Connection Between Epigenome, Selective Mutability, Evolution, and Human Disease
Li, Harris et al., PLoS Genetics
Researchers at the Baylor College of Medicine and elsewhere propose a "connection between the epigenome, selective mutability, evolution, and human disease" based on the findings of their study on associations of structural mutability with germline DNA methylation and with non-allelic homologous recombination mediated by low-copy repeats. "Combined evidence from four human sperm methylome maps, human genome evolution, structural polymorphisms in the human population, and previous genomic and disease studies consistently points to a strong association of germline hypomethylation and genomic instability," the Baylor-led team writes.
Oh, the Vanity
The Scholarly Kitchen blog's Kent Anderson reports on an open letter on BMJ.com says that authors with connections to industry are more than twice as likely to pay open access fees to make their work free — a bias which could lead to "preferential reading of pro-industry results." The study examined the funding source and access status of 216 extended reports published between 2007 and 2008 in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases, which operates under a hybrid open access model, where studies are accessed by subscription but authors are allowed to purchase open access rights to their articles. According to the study, 17 percent of industry-funded papers were made open access, as opposed to 8 percent of papers which weren't backed by industry. "Pro-industry bias is not new to medical publishing. That industry would view author-pays publishing as an opportunity to promote favorable work is not entirely surprising," Anderson writes.
At Science in the Open, Cameron Neylon, an academic editor at PLoS One says that while an 'author-pays' model has the potential to create a conflict of interest, that is not the case at PLoS One. "Within reputable publishers, structures are put in place to reduce that risk as far as is possible, divorcing the financial side from editorial decision making, creating Chinese walls between editorial and financial staff within the publisher," he writes. "The suggestion that my editorial decisions are influenced by the fact the authors will pay is, to be frank, offensive, calling into serious question my professional integrity and that of the other AEs."
I reject the notion that
I reject the notion that because twice as many industry-funded research papers compared to purely academic-sourced publications are available without subscription fees a pro-industry bias results.
Firstly, with the traditional journal subscription model, authors typically still have to pay page charges and reprint charges. Consequently, there has alway been an "author-pays' element to scientific publishing in most cases.
Secondly, independent peer of scientific papers is the first barrier to getting a manuscript published. While I am sure that politics plays a role in publication in some of the more popular journals that have a strong advertising base and the need to publish on hot topics, the submitted paper still has to pass scientific scrutiny from referees.
Thirdly, academic authors would be just as inclined to publish "favorable work" as industrial authors, because they are subjected to even more pressure to publish or perish that those in industry. It should be appreciated that the ultimate goal of industrial pursuits is the successful development of products, processes or services that permit profitability.
Publications with industrial input, especially from larger companies, benefit from the experience of highly trained teams of scientists with state of the art equipment and other resources. The problems that they tackle are often more challenging than those that can be taken on by an independent investigator in a university- or hospital-based lab. In my observations, a large amount of basic research publications also arises from industrial sources.
Government agencies such as the US National Institutes of Health and the Canadian Institutes for Health Research are pushing their funded researchers to publish with open access. The fact that industry has apparently taken a lead on making their scientific research freely available should be applauded, not viewed with suspicion as primarily self-serving.