FW: [HLIB-NW] PubMed Commons to be Discontinued
Glenn Hampson
Of interest
From: HLIB-NW [mailto:hlib-nw...@mailman13.u.washington.edu] On Behalf Of Patricia J. Devine
Sent: Friday, February 9, 2018 1:31 PM
To: hli...@uw.edu
Subject: [HLIB-NW] PubMed Commons to be Discontinued
FYI,
After a trial period of 4 years, NLM has decided to discontinue PubMed Commons, which was a project allowing comments on articles indexed in PubMed. Commenters had to be authors themselves of an article in PubMed. Although the comments added value, more participation was hoped for. Since only 6,000 of the 28 million article indexed in PubMed had comments, the decision has been made to discontinue the project. Read more about it in the NCBI Insights blog.
Pat
Patricia J. Devine, MLS
Outreach & Communications Coordinator
National Network of Libraries of Medicine/Pacific Northwest Region
Health Sciences Library, Box 357155
University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195
Phone: (206)543-8275 | dev...@uw.edu | http://nnlm.gov/pnr
Bryan Alexander
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Alexander Garcia Castro
Maryann Martone
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Fiore, Steve
To respond to Bryan's question, I suspect people did not participate for a number of reasons - from a lack of awareness to a lack of incentives to even concern about backlash. They need to do an assessment of why it did not work as expected. Even just a survey to all those who were "members" would be helpful. This could help us understand who did and did not choose to comment and why they chose to comment or not.
Best,
Steve
--------
Stephen M. Fiore, Ph.D.
Professor, Cognitive Sciences, Department of Philosophy (philosophy.cah.ucf.edu/staff.php?id=134)
Director, Cognitive Sciences Laboratory, Institute for Simulation & Training (http://csl.ist.ucf.edu/)
University of Central Florida
Sent: Monday, February 12, 2018 12:44 PM
To: Alexander Garcia Castro
Cc: Bryan Alexander; Glenn Hampson; The Open Scholarship Initiative
Subject: Re: [HLIB-NW] PubMed Commons to be Discontinued
Bryan Alexander
Fiore, Steve
That comment has to do with the idiosyncratic way I learned about this feature. Specifically, I found out about this commenting feature from some scholars who were helping psychology address the "replication crisis". From what I recall, this PubMed feature was viewed as important as a kind of post-publication peer review. As background, what was going on as the 'crisis' was brewing, was that some scholars were pointing out flaws in published articles even before people had tried (and failed) to replicate them. So this new PubMed feature was seen as a way for scholars who identified questions/issues in publications to discuss them in a community forum (as opposed to one's individual blogs). This was supposed to accelerate the advancement of science because people would not have to wait for studies to replicated (or not) and then peer-reviewed and then published (i.e., this cycle takes years whereas PubMed comments can happen nearly as soon as an article is published). Anyway, I recall some people saying they'd be concerned to comment on (point out flaws in) published articles because they feared repercussions from authors (who were likely going to be reviewers in their future) or from editors who might have not been pleased with people pointing out flaws. Again, this is all idiosyncratic to a small cross-section of the community. So I'm not suggesting this was the main motivator, rather just one of many. I'll also note that many such discussions are taking place on Facebook. One such group is the Psychological Methods Discussion Group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/853552931365745/). Below are a couple of examples and they range from comments on individual articles (like PubMed Commons wanted) to general issues on research methods. Note also that some are posting their own blogs on this page.
--------
Stephen M. Fiore, Ph.D.
Professor, Cognitive Sciences, Department of Philosophy (philosophy.cah.ucf.edu/staff.php?id=134)
Director, Cognitive Sciences Laboratory, Institute for Simulation & Training (http://csl.ist.ucf.edu/)
University of Central Florida
Sent: Monday, February 12, 2018 12:48 PM
To: Fiore, Steve
Cc: Maryann Martone; Alexander Garcia Castro; Glenn Hampson; The Open Scholarship Initiative