How publishing replication studies and negative results helps science

1. Replication Studiesand Negative Results

2. What do journals hesitate to publish? Let’s understand these two types of submissions better.

3. Replication studies

4. What are replication studies? A replication study involves repeating a study using the same methods but with different subjects and experimenters. • Replication studies: • Ensure that results are reliable and valid • Apply the previous results to new situations • Inspire new research that builds upon previous findings from related studies

5. Importance of replication studies Scientific experiments must be reproducible! If you cannot repeat a trial using a different set of parameters, your scientific method has failed. Did you know? The results of a landmark study, which had been cited over 1,900 times, could not be reproduced even by the original researchers in their own laboratory. • Validation of research findings is the cornerstone of science. • If you cannot replicate the results of a study, you must report it. This can lead to new discoveries and a better understanding of the original study.

6. Why most journals do not favor replication studies Replication studies may not interest some journals because their publishers: • Are biased towards publishing original research • Feel that this will give authors an easy way to get published • Believe that replication studies don’t reveal new information • Think the results are not dramatic enough to attract the journal’s readership • Want to avoid any potential controversy regarding the results of the replication • Prefer to publish successful replication results, and not all replication studies are successful

7. This is a problem If journals do not publish replication studies: • Fewer researchers will choose to perform reproducibility experiments. • Scientific development could be at stake. • In the case of clinical trials, in particular, this could lead to serious health care consequences.

8. Some solutions Journals could publish yearly special issues/include regular sections dedicated to replication studies. Publishers could set up forums that encourage alternative forms of publishing, e.g., a website/blog that publishes replication studies. We need tools to validate scientific research data. One such tool is CrossMark, which validates content with a unique approval stamp and displays most updated data: readers can assume that information without the approval stamp is not up to date/has not yet been taken up for a replication check and that the results may be inaccurate.

9. Negative results NEGATIVE RESULTS

10. What are negative results? When a hypothesis turns out to be incorrect, the study is considered to have produced negative results. Example: A researcher conducts a study to prove that drug X can destroy cancerous cells in the human body. But the researcher finds out that drug X is incapable of fighting cancerous cells. Thus, he ends up with a negative result.

11. Why journals do not favor negative results • Negative findings have lesser impact than positive results. • Papers with negative results may not have a high number of citations, affecting the journal’s impact factor. • Readers may not be as interested in reading about negative results as they would be in breakthrough results.

12. Proportion of negative and positive results in the literature

13. Did you know this about negative results? • More than 60% of research experiments fail to produce results or expected discoveries. • Negative results have been gradually disappearing from academic literature over the past two decades. • Articles primarily and clearly stating positive results have grown by 22% between 1990 and 2007. Annual odds of a positive result getting published have increased by around 6% every year. This is a problem! Just because an experiment failed, it does not mean that it should not be shared/published. In fact, publishing negative results will only give other researchers the opportunity to build upon the data and make further discoveries.

14. How can we solve this problem? Together! Every member of the academic publishing community should work towards embracing negative results and their publication. The perspective towards negative results can be changed by: • Creating awareness (among authors, journals, and publishers) about the importance of publishing negative results • Increased focus on journals that publish negative results (e.g. Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine, PLoS ONE, The All Results Journals)  • Universities, funding committees, and companies backing researchers for publishing important negative findings

15. Moving towards scientific progress Authors Publishers The next time you want to replicate an experiment OR Publish negative results of your study Go ahead and submit it because… The next time you receive a replication study OR A paper that describes negative results Give it a fair chance because… By doing so, you’re helping science grow!

16. References • http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2012/07/18/a-proposed-list-60-things-journal-publishers-do/ • http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org//?s=what+do+journals+consider+when+accepting+a+paper+for+publication • https://becker.wustl.edu/sites/default/files/archived-pdfs/preparepub.pdf • http://jech.bmj.com/content/65/2/119 • http://scx.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/01/24/1075547012472684.abstract • http://www.nature.com/news/replication-studies-bad-copy-1.10634 • http://andrewgelman.com/2011/06/13/how_should_jour/ • http://www.crossref.org/crossmark/ • http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/12/is-the-scientific-literature-self-correcting.html

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