even more under-represented when it comes to retracted articles. A new study finds that women’s names filled just 23% of author slots in a sample of nearly 900 retracted articles published in medical journals between 2008 and 2017.
JB: You can read the PLOS One research article here: Gender disparities among authors of retracted publications in medical journals: A cross-sectional study. The news story skirts around one obvious explanation for why there’s this gender disparity: perhaps, just maybe, men are inherently more dishonest than women? And, yes, I know — retractions don’t necessarily signal dishonesty — but you get my point, I hope.
Springer Nature flags paper with fabricated reference to article (not) written by our cofounder
The paper with the nonexistent reference, published November 13 in DARU Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, criticizes platforms for post-publication peer review — and PubPeer specifically — as being vulnerable to “misuse” and “hyper-skepticism.” Five of the paper’s 17 references do not appear to exist, three others have incorrect DOIs or links, and one has been retracted.
JB: Over the years I’ve learned to trust my editorial gut instinct. I read the paper in question last week, before this news story broke, after it popped up on a PubMed feed. There was something about it that didn’t feel right, even after just a cursory skim read, so I decided against including it in the newsletter. Good call, James. Retraction Watch dug deeper and found significant problems, noting:
The editor-in-chief of the journal is Mohammad Abdollahi, who is also the last author on the paper. Abdollahi has previously served as a council member for the Committee on Publication Ethics, according to COPE’s alumni website, and has 11 retractions. Abdollahi has not responded to our request for comment on the fake references.
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