Mike Lauer
November 8, 2017
The scientific community is paying increasing attention to the quality practices of journals and publishers. NIH recently released a Guide notice (NOT-OD-18-011) to encourage authors to publish in journals that do not undermine the credibility, impact, and accuracy of their research findings. This notice aims to raise awareness about practices like changing publication fees without notice, lacking transparency in publication procedures, misrepresenting editorial boards, and/or using suspicious peer review.
This may not be a big problem for NIH-funded publications now; our colleagues Jennifer Marill, Kathryn Funk, and Jerry Sheehan from the National Library of Medicine note that more than 90% of the 815,000 publicly available journal articles reporting on NIH-funded research are published in MEDLINE indexed journals. Nonetheless, we do know that a problem exists – there are articles reporting NIH-funded research appearing in journals that engage in questionable practices. Ensuring the credibility of NIH funded research is important to maintaining public trust in research.
