Score: 28.3, Published: 2024-02-04
DOI: 10.1101/2024.02.01.578440
BackgroundReviewers rarely comment on the same aspects of a manuscript, making it difficult to properly assess manuscripts quality and the quality of the peer review process. It was the goal of this pilot study to evaluate structured peer review implementation by: 1) exploring if and how reviewers answered structured peer review questions, 2) analysing reviewer agreement, 3) comparing that agreement to agreement before implementation of structured peer review, and 4) further enhancing the piloted set of structured peer review questions. MethodsStructured peer review consisting of 9 questions was piloted in August 2022 in 220 Elsevier journals. We randomly selected 10% of these journals across all fields and IF quartiles and included manuscripts that in the first 2 months of the pilot received 2 reviewer reports, leaving us with 107 manuscripts belonging to 23 journals. Eight questions had open ended fields, while the ninth question (on language editing) had only a yes/no option. Reviews could also leave Comments-to-Author and Comments-to-Editor. Answers were qualitatively analysed by two raters independently. ResultsAlmost all reviewers (n=196, 92%) filled out the answers to all questions even though these questions were not mandatory in the system. The longest answer (Md 27 words, IQR 11 to 68) was for reporting methods with sufficient details for replicability or reproducibility. Reviewers had highest (partial) agreement (of 72%) for assessing the flow and structure of the manuscript, and lowest (of 53%) for assessing if interpretation of results are supported by data, and for assessing if statistical analyses were appropriate and reported in sufficient detail (also 52%). Two thirds of reviewers (n=145, 68%) filled out the Comments-to-Author section, of which 105 (49%) resembled traditional peer review reports. Such reports contained a Md of 4 (IQR 3 to 5) topics covered by the structured questions. Absolute agreement regarding final recommendations (exact match of recommendation choice) was 41%, which was higher than what those journals had in the period of 2019 to 2021 (31% agreement, P=0.0275). ConclusionsOur preliminary results indicate that reviewers adapted to the new format of review successfully, and answered more topics than they covered in their traditional reports. Individual question analysis indicated highest disagreement regarding interpretation of results and conducting and reporting of statistical analyses. While structured peer review did lead to improvement in reviewer final recommendation agreements, this was not a randomized trial, and further studies should be done to corroborate this. Further research is also needed to determine if structured peer review leads to greater knowledge transfer or better improvement of manuscripts.
Score: 7.0, Published: 2024-02-13
DOI: 10.1101/2023.06.13.544882
Sex differences exist in the risk of developing both type 1 and type 2 diabetes, and in the risk of developing diabetes-associated complications. Sex differences in glucose homeostasis, islet and {beta} cell biology, and peripheral insulin sensitivity have also been reported in multiple animals. To determine the degree to which biological sex has been addressed in published literature related to diabetes and insulin biology, we developed a scoring system to assess the inclusion of biological sex in papers related to these topics. We scored manuscripts published in Diabetes, published by the American Diabetes Association, as this journal focuses on diabetes and diabetes-related research. We scored papers published across three years within a 20-year period (1999, 2009, 2019), a timeframe that spans the introduction of funding agency and journal policies to improve the consideration of biological sex as a variable. Our analysis shows fewer than 15% of papers used sex-based analysis in even one figure across all study years, a trend that was reproduced across journal-defined categories of diabetes research (e.g., islet studies, signal transduction). Single-sex studies accounted for approximately 40% of all manuscripts, of which >87% used male subjects only. While we observed a modest increase in the overall inclusion of sex as a biological variable during our study period, our results highlight significant opportunities to improve consideration of sex as a biological variable in diabetes research. In particular, we show that journal policies represent one way to promote better consideration of biological sex as a variable. In the long term, improved practices will reveal sex-specific mechanisms underlying diabetes risk and complications, generating insights to support the development of sex-informed prevention and treatment strategies.
Score: 1.2, Published: 2024-02-16
DOI: 10.1101/2024.02.13.580073
Practical approaches have become a standard in many scientific disciplines, including population genetics. By analyzing properly selected datasets, the students can calculate parameters and draw conclusions about genetic diversity, differentiation and evolution of populations with higher efficiency than if based exclusively on theoretical lessons. However, preparing the appropriate datasets is a hard task and a wrong selection can spoil a well-aimed practice. Here we present SIMHYB 2, a software tool specifically intended to ease the full understanding of evolutionary forces by the students and to help the teacher to prepare adequate datasets and examples for the practices. It simulates the course of a mixed population under user-defined reproductive and evolutionary conditions. Outputs can be easily adapted for downstream analysis with other popular tools as GENALEX or STRUCTURE. Thus, SIMHYB 2 is very suitable for project-based-learning approaches: students can produce their own datasets in different scenarios of genetic drift, migration, selective advantage, reproductive success, etc. Additionally, SIMHYB 2 is the only simulation software available to date providing traceable pedigrees of individuals, being therefore very convenient for preparing datasets for parentage analysis, spatial genetic structure or conservation genetics study cases. Satisfactory results from its ongoing utilization in higher education and research are reported.