{"id":2569,"date":"2019-02-04T18:11:15","date_gmt":"2019-02-04T18:11:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/?p=2569"},"modified":"2019-02-04T18:13:17","modified_gmt":"2019-02-04T18:13:17","slug":"preprints-and-science-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/2019\/02\/04\/preprints-and-science-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Preprints and science news"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I\u2019ve written before about preprints\nand science news<\/a>. That blogpost was occasioned by the open\nletter<\/a> last summer from Fiona Fox at the Science Media Centre on the subject,\nand the follow-up comment\npiece by Tom Sheldon<\/a> in Nature<\/em>. Mine was just one of several responses<\/a>,\nmost of which<\/a>\nsought to defend<\/a>\npreprints from the perceived attack. The discussion served to demonstrate that preprints\nhave become an important part of the biomedical research publishing scene,\nalbeit still a small part. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems to me though that there is still an unanswered question about how preprints and science reporting will co-exist. That is why I have organised a meeting this week<\/a> for open Research London on this topic. The speakers will be Tom Sheldon, Clare Ryan, Robin Lovell-Badge, Teresa Rayon Alonso. Tom is from the Science Media Centre and leads their work on preprints.  Clare is Head of Media Relations at the Wellcome Trust \u2013 an organisation that is a strong supporter of open access and preprints. Robin is a senior group leader at the Francis Crick Institute who has extensive media experience and is on the advisory board of PLOS.  Teresa is a postdoc at the Crick and a preprint summariser at preLights<\/a>; she co-authored a response to Tom Sheldon\u2019s article. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think it will be an interesting evening and there are still\na few tickets left but you need to register<\/a>.  The event will not be streamed but we aim to\nrecord it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think it\u2019s an interesting topic as it\u2019s new, but also\nquite an old conversation, or rather two old conversations that are coming together.\nThere have been endless conversations about the value or otherwise of embargoes\nin science news reporting \u2013 I remember them going back to 2009 but I\u2019m sure\nthey go back further. There have also been endless conversations about peer\nreview and whether preprints in biomedicine are a good thing \u2013 I remember them\ngoing back to 1999 but again they certainly go back further. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would summarise the problem as a series of mutually\nincompatible premises:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Science benefits from\npreprints (speeding up communications)<\/li>
  2. Science benefits from news\nreports (keeping science in the public eye)<\/li>
  3. Embargoes are necessary for\ngood science news reporting <\/li>
  4. Preprints are incompatible\nwith embargoes<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    There are a few other issues involved, but to my mind these\nare at the core of the problem. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    At this point I had intended to write a magisterial overview\nof everything written on the subject, but time has run out so I will just\ninclude a few pointers to other writings and discussions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    On embargoes<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    I first heard the arguments about embargoes during a\ndiscussion at the World Conference of Science Journalists in 2009, nicely summarised\nby Ed Yong<\/a>. There was another\ndiscussion<\/a> at their conference four years later. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In 2016 noted embargo-watcher Ivan Oransky gave a brief history\nof embargoes<\/a> and suggests they are no longer useful, but Vivian\nSiegel maintained<\/a> they were still needed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    A rather different idea for reforming science news reporting\nwas suggested\nby John Rennie<\/a> following the Science Online conference in 2011.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    On preprints<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    Matthew Cobb Traces the history\nof preprints<\/a> in biology back to the 1960s in a very thorough article in\nPLOS Biology.  I still remember the\nlively discussion that took place in 1999 following Harold Varmus\u2019 E-Biomed\nproposal.  An addendum to the\nproposal<\/a> provided responses to some of the key issues raised in discussion.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    On preprints and embargoes<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    I started out by saying that the issue of how to reconcile preprints and embargoes was an unanswered question, but there has been some discussion of the matter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The (US) National Association of Science Writers held a meeting<\/a> last autumn, bringing together journalists, press officers and journal editors. The conversations were summarised in a Google doc<\/a>. Avren Keating observed:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In the end, there were more questions raised than answers, though a couple of messages did surface. Journalists, it was argued, are moving faster than the PIO community in adapting to preprints. The audience also believed journalists should take the same skeptical rigor they use to judge preprints of newsworthiness and apply that rigor to peer-reviewed research.<\/em><\/p>The future is now: How science communicators can adapt to preprints<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

    A post on the STEMPRA blog<\/a> last year by Claire Hastings mulls over the issue and comes up with some possible solutions, though for my money her solutions have the flavour of trying to turn the tide back. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Another blogpost from last year suggests that “Journalists Need to Adapt to Preprints, Not Ignore Them<\/a>“. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I suspect that there’ll be a good deal more discussion to come about preprints and embargoes. I hope the event on 6 Feb 2019<\/a> will be a useful forum for informed discussion. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I\u2019ve written before about preprints and science news. That blogpost was occasioned by the open letter last summer from Fiona Fox at the Science Media Centre on the subject, and the follow-up comment piece by Tom Sheldon in Nature. Mine … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,119],"tags":[134],"class_list":["post-2569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communicating-science","category-preprints","tag-embargoes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2569\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/trading-knowledge\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}