Graham Steel - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Graham Steel

There is a high demand for biodiversity observation data to inform conservation and environmental... more There is a high demand for biodiversity observation data to inform conservation and environmental policy, and citizen scientists generate the vast majority of terrestrial biodiversity observations. As this work is voluntary, many people assume that these data are openly available for use in conservation and scientific research.

A Science investigation has uncovered a smorgasbord of questionable practices including paying fo... more A Science investigation has uncovered a smorgasbord of questionable practices including paying for author’s slots on papers written by other scientists and buying papers from online brokers

Dementia is receiving increasing attention from governments and politicians. Epidemiological rese... more Dementia is receiving increasing attention from governments and politicians. Epidemiological research based on
western European populations done 20 years ago provided key initial evidence for dementia policy making, but these
estimates are now out of date because of changes in life expectancy, living conditions, and health proﬁ les. To assess
whether dementia occurrence has changed during the past 20–30 years, investigators of ﬁ ve diﬀ erent studies done in
western Europe (Sweden [Stockholm and Gothenburg], the Netherlands [Rotterdam], the UK [England], and Spain
[Zaragoza]) have compared dementia occurrence using consistent research methods between two timepoints in well-
deﬁ ned geographical areas. Findings from four of the ﬁ ve studies showed non-signiﬁ cant changes in overall dementia
occurrence. The only signiﬁ cant reduction in overall prevalence was found in the study done in the UK, powered and designed explicitly from its outset to detect change across generations (decrease in prevalence of 22%; p=0·003).
Findings from the study done in Zaragoza (Spain) showed a signiﬁ cant reduction in dementia prevalence in men
(43%; p=0·0002). The studies estimating incidence done in Stockholm and Rotterdam reported non-signiﬁ cant
reductions. Such reductions could be the outcomes from earlier population-level investments such as improved education and living conditions, and better prevention and treatment of vascular and chronic conditions. This evidence suggests that attention to optimum health early in life might beneﬁt cognitive health late in life. Policy planning and future research should be balanced across primary (policies reducing risk and increasing cognitive reserve), secondary (early detection and screening), and tertiary (once dementia is present) prevention. Each has their place, but upstream primary prevention has the largest eﬀect on reduction of later dementia occurrence and disability.

Peer review has been with humans for a long time. Its effective inception dates back to World War... more Peer review has been with humans for a long time. Its effective inception dates back to World War II resulting information overload, which imposed a quantitative and qualitative screening of publications. Peer review was beset by a number of accusations and critics largely from the biases and subjective aspects of the process including the secrecy in which the processes became standard. Advent of the Internet in the early 1990s provided a manner to open peer review up to make it more transparent, less iniquitous, and more objective. This chapter investigates whether this openness led to a more objective manner of judging scientific publications. Three sites are examined: Electronic Transactions on Artificial Intelligence (ETAI), Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (ACP), and Faculty of 1000 (F1000).

These sites practice open peer review wherein reviewers and authors and their reviews and rebuttals are available for all to see. The chapter examines the different steps taken to allow reviewers and authors to interact and how this allows for the entire community to participate. This new prepublication reviewing of papers has to some extent, alleviated the biases that were previously preponderant and, furthermore, seems to give positive results and feedback.
Although recent, experiences seem to have elicited scientists’ acceptance because openness allows for a more objective and fair judgment of research and scholarship. Yet, it will
undoubtedly lead to new questions which are examined in this chapter.

Spam has become an issue of concern in almost all areas where the Internet is involved, and many ... more Spam has become an issue of concern in almost all areas where the Internet is involved, and many people today have become victims of spam from publishers and individual journals. We studied this phenomenon in the ﬁeld of scholarly publishing from the perspective of a single author. We examined 1,024 such spam e-mails received by Marcin Kozak from publishers and journals over a period of 391 days, asking him to submit an article to their journal. We collected the following information: where the request came from; publishing model applied; fees charged; inclusion or not in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ); and presence or not in Beall’s (2014) listing of dubious journals. Our research showed that most of the publishers that sent e-mails inviting manuscripts were (i) using the open access model, (ii) using article-processing charges to fund their journal’s operations; (iii) offering very short peer-review
times, (iv) on Beall’s list, and (v) misrepresenting the
location of their headquarters. Some years ago, a letter
of invitation to submit an article to a particular journal
was considered a kind of distinction. Today, e-mails
inviting submissions are generally spam, something
that misleads young researchers and irritates experi-
enced ones.

This article discusses the emergence of magical realism as a narrative form that was embraced by ... more This article discusses the emergence of magical realism as a narrative form that was embraced by a number of South African writers in the times of transition and became increasingly attuned to express South African writing sensibility of the period. It argues that, straddling realist and postmodern narrative strands, by reconciling the realism's faithfulness to the socio-political context and the postmodern devotion to formal experimentation, syncretism and meta-fiction, magical realism simultaneously relies heavily on African oral traditions, and in doing so, it not only constitutes a point of confluence of black and white writing of the apartheid era, but it also epitomises reconciliation of Eurocentric Western rationalism and African tradition. While discussing magic realism in relation to the post-apartheid novels of André Brink and Zakes Mda, this article points towards the possible origins of the proliferation of South African texts embracing this narrative mode in the period directly following the demise of apartheid, as well as the possible reasons behind the gradual abandonment of magical realist strategy in post-millennial South African fiction. Thus, South African magical realist texts will be positioned at the intersection between literature of celebration and literature of disillusionment, emerging out of the short-lived coexistence of the two literary trends in South African literary history.

In this study, we compare the difference in the impact between open access(OA) and non-open acces... more In this study, we compare the difference in the impact between open access(OA) and non-open access (non-OA) articles. 1761 Nature Communications articles published from 1 January 2012 to 31 August 2013 are selected as our research objects, including 587 OA articles and 1174 non-OA articles. Citation data and daily updated article-level metrics data are harvested directly from the platform of nature.com. Data is analyzed from the static versus temporal-dynamic perspectives. The OA citation advantage is conﬁrmed, and the OA advantage is also applicable when extending the comparing from citation to article views and social media attention. More important, we ﬁnd that OA papers not only have the great advantage of total downloads, but also have the feature of keeping sustained and steady downloads for a long time. For article downloads, non-OA papers only have a short period of attention, when the advantage of OA papers exists for a much longer time.

The subscription prices of peer-reviewed journals have in the past not been closely related to th... more The subscription prices of peer-reviewed journals have in the past not been closely related to the scientiﬁc quality. This relationship has been further obscured by bundled e-licenses. The situation is different for Open Access (OA) journals that ﬁnance their operations via article processing charges (APCs). Due to competition and the fact that authors are often directly involved in making APC payments from their own or other limited funds, APC pricing has so far been sensitive to the quality and services offered by journals. We conducted a systematic survey of prices charged by OA journals indexed in Scopus and this revealed a moderate (0.40) correlation between the APCs and Source Normalized Impact per Paper values, a measure of citation rates. When weighted by article volumes the correlations between the quality and the price were signiﬁcantly higher (0.67). This would seem to indicate that while publishers to some extent take the quality into account when pricing their journals, authors are even more sensitive to the relationship between price and quality in their choices of where to submit their manuscripts.

Many studies have attempted to use music to influence the behavior of nonhuman animals; 20 howeve... more Many studies have attempted to use music to influence the behavior of nonhuman animals; 20 however, these studies have often led to conflicting outcomes. We have developed a theoretical 21 framework that hypothesizes that in order for music to be effective with other species, it must be 22

Many medications have anticholinergic effects. In general, anticholinergic induced cognitive imp... more Many medications have anticholinergic effects. In general, anticholinergic induced cognitive impairment is considered reversible on discontinuation of anticholinergic therapy. However, a few studies suggest that anticholinergics may be associated with an increased risk for dementia.

They’re harming researchers in low and middle income countries most, but everyone must fight back

Significance Peer review is an institution of enormous importance for the careers of scientists... more Significance

Peer review is an institution of enormous importance for the careers of scientists and the content of published science. The decisions of gatekeepers—editors and peer reviewers—legitimize scientific findings, distribute professional rewards, and influence future research. However, appropriate data to gauge the quality of gatekeeper decision-making in science has rarely been made publicly available. Our research tracks the popularity of rejected and accepted manuscripts at three elite medical journals. We found that editors and reviewers generally made good decisions regarding which manuscripts to promote and reject. However, many highly cited articles were surprisingly rejected. Our research suggests that evaluative strategies that increase the mean quality of published science may also increase the risk of rejecting unconventional or outstanding work.

The present study shows that sciatic nerve crush in 2-day-old rats causes extensor digitorum long... more The present study shows that sciatic nerve crush in 2-day-old rats causes extensor digitorum longus (EDL) muscle atrophy and motor neuron loss and that treatment with glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) promotes muscle reinnervation, motor neuron survival, and markedly increases insulinlike growth factor-I (IGF-I) content in the denervated muscles. EDL muscle denervation-induced atrophy in saline-treated rats is progressive and reaches the greatest extent at 42 days after birth, which correlates with reduced EDL weight growth. There is also a partial reinnervation as shown by the number of reinnervated EDL muscle fibers (65.4% of control) and by the poor restoration of the indirect isometric twitch tension (62% of control) that is further reduced under tetanic stimulation (34% of control). The number of surviving motor neurons that innervate EDL muscle drops from 55 ؎ 3 to 29 ؎ 8. In GAGs-treated 42-day-old rats, the effects of neonatal nerve lesioning on EDL muscle atrophy and denervation are successfully reversed, and the isometric twitch tension and the capacity to hold tetanic stimulation are restored to almost control levels. The number of surviving EDL motor neurons is also increased to 43 ؎ 4. Treatment with GAGs selectively affects IGF-I content in denervated hindlimb muscles, which is augmented from 7.02 ؎ 0.71 ng/mg tissue to 25.72 ؎ 0.7 in the EDL and from 3.2 ؎ 0.18 to a robust 211 ؎ 9.6 in the soleus. J. Neurosci. Res. 55:496-503, 1999.

The study on wobbler mouse has shown that the combined treatment with low doses of glycosaminogly... more The study on wobbler mouse has shown that the combined
treatment with low doses of glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) and
insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I) fully prevented motor neu-
rone death and forelimb impairment up to 9–12 weeks of a
mouse’s life. The effect was accompanied by the prevention of
the early hypertrophy of wobbler neurones, an effect likely due
to the promotion of neuronal survival. At the 18th week,
wobbler mice treated with IGF-I + GAGs still showed signiﬁ-
cantly improved forelimb function, reduced muscle atrophy
and a higher number of cervical motor neurones. IGF-I alone
and GAGs alone were active up to the 3rd week of treatment;
thereafter the beneﬁcial effects of single treatments
decreased drastically. GAGs and IGF-I treatments also affected IGF-I plasma and muscle levels. In wobbler mice
there was a progressive reduction in IGF-I plasma levels that
was prevented by IGF-I or GAGs alone and greatly increased,
even above heterozygote levels, by the combination treat-
ment. Such a powerful increase was correlated by a small
enhancement in insulin-like growth factor binding protein-3
(IGFBP-3) plasma levels, while treatment with IGF-I alone
affected very signiﬁcantly both IGFBP-1 and IGFBP-3.
Co-treatment also prevented the decrease in IGF-I content
observed in vehicle-treated wobbler mice forelimb muscles.

Increasingly, academics have to demonstrate that their research has academic impact. Universities... more Increasingly, academics have to demonstrate that their research has academic impact. Universities normally use journal rankings and journal impact factors to assess the research impact of individual academics. More recently, citation counts for individual articles and the h-index have
also been used to measure the academic impact of academics. There are, however, several serious problems with relying on journal rankings, journal impact factors and citation counts. For example, articles without any impact may be published in highly ranked journals or journals with
high impact factor, whereas articles with high impact could be published in lower ranked journals or journals with low impact factor. Citation counts can also be easily gamed and manipulated, and the h-index disadvantages early career academics. This paper discusses these and several other problems and suggests alternatives such as post-publication
peer review and open-access journals.

Therapy' is a legal concept of considerable import, traditionally juxtaposed with, but separate f... more Therapy' is a legal concept of considerable import, traditionally juxtaposed with, but separate from, research and also, to some degree, marking the boundaries of legitimate medical intervention. The recent case of Simms highlighted these issues, in addition to which novel clinical interventions were the subject of specific recommendations in the Bristol Royal Infirmary Inquiry Report. This article subjects the notion of therapy to analytical scrutiny and considers the extent of proper clinician discretion to innovate and, albeit much more superficially, how medicine should itself evolve. It advocates a new, more (patient) protective model which should generate confidence in the ethical character of contemporary innovatory practices.

Source http://www.orphan-drugs.org/2014/09/05/top-10-researched-rare-diseases/

They’re harming researchers in low and middle income countries most, but everyone must fight back

Significance Peer review is an institution of enormous importance for the careers of scientists... more Significance

Source http://www.orphan-drugs.org/2014/09/05/top-10-researched-rare-diseases/