{"id":1476,"date":"2017-10-08T19:17:57","date_gmt":"2017-10-09T00:17:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewkiang.com\/?p=1476"},"modified":"2021-01-11T10:30:37","modified_gmt":"2021-01-11T15:30:37","slug":"using-r-wikipedia-sherparomeo-show-new-england-journal-medicines-pre-print-statement-empirically-false","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewkiangcom.local\/2017\/10\/08\/using-r-wikipedia-sherparomeo-show-new-england-journal-medicines-pre-print-statement-empirically-false\/","title":{"rendered":"Using R, Wikipedia, and SHERPA\/RoMEO to show New England Journal of Medicine<\/i>‘s pre-print statement is empirically false"},"content":{"rendered":"O<\/span>ne of the most fundamental aspects of collaborative research is sharing your work with others through pre-print or conference presentations. This isn’t likely to be news to anybody doing collaborative research these days, and many journals have become increasingly permissive with their pre-print policy. For example,\u00a0Nature<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>released an editorial making it clear, “Nature<\/em> never wishes to stand in the way of communication between researchers.[…] Communication between researchers includes not only conferences but also preprint servers. The ArXiv preprint server is the medium of choice for (mainly) physicists and astronomers who wish to share drafts of their papers with their colleagues, and with anyone else with sufficient time and knowledge to navigate it. […] If scientists wish to display drafts of their research papers on an established preprint server before or during submission to Nature<\/em> or any Nature<\/em> journal, that’s fine by us.”1<\/a><\/sup> Other prestigious journals have similar policies\u2014for example, The Lancet<\/em>, Science<\/em>, PNAS<\/em>, and BMJ<\/em>. (The list goes on<\/a> and on.)<\/p>\n

One such journal does<\/del> did not. New England Journal of Medicine (Figure 1).<\/p>\n

UPDATE: Since this post, NEJM has changed their position and pre-prints are allowed. <\/div>\n

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Figure 1: NEJM’s Pre-print policy. Accessed 9\/6\/2017.<\/p><\/div>\n

At the end of their statement, NEJM<\/em> seeks to comfort authors by assuring them that, “Most medical journals have similar [no pre-print] rules in place”.<\/p>\n

Using R<\/code>, Wikipedia’s List of Medical Journals<\/a>, and the SHERPA\/RoMEO<\/a> database, we can empirically show this statement to be false.<\/p>\n

Defining “most”<\/h3>\n

Merriam-Webster<\/a> defines the word “most” as:<\/p>\n

2 :<\/strong>the majority of<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Defining the problem<\/h3>\n

Using the M-W definition, we’re going to show that “the majority of” medical journals do\u00a0not<\/strong> have the same strict no-pre-print policy. That is, given a comprehensive list of medical journals, the majority of them will have more lenient pre-print policies than NEJM<\/em>.<\/p>\n

We will operationalize this with the SHERPA\/RoMEO categorization:<\/p>\n