IPC4 Day 1 – Death is the road to awe

Jon Tennant September 30, 2014

Following on from the previous post, the afternoon symposium was all about the applications and implications of vertebrate taphonomy.

Matt Carrano kicked things off with a great talk on how microfossil bonebeds help to guide our understanding of terrestrial palaeoecosystems. Using sites from the well-known but poorly understood Cloverly Formation, he provided a key insight from abundances from terrestrial microsites into the composition of faunas. This was a particularly appealing talk for me as it contained atoposaurids!

Carina Colombi asked what the effect was of atmospheric CO₂ on the evolution and preservation of the terrestrial fauna of the famous Ischigualasto Formation. It seems that decreases in atmospheric CO₂ may explain decreases in the number of preserved vertebrate fossils in different horizons.

Tao Deng explored the taphonomy of the vertebrate fauna in the Linxia Basin in Gansu, China. Older individuals from particularly abundant rhino fossils seem preferentially preserved, based on ages inferred from tooth eruption

Adriana Mancuso described her research into taphonomic modes in a Triassic-Jurassic loessite (wind-blown deposit) from Patagonia. Different taphonomic regimes suggest aspects of social aggregation in some animals, for example from the accumulation of groups of juvenile specimens.

Alexander Parkinson gave an interesting talk on insect-bone interactions from the “Cradle of Humankind” in South Africa. There were plenty of types of boring trace, with a possible new ichnotaxon. The spatial distribution and mode of preservation of the fossils suggests extremely rapid burial and fossilisation.

Raymond Rogers brought us back to microfossil bonebeds, from the Upper Cretaceous Judith River Formation in the US. He was looking at huge numbers of fragmentary fossils and what their size and shape can tell us about their diagenensis, in particular how the deposits formed and where the fossils were sourced from.

Vijay Sathe discussed the taphonomy of a new large mammalian fauna from the Quaternary of India, and the possibility of their mode of death. It seems some may have fallen into pits, and subsequently scavenged by predators, with the preferential preservation of younger and older animals.

Leif Tapanila finished things off by looking at the effect of impermeable ash layers within geological basins, and whether their distribution affected the preservation potential of fossil layers by changing hydraulic regimes.

End of day 1! The best part for me of this second symposium was the potential that fossil microsites have in greatly increasing our understanding of diversity through time. Hopefully much more on this in the future.

IPC4 Day 1 – Using the past to inform the present

Jon Tennant September 30, 2014

Welcome to the fourth International Palaeontology Congress! 900 palaeontologists have piled into the land of steak, sun, and malbec in Mendoza, Argentina, for the biggest palaeontology conference that draws from all parts of the field.

What I want to do with these posts is just provide snapshot summaries of the talks I’ve been at to provide a window into the conference and the amazing diversity of research being conducted by a global team of awesome researchers. It’s not all just dinosaurs you know! Results will not be discussed in any detail for obvious reasons.

The first symposium I attended was on the “Coevolution of the Earth and life: the role of the physical environment in species’ evolution.”

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What causes high retraction rates in high-profile journals?

Jon Tennant September 18, 2014

A Nature News piece is out today featuring comments from me, about how high retraction rates correlate with impact factors in scholarly journals. However, the piece cherry picks my comments a little, and doesn’t really go into that much depth. Bjorn Brembs already has a response up, and seeing as when I was contacted for comments, I mentioned a piece of research from him and other colleagues, I feel it is in the spirit to echo what he mentions by publishing my full response to Nature here.

In response to a tweet about an article on retraction rates, I was contacted with the following questions: “Did anything in particular inspire you to share this paper at this time? Can I assume that you feel the paper is still relevant?”

My full response:

“The reason why I shared it? Well, in all honesty I didn’t see the date, and just came across it and thought it was fairly relevant to a lot of current discussions about impact factors. I don’t think studies like this really lose their usage that quickly. It’s remarkably similar to a more recent study, in fact, that calls for a complete overhaul of the publishing industry and the use of impact factors (see Fig. 1 http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00291/full).

I do feel the paper is relevant still, especially given several recent ‘horror stories’ regarding retractions, and falsification of results. However, I do feel it is missing key discussion points, such as what is creating the pattern. I think there are two ways of reading it. The first, is that the ‘publish or perish’ culture very much alive and prevalent within academia is still causing academics to chase after ‘high impact’ journals, and in doing so are more likely to create incorrect results, deliberate or not, in the pursuit of achieving substantial enough results deemed worthy of ‘top tier journals’ – sensationalism over quality. The second way is that journals with higher impact factors generally have higher readerships, and as such increase the probability of detection of incorrect results. However, there is no current information that I’m aware of to support this latter link, beyond anecdote.

The raw way of reading it, however, is that the higher the impact factor of a journal, the increased probability that the contents within are wrong. I think although it is not as black and white as this, it is certainly another piece of evidence to caution against ‘impact factor mania’ within academia (something that I still see my colleagues suffer from on a daily basis, and try to engage with).

Perhaps more significantly is that it draws attention to the short-comings of peer review, if detection of incorrect results is not picked up during this screening process. Perhaps even further, it highlights the rift between editorial decisions and recommendations of review, highlighted in the ‘Bohannon Sting’ operation last year, if you recall (i.e., bad results, accepted for publication anyway). Either way, it highlights a need for more transparency in the review process – this will ultimately drive down retractions as mistakes can be detected and dealt with much quicker.”

Anyway, that’s my thoughts on glamour mags and retraction rates. What are yours? Have I missed any key information here too?

Jon Tennant September 3, 2014

Top scientific publisher chooses not to advance open access

By Erin McKiernan, independent, and Jon Tennant, Imperial College London

Access to research is limited worldwide by the high cost of subscription journals, which force readers to pay for their content. The use of scientific research in new studies, educational material and news is often restricted by these publishers, who require authors to sign over their rights and then control what is done with the published work. In response, a movement that would allow free access to information and no restrictions on reuse – termed open access – is growing.

Some universities and funding organisations, including those administered by governments, now mandate open access, recognising its potential to increase the impact of research paid for by public money. The United Nations is considering the importance of open access to ensure the “right to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications”.

Scholarly societies, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), which is the largest such body, have recently launched new open-access journals. This is a welcome development, but this AAAS approach is at odds with that of other major open-access publishers and could impair the goals of the movement.

The journal Science Advances, to be launched in February by the AAAS, plans to publish articles under a license that would prevent commercial reuses by default. This includes publication on some educational blogs and incorporation into educational material, as well as reuse by small-medium enterprises. By definition, this is not open access. AAAS will give authors the option to publish their work under a fully open license, but will levy a US$1,000 surcharge on top of the US$3,000 base publication fee. A reason for this surcharge was not given.

Science Advances is going to be an online-only journal, but AAAS will also charge authors US$1,500 more to publish articles that are more than ten pages long. They believe editorial services are enough justification for this charge, but there is no calculation to support this claim. They reason this limit is also necessary due to concerns about brevity and writing quality. However, these issues can be addressed during peer review – a process by which scientists judge other scientists’ work as objectively as possible and which is done at little to no cost to the journal.

Some scientists worry that a page-limit surcharge could lead to the omission of details necessary for replicating experiments, a core tenet of scientific research. Leading open-access journals from publishers such as PLOS and BioMedCentral offer unlimited page lengths at no additional cost.

A comparison shows that fees to be charged by Science Advances are among the highest in the publishing industry.

AAAS says it is fully committed to open-access publishing, but an examination of its recent actions are cause for concern.

In October, AAAS’s journal Science published a “study”, claiming systemic problems with peer review at open-access journals. But it was severely criticised for its flaws.

In June, AAAS wrote a letter to Farina Shaheed, Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights at the United Nations. Shaheed is preparing a report on open access for the UN Human Rights Council. AAAS expressed reservations about open access, calling the movement “young”, the approaches “experimental”, and encouraging Shaheed not to ignore the potential benefits of the reader-pays publishing model.

In August, AAAS announced that Kent Anderson has been appointed as publisher of the Science journals and will oversee the launch of Science Advances. The choice of Anderson, a vocal sceptic of open-access publishing, was criticised by academics.

Concerns about AAAS’s approach to open-access publishing recently led more than 100 scientists, including us, to sign an open letter to them providing recommendations to improve Science Advances. AAAS have not responded formally to the open letter, choosing instead to publish a FAQ which makes no changes to their policies.

Some of Science Advances’s potential competitors have unfortunately taken a similar approach to open access. Nature Publishing Group (NPG) levies a US$400 surcharge for publishing under a fully open license in its journal, Nature Communications. The Society for Neuroscience will do the same, with a US$500 surcharge for open licensing in its new journal, eNeuro. The American Chemical Society charges US$1000 for upgrading to an open license. In contrast, leading open-access publishers such as PLOS and BioMedCentral offer open licensing as standard for no additional cost.

It is unfortunate that AAAS and others have chosen not to fully embrace open access and maximise the impact of publicly funded research. These are missed opportunities for the world’s largest general scientific society to lead the way in increasing worldwide access to information.

Erin McKiernan co-authored this piece. Jon Tennant receives funding from The National Environmental Research Council.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article.