Researcher's Perceptions on Publishing “Negative” Results and Open Access
Open accessAbstract
Scientific advance is based on reproducibility, corroboration, and availability of research results. However, large numbers of experimental results that contradict previous work do not get published and many research results are not freely available as they are hidden behind paywalls. As part of COST Action “DARTER”, a network of researchers in the field of RNA therapeutics, we have performed a small survey among our members and their colleagues to assess their opinion on the subject of publishing contradictory or ambiguous results and their attitude to open access (OA) publishing. Our survey indicates that, although researchers highly value publication of “negative” results, they often do not publish their own, citing lack of time and the perception that those results may not be as highly cited. OA, on the other hand, seems to be widely accepted, but in many cases not actively sought by researchers due to higher costs associated with it.
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Researchers value publication of 'negative' results, but frequently do not publish their own, probably due to lack of time and that findings might not be highly cited.
“Although researchers value publication of ‘negative’ results, they frequently do not publish their own, probably due to lack of time and that findings might not be highly cited [39].”
From Reporting quality of abstracts of systematic reviews/meta-analyses: An appraisal of Arab Journal of Urology across 12 years: the PRISMA-Abstracts checklist (2023) · cites this paper as [39]
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“We live in the era of ‘‘publish or perish’’ and the publication of experimental negative results is disappearing from most disciplines and countries: it has been described that the percentage of studies, where the initial hypothesis was verified, grew by 22% between 1990 and 2007, with papers claiming to have produced…”
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“Many reasons could be at the origin of this bias toward the preferential publication of positive results: one of them is the pressure to publish high-impact data, particularly among academics who are led to believe that their work needs to be groundbreaking to get published [3].”
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“Considering the nature of scientific research, the high percentage of publications reporting positive results is clearly not a true reflection of research results and, in some measure, it is linked to scientific misconduct and lack of reproducibility of results in science [1,2].”
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“Regarding the sharing of negative and inconclusive results, we have found that, although researchers think that negative results are valuable for the scientific field, they do not publish them because they consider it detrimental to their individual careers [5] or because it is perceived that the whole process of rese…”
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- Authors
- Echevarría, L., Malerba, A., & Arechavala-Gomeza, V.
- Affiliations
- Inserm (FR)
- Royal Holloway University of London (GB)
- Neuromuscular Disorders, Biocruces Bizkaia Health Research Institute, Barakaldo, Spain.
- Venue
- Nucleic Acid Therapeutics
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2021-06-01
- Volume
- 31
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 185-189
- ISSN
- 2159-3337 (ISSN-L)
- 2159-3345
- PMC
- PMC8215407
- OpenAlex
- W3046392261
- Cited by
- 45
- References
- 8
- Citations by year
- 2026: 4 · 2025: 11 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 6 · 2022: 12 · 2021: 1
- FWCI
- 4.71
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Nucleic Acid Therapeutics (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- HAL (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Academic Publishing and Open Access
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Publishing and Scholarly Communication
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Academic Writing and Publishing
- Keywords
- negative results, open access publishing, researcher perceptions, paywalls, RNA therapeutics, reproducibility, publication costs
- MeSH terms
- Reproducibility of Results, Access to Information, Open Access Publishing
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