Open access and predatory publishing: a survey of the publishing practices of academic pharmacists and nurses in the United States

Objective:Academics are under great pressure to publish their research, the rewards for which are well known (tenure, promotion, grant funding, professional prestige). As open access publishing gains acceptance as a publishing option, researchers may choose a “predatory publisher.” The purpose of this study is to investigate the motivations and rationale of pharmacy and nursing academics in the United States to publish in open access journals that may be considered “predatory.”Methods:A 26-item questionnaire was programmed in Qualtrics and distributed electronically to approximately 4,500 academic pharmacists and nurses, 347 of whom completed questionnaires (~8%). Pairwise correlations were performed followed by a logistic regression to evaluate statistical associations between participant characteristics and whether participants had ever paid an article processing fee (APF).Results:Participants who had published more articles, were more familiar with predatory publishing, and who were more concerned about research metrics and tenure were more likely to have published in open access journals. Moderate to high institutional research intensity has an impact on the likelihood of publishing open access. The majority of participants who acknowledged they had published in a predatory journal took no action after realizing the journal was predatory and reported no negative impact on their career for having done so.ConclusionThe results of this study provide data and insight into publication decisions made by pharmacy and nursing academics. Gaining a better understanding of who publishes in predatory journals and why can help address the problems associated with predatory publishing at the root.     

A Simulation Study Evaluating the Generalized Additive Model for Assessing Intervention Effects with Small Samples

Single subject (SS) designs are popular in educational and psychological research. There exist several statistical techniques designed to analyze such data and to address the question of whether an intervention has the desired impact. Recently, researchers have suggested that generalized additive models (GAMs) might be useful for modeling nonlinear effects that are common with SS designs. This study sought to extend the use of GAM from SS to a research design in which individuals may be placed in separate groups and receive different interventions. Results of the simulation study found that using a mixed model form of GAM (GAMM) resulted in higher power for detecting actual effects in the population than was true for either GAM or a Bayesian GAM estimator. Thus, GAMMs are recommended for use with SS designs when interventions are expected to induce nonlinear relationships between time and the outcome variable and individuals receive different treatments.     

Estimation of Item Response Theory Parameters in the Presence of Missing Data

Missing data are a common problem in a variety of measurement settings, including responses to items on both cognitive and affective assessments. Researchers have shown that such missing data may create problems in the estimation of item difficulty parameters in the Item Response Theory (IRT) context, particularly if they are ignored. At the same time, a number of data imputation methods have been developed outside of the IRT framework and been shown to be effective tools for dealing with missing data. The current study takes several of these methods that have been found to be useful in other contexts and investigates their performance with IRT data that contain missing values. Through a simulation study, it is shown that these methods exhibit varying degrees of effectiveness in terms of imputing data that in turn produce accurate sample estimates of item difficulty and discrimination parameters.     

The "Revolution in chemistry and physics." Overthrow of a reigning paradigm or competition between contemporary research programs?

Recent revisionist interpretations of the chemical revolution have left intact the core of the traditional view that its central feature was the overthow of the phlogiston theory by the oxygen theory of combustion of Antoine Lavoisier. The central confrontation has been seen as that between the adherents of the chemical system that Lavoisier built around his theory and the form of the phlogiston theory defended by Joseph Priestley. This essay contends that Priestley's use of phlogiston was so loosely connected with the older phlogiston theories descended from that of Georg Ernst Stahl that the events at the heart of the chemical revolution should be viewed more as a competition between two rival new research programs than as the replacement of a reigning paradigm.     

A Family Focused Intervention Influences Hippocampal-Prefrontal Connectivity Through Gains in Self-Regulation

The stressors associated with poverty increase the risks for externalizing psychopathology; however, specific patterns of neurobiology and higher self-regulation may buffer against these effects. This study leveraged a randomized control trial, aimed at increasing self-regulation at ~11 years of age. As adults, these same individuals completed functional MRI scanning (M_age = 24.88 years; intervention n = 44; control n = 49). Functional connectivity between the hippocampus and ventromedial prefrontal cortex was examined in relation to the intervention, gains in self-regulation, and present-day externalizing symptoms. Increased connectivity between these brain areas was noted in the intervention group compared to controls. Furthermore, individual gains in self-regulation, instilled by the intervention, statistically explained this brain difference. These results begin to connect neurobiological and psychosocial markers of risk and resiliency.     

Combining exploratory learning with structured practice educational technologies to foster both conceptual and procedural fractions knowledge

Educational technology research and development - Educational technologies in mathematics typically focus on fostering either procedural knowledge by means of structured tasks or, less often,...