BioPharma

Amgen and biochemist Bruce Alberts have created a new online journal, looking to reveal often hidden results in biomedicine

Amgen is stepping up by creating a new journal to make sure that study publications are being confirmed and studies are replicated.

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Often times there are hidden results in biomedicical journal publications, which can lead to retractions and even fraud. This happens most often when there are no outsiders to confirm results. For that reason, Amgen Inc. and biochemist Bruce Alberts are starting a new journal, F1000Research, aimed to address this problem with an open access online source.

To kick things off, Amgen, which is seeding the publication, is demonstrating three replications of its studies in diabetes and neurodegenerative disease. The company hopes this will inspire other companies to do the same.

The journal is aiming to allow both companies and academic scientists to share their replications so that others will be less likely to waste time following up on flawed findings, Sasha Kamb said, according to Science Magazine.

Alberts, a former Science editor-in-chief and National Academy of Sciences president who is at the University of California, San Francisco, said that a lot of times this study replications and examining errors aren’t always a priority because they lack novelty. This publication provides the motivation to improve this.

The F1000Research journal will first post the raw manuscripts, then invite peer reviews that will be added with the reviewers’ names. The journal will charge author fees of $150—$1000 per paper, depending on length. Should the peer-reviewed papers be accepted, they will put on record and be indexed in PubMed.

Photo: Flickr user Angela

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