ArticleeLife2016
Priority of discovery in the life sciences.
Article in eLife, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed.
- Preprint policies across journals and publishers in ecology and evolutionary biology.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- A guide to preprinting for early-career researchers.Biology open · 2022Article
- Seven steps to enhance Open Science practices in animal science.PNAS nexus · 2022Article
- High-Impact Clinical Studies That Fomented New Developments in Anesthesia: History of Achievements, 1966-2015.Drug design, development and therapy · 2021Review
- Open collaborative writing with Manubot.PLoS computational biology · 2019Article
- Competition for novelty reduces information sampling in a research game-a registered report.Royal Society open science · 2019Article
- A proposal for the future of scientific publishing in the life sciences.PLoS biology · 2019Article
- Prepublication disclosure of scientific results: Norms, competition, and commercial orientation.Science advances · 2018Article
- Preprinting Microbiology.mBio · 2017Article
- Ten simple rules to consider regarding preprint submission.PLoS computational biology · 2017Article
- Preprint Déjà Vu.The EMBO journal · 2016Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The job of a scientist is to make a discovery and then communicate this new knowledge to others. For a scientist to be successful, he or she needs to be able to claim credit or priority for discoveries throughout their career. However, despite being fundamental to the reward system of science, the principles for establishing the "priority of discovery" are rarely discussed. Here we break down priority into two steps: disclosure, in which the discovery is released to the world-wide community; and validation, in which other scientists assess the accuracy, quality and importance of the work. Currently, in biology, disclosure and an initial validation are combined in a journal publication. Here, we discuss the advantages of separating these steps into disclosure via a preprint, and validation via a combination of peer review at a journal and additional evaluation by the wider scientific community.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.