Introduction: Go for Green® (G4G) is an evidence-based, multi-component nutrition program for military dining facilities (DFAC) to improve nutritional fitness among Service Members. The program evolved from supporting "fueling" during initial Army training into a robust intervention across all U.S.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: The aim was to develop, refine and assess the usefulness of the Go for Green (G4G) 2.0 Program Fidelity Assessment (PFA) tool. G4G 2.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOpen peer review (OPR), as with other elements of open science and open research, is on the rise. It aims to bring greater transparency and participation to formal and informal peer review processes. But what is meant by `open peer review', and what advantages and disadvantages does it have over standard forms of review? How do authors or reviewers approach OPR? And what pitfalls and opportunities should you look out for? Here, we propose ten considerations for OPR, drawing on discussions with authors, reviewers, editors, publishers and librarians, and provide a pragmatic, hands-on introduction to these issues.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn May 2016, we launched , an international, open access journal with fully open peer review (reviewers are identified on their reports and named reports are published alongside the article) to provide a home for research on research and publication ethics, research reporting, and research on peer review. As the journal enters its third year, we reflect on recent events and highlights for the journal and explore how the journal is faring in terms of gender and diversity in peer review. We also share the particular interests of our Editors-in-Chief regarding models of peer review, reporting quality, common research integrity issues that arise during the publishing process, and how people interact with the published literature.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: To assess why articles are retracted from BioMed Central journals, whether retraction notices adhered to the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines, and are becoming more frequent as a proportion of published articles.
Design/setting: Retrospective cross-sectional analysis of 134 retractions from January 2000 to December 2015.
Results: 134 retraction notices were published during this timeframe.
Objectives: To assess whether reports from reviewers recommended by authors show a bias in quality and recommendation for editorial decision, compared with reviewers suggested by other parties, and whether reviewer reports for journals operating on open or single-blind peer review models differ with regard to report quality and reviewer recommendations.
Design: Retrospective analysis of the quality of reviewer reports using an established Review Quality Instrument, and analysis of reviewer recommendations and author satisfaction surveys.
Setting: BioMed Central biology and medical journals.
BMC Pharmacol Toxicol
September 2014
BMC Pharmacology and Toxicology was created from the merger of two journals within the BMC series published by BioMed Central: BMC Pharmacology and BMC Clinical Pharmacology. BMC Pharmacology operated anonymous peer review whereas BMC Clinical Pharmacology operated a fully open peer review policy where the identity of the reviewers was known to the editors, authors and readers. The merged journal also adopted a fully open peer review policy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAfter publication of this article (Fernandez et al., BMC Genomics 2011, 12:604) it was brought to the Editors' attention that the data generated by the first author, Ariel Fernandez, seemed anomalous. One of the author's institutions found that the data were not reproducible from the described methods, but an investigation by the author's other institution did not find the data or their interpretation suspicious.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBMC Sports Sci Med Rehabil
March 2013
This Editorial celebrates the launch of BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation within the BMC series of journals published by BioMed Central. BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation incorporates the recently closed Sports Medicine, Arthroscopy, Rehabilitation, Therapy & Technology (SMARTT) with an expanded scope and Editorial Board. BMC Sports Science, Medicine and Rehabilitation will fill its own niche in the BMC series alongside other companion journals including BMC Physiology, BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders and BMC Surgery.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBMC Pharmacol Toxicol
August 2012
This editorial celebrates the launch of BMC Pharmacology and Toxicology within the BMC series of journals published by BioMed Central. The scope of the journal is interdisciplinary encompassing toxicology, experimental and clinical pharmacology including clinical trials. In this editorial we discuss the origins of this new journal and the ethos and policies under which it will operate.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis Editorial highlights recent changes to the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature and the implications these changes have for electronic journals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlkaptonuria is a rare, autosomal recessive disorder of tyrosine degradation due to deficiency of the third enzyme in the catabolic pathway. As a result, homogentisic acid (HGA) accumulates and is excreted in gram quantities in the urine, which turns dark upon alkalization. The first symptoms, occurring in early adulthood, involve a painful, progressively debilitating arthritis of the spine and large joints.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis editorial celebrates the re-launch of PMC Biophysics previously published by PhysMath Central, in its new format as BMC Biophysics published by BioMed Central with an expanded scope and Editorial Board. BMC Biophysics will fill its own niche in the BMC series alongside complementary companion journals including BMC Bioinformatics, BMC Medical Physics, BMC Structural Biology and BMC Systems Biology.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn a number of land plants, Golden2-like (GLK) genes encode a pair of partially redundant nuclear transcription factors that are required for the expression of nuclear photosynthetic genes and for chloroplast development. As chloroplast biogenesis depends on close co-operation between the nuclear and plastid compartments, GLK gene function must be dependent on tight intracellular control. However, the extent to which GLK-mediated chloroplast development depends on intercellular communication is not known.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLand plant chloroplasts evolved from those found in the green algae. During land plant evolution, nuclear regulatory mechanisms have been modified to produce morphologically and functionally diverse chloroplasts in distinct developmental contexts. At least some of these mechanisms evolved independently in different plant lineages.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVascular plants evolved in the Middle to Late Silurian period, about 420 million years ago. The fossil record indicates that these primitive plants had branched stems with sporangia but no leaves. Leaf-like lateral outgrowths subsequently evolved on at least two independent occasions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChloroplast trnL-F sequence data, nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) sequence data, and morphology were used to analyze phylogenetic relationships among members of the subtribe Strobilanthinae. Parsimony and maximum likelihood analyses of trnL-F indicate that the Strobilanthinae are a monophyletic group. While parsimony analysis of ITS recovers a nonmonophyletic subtribe, maximum likelihood analysis of ITS corroborates results from trnL-F and suggests that systematic error is impacting on ITS parsimony analysis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF