Sometimes you're the scooper, and sometimes you get scooped: How to turn both into something good

Jin-Soo Kim; Jacob E Corn

doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.2006843

Sometimes you're the scooper, and sometimes you get scooped: How to turn both into something good

PLoS Biol. 2018 Jul 16;16(7):e2006843. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.2006843. eCollection 2018 Jul.

Authors

Jin-Soo Kim^{1

2}, Jacob E Corn^{3

4}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
² Center for Genome Engineering, Institute for Basic Science, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
³ Innovative Genomics Institute, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, California, United States of America.
⁴ Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, California, United States of America.

Abstract

Fast-moving, competitive fields often inadvertently duplicate research. In a research environment that values being first over being robust, this results in one manuscript "scooping" ongoing research from other groups. Opportunities to demonstrate the solidity of a result through coincidental reproduction are thus lost. Here, two group leaders, one the scooper and one the scoopee, discuss their experiences under PLOS Biology's new "complementary research" policy. In this case, submission of the second article followed publication of the first by mere days. Scooper and scoopee discuss how complementary research is good for everyone by expanding the scientific reach of studies that are overlapping but not identical, demonstrating the robustness of related results, increasing readership for both authors, and making "replication" studies cost effective by creatively using resources that have already been spent.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Periodicals as Topic
Publishing*
Reproducibility of Results

Grants and funding

Li Ka Shing Foundation (no grant number). Received by JEC. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Heritage Medical Research Institute (no grant number). Received by JEC. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. National Institutes of Health (grant number DP2-HL-141006). Received by JEC. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Institute for Basic Science (grant number IBS-R021-D1). Received by JSK. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.