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We at F1000Research have a strong belief in transparency: transparency in peer review; transparency in research that is published, through the release and publication of all the underlying data; and transparency in publication, through acceptance of both positive and the ’unexciting’ negative and null findings to reduce the current positive publication bias.

Most scientists we talk to strongly agree that these negative findings need to be published.  A few believe, however,  that researchers have little enough time as it is and should therefore focus on the big high-impact studies, which may be a mixture of positive and negative findings.  While I don’t disagree with this in some regards, there are many ‘big’ findings that have been discovered by looking at a mountain of small findings that, in themselves, don’t appear particularly interesting or important. Furthermore, some ‘negative’ results are in fact very important.  Søren Sheikh, Professor at the Department of Biochemistry and Pharmacology, Odense University Hospital, Denmark commented to us that ‘one of my most cited papers is largely a negative result’.

The challenge of course with these less exciting studies is getting them higher on the researchers’ priority list for them to be published. They are typically left behind in the drawer due to a lack of time to write them up, a lack of financial support for that time or a lack of funding for an article processing charge (APC) for open access publication, as well as difficulties getting these papers accepted by journals.

Unfortunately we can’t create time, but as we announced last week, we are working to reduce other barriers, starting with the fact that we will openly accept such studies for publication and the waiving of all APCs for any negative or null studies that are submitted to us before the end of August 2013. We are also talking with funders about grant opportunities to actively support the writing up of such studies and I’ll talk more on that in a few days.

How do we filter for scientific quality?

We are of course highly aware of the issue of maintaining research quality in such publications.  It is easy to get what appears to be a negative or null result just by using poor experimental technique, and it can actually be harder to prove a negative or null result than a positive one.  We have been discussing these issues with some of our Advisory Panel and Editorial Board members, and we would welcome your thoughts on this tricky issue.

Azim Surani (Mary Marshall and Arthur Walton Professor of Physiology and Reproduction at the Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute, Cambridge, UK) suggested that we should ask PIs involved in any negative results submitted for publication to sign a statement that confirmed that:

1. The data was not a part of any previous publication.
2. The experiments were conducted rigorously with appropriate controls.
3. All reasonable efforts were made by the PI to check that the negative results were not due to technical errors.

Many agreed with this approach.  Ian Booth (Professor Emeritus Microbiology, Institute of Medical Sciences from the University of Aberdeen, UK) went further, suggesting that we should ensure there is a clear hypothesis section, together with an ‘unexpected problems’ section that would cover comments about the limitations of the method.

What do you think?

We plan to put together a set of controls such as above to help reduce the likelihood of poor quality studies getting through our pre-publication checks, so please let us know what you think of these suggestions and whether you think there is anything else we should routinely check for with these studies. We’re offering F1000Research t-shirts in return for your suggestions!