Improving transparency and scientific rigor in academic publishing
- PMID: 32721132
- PMCID: PMC7941525
- DOI: 10.1002/cnr2.1150
Improving transparency and scientific rigor in academic publishing
Abstract
Progress in basic and clinical research is slowed when researchers fail to provide a complete and accurate report of how a study was designed, executed, and the results analyzed. Publishing rigorous scientific research involves a full description of the methods, materials, procedures, and outcomes. Investigators may fail to provide a complete description of how their study was designed and executed because they may not know how to accurately report the information or the mechanisms are not in place to facilitate transparent reporting. Here, we provide an overview of how authors can write manuscripts in a transparent and thorough manner. We introduce a set of reporting criteria that can be used for publishing, including recommendations on reporting the experimental design and statistical approaches. We also discuss how to accurately visualize the results and provide recommendations for peer reviewers to enhance rigor and transparency. Incorporating transparency practices into research manuscripts will significantly improve the reproducibility of the results by independent laboratories. SIGNIFICANCE: Failure to replicate research findings often arises from errors in the experimental design and statistical approaches. By providing a full account of the experimental design, procedures, and statistical approaches, researchers can address the reproducibility crisis and improve the sustainability of research outcomes. In this piece, we discuss the key issues leading to irreproducibility and provide general approaches to improving transparency and rigor in reporting, which could assist in making research more reproducible.
Keywords: Open Science; peer review; policy; publishing; scientific rigor; transparency.
© 2018 The Authors Cancer Reports Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Conflict of interest statement
Though objectivity of a researcher or group is assumed, conflicts of interest may exist and could be a potential source of bias. Conflicts of interest largely focus on financial conflicts,91, 92 but they can also occur when an individual's personal interests are in conflict with professional obligations, including industrial relationships.93 Conflicts, whether real or perceived, arise when one recognizes an interest as influencing an author's objectivity. This can occur when an author owns a patent, or has stock ownership, or is a member of a company, for example. All participants in a paper must disclose all relationships that could be viewed as presenting a real or perceived conflict of interest. When considering whether a conflict is present, one should ask whether a reasonable reader could feel misled or deceived. While beyond the scope of this article, the Committee on Publication Ethics offers a number of resources on
Dr. David McArthur serves as JNR's paid statistical reviewer and has reviewed in that capacity for other journals, both Wiley and other publishers. Dr. Anita Bandrowski runs SciCrunch, a company devoted to ensuring RRIDs persist in the literature. Dr. Maryann Martone is a founder and the CSO of SciCrunch, which provides services supporting RRIDs and is the Editor‐in‐Chief of
