Newsletter / Bulletin

Plagiarism detection software

References and citation management

• EndNote: a software for managing references
• Mendeley: a citation management tool to collect, organize and use citations
• Zotero: a free, easy-to-use tool to collect, organize, cite and share research sources

Database and data-mining software

• NCBI: provides access to biomedical and genomic information and tools
• PubMed: a free search engine for more than 28 millions citations for scientific literature
• Scopus: a database that covers scientific, engineering, technical, medical, social sciences, arts and humanities fields
• Web of Science: one of the largest multidisciplinary index covering sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities
• Engineering Village: a research database for engineering literature
• IEEE Xplore: full text access to highly cited publications in electrical engineering, computer science and electronics.

Statistical Analyses

• Data Analytics Consulting Centre: free advisory service to all NUS researchers to discuss matters of a statistical nature
• SPSS: a software package for interactive or batched statistical analysis. Charges for installation may apply.
  
• The Interactive Statistical Pages: an ongoing effort to develop and disseminate statistical analysis software by volunteers

Reading Materials

• Replication challenges
  The ability to test validity by replicating experiments and comparing results is a cornerstone of science.

• Reproducibility and Replicability in Science
  When a scientific effort fails to independently confirm the computations or results of a previous study, some fear that it may be a symptom of a lack of rigor in science, while others argue that such an observed inconsistency can be an important precursor to new discovery.

• Keeping a clean research environment: Addressing research misconduct and improving scientific integrity in China
  Governments and academic communities worldwide have made enormous efforts to clamp down on scientific misconduct and improve research environments and scientific integrity.

• The top 10 Asia Pacific countries in science for 2018
  Singapore and New Zealand might have a fraction of the population of China and Japan, but they are right up there with the best of them in high-quality research output.

• Reducing bias: accounting for the order of co–first authors
  The JCI is now requiring an explanation for how the first-author position is determined when shared among contributing authors. 

• Figure errors, sloppy science, and fraud: keeping eyes on your data
  At the JCI, we have introduced several data screening checks for manuscripts prior to acceptance in an attempt to reduce the number of post-publication corrections and retractions, with the ultimate goal of increasing confidence in the papers we publish.

• Forensics Friday: What would you do if you were the reviewer?
  Retraction Watch has been running a series of 'Forensics Friday'  which feature imagery manipulation examples on which one can test one's knowledge. 

• Is academic integrity obsolete in the 21st century?
  Academic integrity goes beyond plagiarizing homework, especially in the digital age.

• Research integrity is much more than misconduct
  All researchers should strive to improve the quality, relevance and reliability of their work.

• Make reports of research misconduct public
  Confronted with bad behaviour, institutions will keep asking the wrong questions until they have to show their working, says C. K. Gunsalus.

• Avoiding Predatory Journals and Questionable Conferences: A Resource Guide
  The goal of this guide is to provide a clear overview of the topics of predatory journals and questionable conferences and advice on how to avoid them.

• Scientific misconduct and accountability in teams
  Increasing complexity and multidisciplinarity make collaboration essential for modern science. This, however, raises the question of how to assign accountability for scientific misconduct among larger teams of authors.

• A Survey on Data Reproducibility and the Effect of Publication Process on the Ethical Reporting of Laboratory Research
  The successful translation of laboratory research into effective therapies is dependent upon the validity of peer-reviewed publications. However, several publications in recent years suggested that published scientific findings could be reproduced only 11% to 45% of the time.

• Impact Factors: Payment by results
  A number of countries and institutions are now rewarding researchers based directly on the journals in which they publish, fuelling fears that academia’s unhealthy obsession with publication metrics is worsening.

• Ten simple rules towards healthier research labs
  These rules are directed towards existing and future principal investigators (PIs) but will be of interest to anyone working in a research lab and/or dealing with how to improve working conditions for scientists.

• Case Reports of Pre-clinical Replication Studies in Metabolism and Diabetes
  Presenting several case reports, we highlight examples with common underlying issues from Novo Nordisk’s experience: animal model variability, reagent quality, and inter-lab variability. We discuss means to prevent these issues and argue for increased collaborative work and transparent manuscript revision procedures.

• Most UK scientists who publish extremely highly-cited papers do not secure funding from major public and charity funders: A descriptive analysis
  The UK is one of the largest funders of health research in the world, but little is known about how health funding is spent. Our study explores whether major UK public and charitable health research funders support the research of UK-based scientists producing the most highly-cited research.

• Austrian agency shows how to tackle scientific misconduct
  A decade on from a major academic scandal, officials there have got their act together.

• Reboot undergraduate courses for reproducibility 
  Collaboration across institutes can train students in open, team science, which better prepares them for challenges to come, says Katherine Button

• Thousands of scientists publish a paper every five days 
  To highlight uncertain norms in authorship, John P. A. Ioannidis, Richard Klavans and Kevin W. Boyack identified the most prolific scientists of recent years.

• Reproducibility: let’s get it right from the start 
  Nature Communications will be setting a higher standard of data reporting for papers under peer review. We believe that sharing raw data at an early stage with editors and reviewers is the best way to build confidence in the reproducibility of your findings.

• Social science studies get a ‘generous’ test
  Replication studies in the social sciences.

• No more excuses for non-reproducible methods
  Online technologies make it easy to share precise experimental protocols — and doing so is essential to modern science, says Lenny Teytelman.

• How to grow a healthy lab
  In this special issue, Nature explores how the working environment shapes research quality and morale — and what can be done to strengthen the research enterprise.

• Editorial: Rethinking the Failure to Replicate
  A journal's opinion on "Failure to replicate".