Interview with Dr Sylvia Ortega

We have interviewed last week Dr. Sylvia Ortega Martinez, a passionate Spanish neuroscientist.

She got her international PhD in Neuroscience at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (July 2013). Her research interest is the role of the new neuron formation in a specific brain area (known as Adult Hippocampal Neurogenesis (AHN)), as a key target in neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric diseases. Indeed, her research experience in six different countries (Spain, USA, Germany, UK, France and Finland) and top institutions (Instituto Cajal, Washington University, Leibniz Institute for Age Research, Oxford University, Universite of Bourgogne, Turku Centre of Biotechnology and The University of Chicago) were focused on this brain process. From July 2017, she is working at The University of Chicago as a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Dr. Sisodia. Her current project aims to elucidate the role of microglia in Alzheimer´s disease through its influence in AHN.

In addition, Dr. Ortega-Martinez is an enthusiastic of science divulgation. Indeed, she has participated in Clubes de Ciencia, Soapbox Science, and has given multiple interviews in newspapers or radio. She is grateful for the opportunity ARJ is given her to talk about science.

ARJ: Could you please do a brief introduction of your research?

Currently my project pursue to elucidate the role of microglia in Familiar early onset Alzheimer´s disease. Specifically, I am interested to understand how microglia affects the new neuron formation in the brain, or neurogenesis, in Alzheimer´s conditions. We already known that mice with specific mutations of Alzheimer´s disease shown lower neurogenesis compared with control mice, after environmental enrichment conditions. We are trying to understand now if microglia has an underlying role in this final output. This research could have a potential future impact in Alzheimer´s disease understanding.

Interview with Prof. Víctor Puntes

Prof. Víctor F. Puntes obtained his PhD in Physics from the Universitat de Barcelona (UB) in 1998, working with Prof. Xavier Batlle and Prof. Amilcar Labarta in Giant magnetoresistance in granular alloys. He had previously done his undergraduate studies in Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, at the Université Louis Pasteur Strasbourg, France, and at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Spain.

After his PhD he spent more than 3 years at the University of California – Berkeley (UCB) and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), USA, in the groups of Prof. Paul Alivisatos and Prof. Kannan Krishnan, working on the synthesis and control of nanostructures. In 2003 he returned to Catalonia with a Ramón y Cajal research position at the UB, and in 2005 obtained an ICREA Professorship at the then Catalan Institute of Nanotechnology (ICN – now ICN2) in Barcelona, Spain, to create the Inorganic Nanoparticles Group, which he leads today. 

To June 2013, he has 108 peer-reviewed publications (97 indexed) with more than 4,500 citations. He is also well-known for his work in science dissemination among the general public and developments towards industrial and commercial applications, as well as for his enterprises linking science and art. 

ARJ: Could you please do a brief introduction of your research? 

Oh! I would say that I study the energy and mass transfer between small aggregates of inorganic atoms, i.e., nanocrystals. This includes their synthesis and evolution during use, or full life cycle, indeed. In particular, we aim to design the chemical (catalytic, reactivity) and physical (optical, magnetic) properties by modifying the morphology of inorganic nanocrystals. Then use them to monitor and manipulate biological states.

ARJ: What do you think of publishing negative results? How can they improve our actual scientific methods? 

Recently I was looking at the statistics published in Science by A. Franco et al. (http://www.sciencemagazinedigital.org/sciencemagazine/29_august_2014?folio=992#pg16) and again is amazing how many works go unpublished. The reason for this is probably evolutionary. Regarding hypothesis, a good result verifies it and a bad one, who knows; maybe we forgot something in the experiment. Is the answer negative or is the question incorrect?

Also I suspect that the equilibrium between cooperation and competition has been shifted towards competition, therefore, not making public what does not work gives you a competitive advantage (others may be stuck in the same errors where you were). From the point of view of knowledge consolidation, this twist helps in a delayed way to sediment knowledge and sends it to the textbooks. From the point of view of efficiency (public money spending and societal needs), it is a criminal disaster.

Probably, the idea is not to have positive and negative result, but go beyond, like the All Results Journals. It is about being smarter than we are (probably a little evolutionary push is needed here), and that we decide to learn from any question we make to nature. Intrinsically, all the results are good, since there is a question addressed to a system (virtual or material) and because of this interaction an answer is generated. We have to be smart enough to learn from all answers, not only those that convey our interests or prejudices. We have to be smart enough to advance with all obtained results and not just a few of them.

ARJ: How does the publication of negative results benefit the scientific community? 

Clearly, avoiding using more resources to find the same answers. Overuse of resources today is a serious threat to mankind, and sometimes there are sentient beings involved, so unless that we do not use All the Results we obtain for progress, we are delaying it and we are morally creditable. Not making public all the results in an accessible manner is against common sense and development.

ARJ: Are researchers used to publishing negative results? What are the reasons, from your point of view, that negative results are usually not reported (or published)? 

It is more difficult. We are not that smart. Of course, it is not a question of publishing a scientific work saying that you do not know what you did and you do not understand what you got. It is a question of using all the results, all the experiments, all the questions and all the answers to build knowledge in a cooperative way to exceed our limited individual capacities.

ARJ: What is the impact of not publishing negative results in your field and clinical research? Can it be influenced by the editors of the journal? 

I have seen a few thousand scientists keeping alive a sterile field just because they were all involved and they had to make their living and publish their papers and go on with their conferences. This happens more often than one may think and it may last for 10 to 20 years before time wipes it out. This is facilitated by the fact that nobody was reporting that the involved techniques are giving much more negative than positive results, but the first were ignored. I can imagine things related to AFM or DLS also. Besides, too many times editors just run a business, and as we know, in this late capitalism, for many, profit has overtaken over prestige with all the consequences. However, as much as not everyone with a white coat working in a laboratory or in an academic department is a scientist, not all the people working on the editing, production, distribution and commercialization of scientific and technical contents is an editor. Editors are nice, editors, as the midwife, help birth (as far as we share common objectives).

ARJ: Is there a way that to overcome the tendency for negative results to be viewed as being less useful than positive results? 

Well, as I said before, this categorization in negative and positive results is naïf and comfortable. There not should be any experiment in the laboratory, which is designed in such a way that the result can be useless. Searching such a predetermined target impedes you to observe the answers of the piece of nature that you are evaluating is not science, but rather sophisticated gambling. To overcome this requires a little change in the mind of many laboratory workers. The All Results is a good initiative, and the principles of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) also supports a more responsible research were any answer or its absence should be used to built knowledge. Be smart, basically.

ARJ: How do you normally manage negative results on your lab? 

I tell the students that there is not such a thing as a failed experiment. Even if by mistake you put ten times more surfactant and precursor solubility increases and crystallization of the nanoparticle is avoided, it is a point in the curve of solubility and stability of the present chemical species. This point is very useful in the map. If you inject nanoparticles coated with proteins and the number of antibodies against it does not increase, you should check your experimental model or your concepts on immunity, since they should explain why there is no apparent response to such external invasion. And so on. The only failed experiment is when you do not know what sample you put in the microscope or which reagents did you used, and these uncertainties should of course be avoided with a little professionalism and good laboratory praxis.

ARJ: We're proud to be the first TOTAL Open Access publishers (no fee to authors or readers to publish or download). What do you think are the biggest advantages of Open Access? 

Well, first I have to think that Open Access has advantages. And yes, I think it has, enormously. I also think that the work of those who enables the journal to be out (language readers, content curators, page makers, etc.) should be paid for their job (with a salary that provides them the opportunity for a decent living in their community if a sufficient amount of work is provided). It is a great service to index and keep the papers recorded, and to distribute them. Open Access can be done altruistically also. The biggest advantage of open access is that may empower an increase in thinking capacity in a more democratic way. We can easily argue that our technology today is quite primitive and that we are still too focused on little details without fully understanding the consequences of our progress. More and different thinking may help to improve that. Increasing layer by layer the levels of complexity.

ARJ: The All Results Journals is totally open, and we try to uncover the soft spots of other journals. Normally, how other journals work is by financial and economic issues all the time… but we are a non-profit organization. We want to show results that are new, and helpful to scientists so they don’t waste their time repeating experiments that were already performed by another researcher. What is the main objection, from your point of view, preventing the researcher from submitting negative results? 

Maybe is because the researcher is conservative. I imagine that if your journal had an impact factor of at least five there will be no objections by the majority of the members of the community to get a paper in evaluable well-placed journal. Besides, your approach, full of common sense, may seem somehow a little radical, is what pushes researchers towards more established long lasting journals. Yet, well presented, a negative-result work can have many citations. I sometimes feel forced to cite a work because of their mistakes and failures, and I feel uncomfortable because by quoting it seems that I support a title that I do not. To have papers where something was shown how it does not work it may be very popular indeed. I also think that the PLoS has introduced some interesting ideas towards promoting more democratic science. However, ARJ proposes more interesting and far-reaching ideas, closer to open data in an open format.

Personally, I rarely think about results as positive and negative; the hypotheses are wider. For example, I tell my students when the synthesis goes terribly wrong to keep this point on the space of results; they will become in the future the intelligent control experiments that beautifully will frame our chosen results to explain the story of our discovery in contrast to our hypothesis of departure. In such a way, I try to systematically publish the “negative” results as “controls” of the work to consolidate the presented hypothesis (and there it goes along with supplementary information). Now is then difficult to me to split the work in the lab into negative and positive results and then build up with the negative part. Maybe we would need a few selected examples to kick people in. I confess to finding it challenging. 

ARJ: Government Agencies (GAs) normally promote positive results, Should they also promote the publication of negative results? 

They should grow up, move beyond negative and positive results and expect that any question we address to the target is a piece of information that grows together into something meaningful. In the meanwhile, they could request that positive results go to papers and negative ones are properly reported to them. Once the researcher has reported it, he will naturally think, hey! Why not to publish this?! I would. I also think that by pushing for all results, reporting would be a fair way to evaluate the efficacy and efficiency of particular laboratory work, and use this to optimize the use for GAs, foundations and other similar resources.

ARJ: Thank you so much for your valuable collaboration at The All Results Journals' Blog 

Interview made by Dr. David Alcántara for The All Results Journals.

Interview with Prof. Jesús Usón

It was a pleasure for us to interview Prof. Jesús Usón Gargallo, founder and scientific director of the Center for Minimally Invasive Surgery "Jesús Usón" (CCMIJU) Cáceres.

Jesús Usón Gargallo (Quinto de Ebro, Zaragoza, 1947) has a PhD in Biology from the University of Zaragoza (1975). He has been an assistant professor, an acting assistant professor, an associate professor and an interim tenured associate professor of the Department of Surgery, Obstetrics and Pathology of Reproduction, at the University of Zaragoza, where he discovered a connection between human and veterinary medicine, created a school for experimental surgery, and worked in the Urology Unit of Miguel Servet Hospital.

Interview with Dr. Homa Sadeghian

It is a pleasure for us to interview Dr. Homa Sadeghian, researcher at Neurovascular Research Laboratory Department at Massachusetts General Hospital (Massachusetts, Boston).


ARJ: Could you please do a brief introduction of your research?

My name is Homa Sadeghian. I graduated from Tehran University of Medical Sciences in Tehran, Iran. During medical school, I focused on the field of neuroscience as a young researcher in the Neuroscience Research Center. Following graduation, I was awarded a research fellowship grant from the International Headache Society (IHS) to study the spreading depression‐induced neuropathological changes in migraine mutant mice. Inspired by my previous experience in the field of neuroscience and my passion for translating fundamental aspects of neuroscience into human neurological disease for improving and changing current diagnostic approaches, I joined the Neurovascular Research Laboratory Department at Massachusetts General Hospital, the teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts.

ARJ: We're proud to be the first TOTAL Open Access publishers (no fee to authors or readers to publish or download). What do you think are the biggest advantages of Open Access?

Total Open Access publishers help to return academic research to its original drive: to spread knowledge and allow that knowledge to be built upon. Price barricades prevent young scientists from getting access to publications they need. Open Access and the open availability and searchability of academic research will have a significant positive impact on education as well as the practice in medicine.

ARJ: What is your opinion about publication bias? What do you think is it due to?

Publication bias arises when results of published investigation are methodically different from results of unpublished investigation. We can measure publication bias by paralleling the results of published and unpublished investigation referring the same issue. Publication bias may be reduced by journals by publishing high-quality studies regardless of novelty results and by publishing protocols or full-study data sets.

ARJ: What do you think is the impact of not publishing negative results in your field and clinical research? Can it be influenced by the editors of the journal?

Articles available in ordinary journals normally provide inadequate confirmation regarding negative data. They hardly allow a demanding assessment of the quality of these results. In addition, provocative results that contradict a current model or simply negative results within a current belief frequently meet substantial resistance before they are acknowledged. No single step can fully overwhelm the complex actions engaged in resistance to publish negative results, and a multi-approach is required by researchers, journal editors, peer reviewers, research sponsors, and research ethics committees.

ARJ: In your opinion, what is the main objection preventing the researcher from submitting negative results?

There could be several reasons: First of all, the researchers themselves might feel that their results are not admirable enough to be published. Secondly, trying to publish negative results is a really difficult responsibility. The reason, therefore, could be that scholarly journals are not even respecting these negative results because the editorial boards don’t think these data are relevant or reviewers reject these findings because of the lack of positive results. Last but not least, specific journals like The All Results Journals (ARJ) are not famous enough, and the researchers are approaching wrong journals for their data.

ARJ: How do you usually manage negative results in your lab?

In general, the researcher is following a hypothesis which he or she believes has a possibility of occurring. Based on my own experience, in some cases, this is not necessarily what will happen at the end of the study; it is more or less an unpredicted surprise for the investigator themselves as well as the whole research group. A certain percentage of these unpredicted results are negative results, which explanation might be problematic. Uncertainties about the setting, methodology, and expected results arise. In my view, if negative results are really approved, it is more important to report these data to the scientific community so that we can learn for future research in medical treatment.

ARJ: What do you think about The All Results Journals and their scope?

Obtaining a negative result is not a breakdown in science. It is a discovery. Getting a positive result by distorting results, engineering data, and ignoring confounding variables is a failure, and The All Results Journals help scientists to publish their “true” results.

ARJ: Did you ever think about publishing your negative results?

Publishing a good paper is not a straightforward trail; it is a time and resource-consuming process including observations, design, experiments, analysis, writing up a manuscript, and enduring the revision process. But behind a worthy paper, there is often a body of work based on the experience of negative results that will be neglected. It might be a good practice to illustrate and write up those experiments that failed or produced a negative result in a supplementary material.

ARJ: How would you convince all those authors who are against the publication of negative results?

Many of my colleagues are very surprised to hear about the existence of a negative journal, as most of them have also produced negative results and did not publish them. Therefore, in my opinion, the willingness is there, but there is also frustration.

ARJ: Thank you so much for your valuable collaboration with The All Results Journals Blog

Interview made by Dra. Belén Suárez  for The All Results Journals

Interview with Prof. Rosa Ana Malvar Pintos

It has been our pleasure to interview Rosa Ana Malvar Pintos last week. She is a professor at the Galician Biological Mission of CSIC (Pontevedra, Spain).

Rosa Malvar earned a Bachelor’s in Biology at the University of Santiago de Compostela (1984) and a PhD in 1989. After postdoctoral stints at the Agricultural University of Wageningen (the Netherlands), in 1991, she joined the Spanish Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) to the Galician Biological Mission (MBG, Pontevedra) as head scientist on the Maize Genetics and Improvement Team. She is currently a research professor for the Spanish Council for Scientific Research at the Galician Biological Mission, where she was director from 2002 to 2011 and deputy director from 1994 to 2002.

She has participated in many national and autonomous community R&D projects. She is the author of over one hundred original research works and has also co-written articles, book chapters and engaged various publishing-related activities. Her teaching activities focus on participating in doctoral courses and Master’s degrees at the Universities of Vigo and Lleida.


ARJ: Could you please give a brief introduction of your research?

My research focuses on plant breeding. Specifically, I research how to improve maize against pest attacks. There are three issues I am currently working on: the causes which produce the negative relationship we found between resistance to pest and crop yield; what genes are related to the resistance or tolerance of plant pests and what defense mechanisms (constitutive or induced) expose plants to insect attacks.

ARJ: Did you find any difficulty or setback to become who you are (academically speaking) today?

Academically speaking, the weakest stage of the Spanish university system is at the postgraduate level. It was during my time and unfortunately, still is. There are a great deal of Master’s programs whose usefulness is doubtful, to say the least. In my case, I made up for this lack with excellent directors during my PhD, not because the doctoral program was good (it was virtually non-existent), but because my director was always concerned about my receiving complete training.

ARJ: Would you change anything in your academic career path to get here?

I would basically not. I would have liked to have had the current opportunities for ready mobility and connection between research groups at the beginning of my career.

ARJ: Which factors do you find most important for reaching success in the world of research?

First of all, good training, and I do not just mean amount of knowledge: You have to learn how to research. To do so, pre-and postdoctoral periods are critical. Just as important is knowing how to work in groups. Today it is impossible to research in isolation. It is essential to know both how to relate with your superiors, and with your colleagues and, when the moment comes, with your subordinates. All of my achievements are due to the group that I have been working with for almost 30 years.

ARJ: Do you consider that you have spent your time in the best way?

In other words, do you have a global time management plan? I do not have a global time management plan. In any event, I think I have managed time satisfactorily. For example, with few exceptions (which do exist) I try not to take work home.

ARJ: How do you normally plan your work? Do you make a list of daily tasks or goals to achieve?

The way I organize work is determined by two factors: 1) working with a culture that has its own cycle, so that all the research planning is marked by growing maize, and this requires advance planning by the whole team and 2) calls for projects and contracts for theses also have a cycle that forces you to plan ahead.

ARJ: How do you set priorities in your work?

Urgent issues always come first, and that applies to people too. For example, correcting a thesis can be a priority because this person has a specific period of time to write it in.

ARJ: Have you felt overwhelmed at some point by a high workload?

Sometimes I have, but I've solved this by taking work home or putting non-urgent things on hold.

ARJ: Thank you so much for your valuable collaboration al The All Results Journals' Blog

Interview made by Dr. Belén Suárez Jiménez and Dr. David Alcántara for The All Results Journals


Original interview (in Spanish)

Interview with Prof. Jordi Bascompte

It has been a pleasure for us to interview last week Prof. Jordi Bascompte, researcher at the Doñana Biological Station of CSIC (Seville, Spain).

Jordi Bascompte (Olot, Gerona, 1967) has a PhD in Biology from the University of Barcelona (1994). He completed two post-doctoral stays at the University of California, Irvine (USA) between 1996 and 1997, and the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis, also of the University of California, Santa Barbara (USA), between 1998 and 1999. In 2000 he joined as a scientist at the Doñana Biological Station (CSIC) in Seville, where he is currently a research professor. In 2004 he was recognized, in his first edition, with the European Young Investigator Award (EURYI Award). In 2007 he received the George Mercer Award from the Ecological Society of America for the best article published in Ecology in the previous two years by a researcher under 40 years. In 2010 he was elected a member of the editorial board of the prestigious journal Science, becoming the only Spanish, until this moment, of the team charged with reviewing scientific articles on the Board of Reviewing Editors. His research interests focus on ecological networks.

ARJ: Could you please do a brief introduction of your research?

Species depend on each other through different types of interactions, such as symbiotic interactions between flowering plants and their pollinators. These interactions form complex networks. My research examines the extent to which the architecture of these networks affects their robustness and performance. It is what we call the architecture of biodiversity. To do this we combine different approaches, such as fieldwork, the analysis of large databases and theoretical developments.

ARJ: Did you find any difficulty or troubles to be who you are (academically) right now?

No, I have never had the feeling of having found a great difficulty. Vocation is a very powerful motor.

ARJ: Would you change anything in your path to get here?

This is always a tricky question because you always have much more information after than before and the details of a career (not the overall theme) are very contingent. Your own trajectory is a mixture of more or less fortunate amplified or diminished by chance decisions. In short, I am moderately satisfied with my career.

ARJ: Which are the factors that you understand most important for success in research?

I would highlight the passion, an almost unhealthy passion, bordering on obsession. This is the great motor that drives vocations and the common factor to all the great scientists who I have had the pleasure of meeting. I would add imagination and independence. Imagination to ask you about the big questions and to address them in new ways. Independence, to continue this agenda without interference or taxation.

ARJ: Do you consider you spent your time in the best way? In other words, do you have a global time management plan?

I feel that it is a very difficult question to answer because a very important part of the research, like the game, is based on exploring and make decisions because you simply it feels good. It is a hardly compatible vision with a useful or optimization carácter, but success is coupled with an increase in commitments. There's a point at which one cannot manage things like before. It is a stressful time until one accepts a new phase. This is where concepts like "global time management plan" begin to make sense.

ARJ: How do you normally plan your work? Do you set any list of daily task or goals to achieve?

Yes, I set daily tasks and try to combine them with other in the medium and long term. It is a dialogue between these three levels. If you just go with daily tasks you will not do anything else. I try to compartmentalize my workday into different tasks such as management, administration and research.

ARJ: How do you set priorities in your work?

I approach tasks as concentric circles formed by throwing a stone on water. The first level is my group, my main priority. Secondly, my collaborations with nearby colleagues. Finally the rest of the scientific community. When I have periods of high workload I try to reduce my work from outside to inside. I often see colleagues that invest this order, but for me it is vital to devote to my research group. Secondly, before accepting an invitation I try to visualize how relevant it is and how interested I am in it. In general we must try to keep your own agenda instead of working on the agenda of others. This means being very careful about choosing work topics, collaborations, or invitations to write an article or give a talk. It involves essentially continuously saying no.

ARJ: Have you felt exceeded at some point by a high workload?

Yes, a lot, as I said before, from a threshold that comes suddenly, almost without warning. Since then, it is a continuum wherein you have to face a management policy of your time.

ARJ: Do you know about any time management technique especially useful for research?

Common sense, to know what you want and to learn to say no, in a politely but firm manner. Do not let urgent things “eat” important things. Thinking about the big questions. A practical example is learning to control e-mail. In the last years I have gone from check it continuously to do it at predetermined times of the day. There is a time after which I close the e-mail until the next morning. Things like this will result in a large increase in the time available for research. Another example is to plan the topic of a meeting well and limit its duration.

ARJ: Do you think you could increase your scientific productivity through a good time management?

To a certain extent, yes I do. As I said before, you should have time to stroll around the shores of science. So, joining these two trends, I would say that good time management would allow me to save some time each day to think or write.

ARJ: Have you ever applied them in your day-to-day?

I tend to do it in the recent years, especially since the birth of my daughter. At that time, the time devoted to work has considerably waned, forcing me to be very organized to try to continue leading our research without sacrificing my family life. I started by renouncing travel and the majority of meetings.

ARJ: Thank you so much for your valuable collaboration at The All Results Journals' Blog


Original interview (in Spanish)


Interview made by Dr. Belén Suárez and Dr. David Alcántara for The All Results Journals

Interview with Prof. Jorge Mira Perez

It has been a pleasure for us to interview last week Prof. Jorge Mira Pérez, Full Professor at University of Santiago de Compostela (A Coruña, Spain).

European PhD degree, University of Santiago de Compostela, 1995, Dr. Mira Perez started The "ConCiencia" Programm in 1999 with which he has managed to bring to Galicia (Spain) 29 Nobel laureates and celebrities like Stephen Hawking. Between 2009-2011 he was recognized with the award of the Spanish Association of Physicists and Galicia Critics Award together with another 11 awards. Since 2006 he is Head of the Department of Applied Physics at University of Santiago de Compostela and became full Professor on Electromagnetics in 2011.


 ARJ: Could you please do a brief introduction of your research?

In research I am developing 5 different lines: dielectric materials, dynamics of languages in competition in the same geographical area (simulation with differential equations), youth arthritis effects on the temporomandibular joint (includes acquisition and processing of inflammation’s images), visualization of the theory of relativity (with didactic reasons, mostly) and development of sensors of domestic electricity.

In disclosure, I am in charge of three lines: ConCiencia Program - www.usc.es/conciencia (visits of Nobel Prizes to Galicia), the Nerd Nites - nerdnite.com (scientific microspeech in places of entertainment at night) and collection of scientific divulgation of publishing at the University of Santiago de Compostela. I am also a scientific collaborator and columnist of the newspaper La Voz de Galicia and co-host of the regional television program of Galicia "Verbas van".

Finally, I am the director of the department of Applied Physics at the University of Santiago. However, scientific activity involved in that position is less because, although in theory there is a part of scientific activity management, in practice research groups have total independence.

ARJ: Did you find any difficulty or troubles to be who you are (academically) right now?

Every path has its difficulties. For me, the key was having to do military service - social service substitutionary - it cut my career short by a full year. It is also true that I have observed that "being in the right place at the right time" is quite true.

ARJ: Which are the factors that you understand most important for success in research?

The most important factor is to have time to reflect and think. It may seem stupid to say this, as it's quite obvious, but surprisingly there are many people (among whom I include myself) that sometimes lack of moments of peace to do it.

Of course, your research group and people in whom you can delegate to are key.

And finally, for me finding synergies has always worked: If anyone knows how to solve one aspect of our research that is taking a long time for us, I look for collaboration.

ARJ: Do you consider you spent your time in the best way? In other words, do you have a global time management plan?

No, I have not spent it in the best way. I've made mistakes and I have many things to correct. I say this because I try to stick to something that can be classified as my time management global plan and I realize how sometimes I turn away from what I consider the best path. I have attended courses and read a lot about time management, a topic that has always interested me.

ARJ: How do you normally plan your work? Do you set any list of daily task or goals to achieve?

Planning starts by separating the wheat from the chaff. Important issues have their own separate list. I have a list of short, medium and long term tasks. Of course, unexpected and date marked tasks (due to deadlines) can change my priorities.

ARJ: How do you set priorities in your work?

Depending on the importance of the line or the particular aspect considered (I know hierarchy perfectly). In addition, having a deadline also helps.

ARJ: Have you felt exceeded at some point by a high workload?

Yes I have, but I guess that it is reasonable because I admit that my schedule is contains a huge load of activities.

ARJ: Do you know about any time management technique specially useful for research?

In my mind I have principles that I consider essential, which are the identifications of the "time eaters", a sequence of steps of a project and reserve "thinking time" to which I referred above.

Anyway, I try not to forget that research is a creative activity, and needs its small portion of chaos. You must be willing to break the work plan if one day you find a vein: in some cases results appear suddenly and, when you get a good streak and the wind blows in your favor, you should stop everything else and focus on the specific streak. The other issues will have their turn.

ARJ: Do you think you could increase your scientific productivity through a good time management?

Yes I do, but it doesn’t happen, because in a heterogeneous work scheme, compartmentalizing often may not be appropriate.

ARJ: Have you ever applied them in your day-to-day?

Yes, I've always applied them. I have always had my own time management plan. In fact, one might say that my list of activities has been growing like a tree, based on the nature of the plan.


Interview made by Dr. Belén Suarez  and Dr. David Alcantara for The All Results Journals  

Original interview (in Spanish)
 

Interview with Prof. Ernesto Carmona

It has been a pleasure for us to interview last week Prof. Ernesto Carmona, Full Professor at University of Seville and the Institute for Chemical Research of CSIC (Seville, Spain).

Ernesto Carmona (PhD degree, University of Seville, 1974) did postdoctoral work at Imperial College London with (the late) Professor Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson (1974-1977). He then returned to Sevilla, to become full Professor in 1983, where he established an independent research group in the area of Organometallic Chemistry.


ARJ: Could you please do a brief introduction of your research?

In a general way my work focuses on the study of Coordination Compounds and Organometallic Compounds, an interdisciplinary area of Chemistry, on the borders between the Inorganic and Organic Chemistry, and focuses primarily on Organometallic Chemistry of transition metals, using different elements and referring to different problems: activation of small molecules, for example, dinitrogen, N2; carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide, CO and CO2 respectively; dihydrogen, H2; other organic molecules as ethylene, propylene, alcohols, and simple aldehydes, etc.;

I also study the breaking of C-H bonds in hydrocarbons of different natures, in order to contribute to the possible use of methane, CH4, and other saturated hydrocarbons, as starting materials in chemical synthesis; the analogous study of chemical transformations where bonds between carbons atoms and other common atoms like oxygen or nitrogen are broken or formed in a selective way.

Currently another important line of work deals with the study of the transition metals compounds with multiple bond between metal atoms, especially with quad and quintuple bond between molybdenum atoms.

ARJ: Did you find any difficulty or troubles to be who you are (academically) right now?

I had to overcome many difficulties and have had to work hard, but I do not think this is anything special or different from what many other professionals find in their lives.

ARJ: Would you change anything in your path to get here?

No I wouldn’t. I'm very pleased to be able to develop my teaching activities at the Faculty of Chemistry, University of Seville, as well as the researchers’ ones at the Institute of Chemical Research at the research center of La Cartuja.

ARJ: Which are the factors that you understand most important for success in research?

Firstly it is imperative to have a team of researchers solvents with complementary scientific training, which allows interdisciplinary problems of current interest to be solved with certain guarantees of success. Furthermore, it is essential to have a good scientific infrastructure, which fortunately exists today in most of the universities and Spanish research centers. Another essential factor is to have a well-trained young scientist, highly motivated and determined to develop an outstanding doctoral thesis. And finally, you need to work hard, with a high dedication. Dr. Santiago Ramon y Cajal said that the secret to get it is very simple, and comes down to two words: work and perseverance.

ARJ: Do you consider you spent your time in the best way? In other words, do you have a global time management plan?

No I don’t have a global plan for managing time, nor do I think one could apply in my work, which unexpectedly sees many issues arise. We are required to attend to these issues with sense of responsibility, solidarity and commitment to our national and international colleagues. For example, participation in doctoral theses courts, in reviewing scientific papers submitted for publication by other authors (in English refereeing), or what I'm doing right now for you, is important just because I think it can help the diffusion of science and knowledge.

 It is important to be organized, have a high capacity for work and, as said before, a large time commitment, and I think that this is enough, or at least to me it has always been enough.

ARJ: How do you normally plan your work? Do you set any list of daily task or goals to achieve?

I assign priorities to my tasks according to their urgency, importance, etc. and I try to fulfill it strictly. Referring again to this questionnaire I’m participating in for you today, it has taken precedence over other tasks that were already scheduled. However, I think it is reasonable to do it like that and I have had no problem in altering the order of backlog, nor have I on many other occasions in similar circumstances.

ARJ: How do you normally set priorities in your work?

For me, teaching has always had priority and will continue to while I am active. After that, research, ordered according to their own urgency, to temporal realization by my collaborators, etc.

ARJ: Have you felt exceeded at some point by a high workload?

I must say that I rarely have felt exceeded and overworking has been, is, and, I fear, will remain a constant in my life.

ARJ: Thank you so much for your valuable collaboration at The All Results Journals' Blog


Interview made by Dr. Belén Suarez  and Dr. David Alcantara for The All Results Journals

Original interview (in Spanish)

Interview with Dr. Juan Manuel Benito

It is a pleasure for us to interview last week Dr. Juan M. Benito, Tenured Scientist in the Institute for Chemical Research of CSIC (Seville, Spain).

Juan M Benito received his PhD degree in Chemistry at the University of Seville, Spain in 2001 for the development of cyclodextrin-based drug delivery systems. Then he moved to Carlsberg Laboratory, Copenhagen, Denmark, to develop combinatorial approaches to the design of artificial carbohydrate receptors under the supervision of Prof. M. Meldal.

In 2004, he enrolled the Institute for Chemical Research, CSIC - University of Seville, where he presently holds a permanent position since 2006. With more than 50 papers, he was distinguished with the “2007 Young Scientist Award of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Seville”.



ARJ: Could you please do a brief introduction of your research?

Well, let me start by acknowledging SACSIS for considering me for this interview (actually this is the first interview I’ve ever been asked for!). In few words, my research deals with carbohydrates and how they interact with other molecules, for instance their biological receptors. Within this large research arena, we aim at exploiting this knowledge to conceive molecular systems programmed to develop particular tasks, for instance delivering a drug to a certain type of cells or selectively switching on/off the activity of a particular enzyme. We are currently engaged into the design of artificial carriers capable of targeting therapeutic genes into selected cells in the same way a virus does.

ARJ: We're proud to be the first TOTAL Open Access publishers (no fee to authors or readers to publish or download), what do you think are the biggest advantages of Open Access?

Certainly, the price! or its absence. We live in the era of information, and we claim it fast and free. Science makes no difference. Indeed, it should be the arrowhead. The rise of the internet changed how publishers reach their clients during the last 15 years, the scientific community benefiting from much faster access to the latest advances and dissemination of their work. Now we might be witnessing a new change with the emergence of Open Access journals. Though some of them are already consolidated and prestigious publications, I sincerely don’t see a future in which Open Access publishers take over the business, but maybe they can force traditional publishers to change their pace again. Maybe this is the biggest advantage of “Open Access” for the scientists.

ARJ: What is your opinion about publication bias? What do you think is it due to?

From the point of view of Science as a body, any type of bias, including publication bias, should be discouraged. But this romantic view has to face reality, where individual researches compete for limited resources with their peers. Their work is continuously ranked and scrutinized by their funding agencies in terms of the results that they achieve (and publish) to decide whether to keep on investing on them or not. This system works (scientific progress is evident), but is far from perfect as lots of results (those that cannot be used to support the next grant application) might never see the light.

ARJ: What do you think is the impact of not publishing negative results in your field and clinical research? Can it be influenced by the editors of the journal?

Regardless of the field, if the results of an experiment are not published, it is quite likely that other researchers would end up by consuming a part of their (limited) resources repeating it. We’ve already experienced this frustration in our field when talking to colleagues in meetings and conferences. Unfortunately, it seems that, so far, this is the only communication forum for negative results. At this level it would only be a matter of resource optimization. But I am afraid that the scenario is far more complex when it comes to clinical research, where huge economic (over scientific) interests might be behind the decision of what to inform about.

ARJ: In your opinion, what is the main objection preventing the researcher from submitting negative results?

I would invoke “two” mains, the order depending of each individual researcher. The first one was already mentioned before: scientists are evaluated by their scientific production (mainly publications) and communicating negative results is not sufficiently appreciated. The second is ego.

ARJ: How do you usually manage negative results in your lab?

It is annoying when experiments do not run as planned, but a negative result can teach great lessons. It is certainly far more complex to rationalize a negative result but it usually ends by opening more doors than the one that closes. The process of rationalizing a negative to turn it into useful knowledge is very exciting and a superb academic exercise for students.

ARJ: What do you think about The All Results Journals and their scope?

The All Results Journal collects the spirit of all the above by offering a forum for dissemination of results that otherwise would lie in a drawer forever. In many senses, it is a truly pioneering initiative crashing against a monolithic establishment. Like for other pioneers, the chance of success is very limited, but even if it isn’t achieved, it might help the scientific community to realize of the potential benefits in terms of efficiency of sharing not only positive but also negative research results.

ARJ: Did you ever think about publishing your negative results?

Never negative results alone so far, I must admit. But quite often I have considered including in a paper the comparative assessment of different strategies to achieve a goal, some of them not being successful. And I have actually done it in certain occasions. Indeed this is quite common at least in chemistry. It is true that, in conventional journals, such kind of data is not welcome unless you end up by including a satisfactory solution to the proposed problem, but until this initiative was launched, it was the sole manner for sharing this knowledge.

ARJ: Do you motivate to your PhD student to consider negative results as important as positive? Do you success?

I always try to encourage students to be critical with their work and to scrutinize the results of their experiments, regardless of their positive or negative outcome. Evidently this is easier to do with positively ending experiments. I like the students to embrace the idea that experiments reflect reality, even if they run “oddly”. Thereby, if our hypothesis doesn’t fit the result, it is the hypothesis the one that has to be neglected, not the result. Do I success? Well, let’s say that I try many things…

ARJ: How would you convince all those authors who are against the publication of negative results?

That’s certainly a challenge. The argument of a pretended improved efficiency of the scientific activity as a whole might not be very convincing for those researchers that are urged to “produce” science to ensure the (economic and scientific) sustainability of their projects. Indeed, it wasn’t convincing for me when I first hear of it a while ago. It is easy to understand that these authors would stick to the “rules” rather than scattering their efforts. In my opinion, rather than being convinced by other’s arguments, authors should individually experience themselves the benefit of dissemination of negative results for their own research lines. This will be a slow moving process, but most important movements are slow.

ARJ: Thank you so much for your valuable collaboration with The All Results Journals Blog


Interview made by Dr. Belén Suarez  for The All Results Journals
 

Interview with Prof. Sebastian Cerdan

We had the pleasure to interview last week Prof. Sebastián Cerdan in a meeting at the Andalusian Center for Nanomedicine and Biotechnology (Bionand, Spain).

ARJ: Could you please do a brief introduction of your research?

My group develops novel biomedical applications of Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Spectroscopy. We are currently engaged in projects concerning the development of intelligent contrast agents, the implementation of advanced methods of functional imaging (Diffusion Weighted), the detection and characterization of cerebral inflammation, the diagnosis and prognosis of cancers and the implementation of new, automatic, artificial intelligence algorithms to extract relevant image features.

ARJ: What do you think of publishing negative results? How can they improve our actual scientific methods?

The scientific method does not distinguish between positive and negative results. For me they are simply results. They both serve to confirm or decline the proposed hypothesis and this is the way science advances. The distinction between positive result and negative result is often contributed by the experimentalist, based in his feelings of success or failure, but these are not scientific attitudes. I have no problem is showing negative or positive results if they contribute to the advance in knowledge.

ARJ: How does the publication of negative results benefit the scientific community?

 Just as the publication of positive results does. No difference.

ARJ: Are researchers used to publish negative results? What are the reasons, from your point of view, that negative results are usually not reported (or published)?

I do not know. I am used to see papers reporting both types of results.

ARJ: What is the impact of not publishing negative results in your field and clinical research? Can it be influenced by the editors of the journal?

No, I do not think editors play any role in this. An article is good or bad based on the results, either positive or negative. Another question is the sales of the journal, but this is an economic, not scientific consideration.

ARJ: Is there a way that we can overcome the tendency for negative results to be viewed as being less useful than positive results?

I do not have the tendency to consider negative results worse than positive. Should this become an issu I would recommend better scientific education.

ARJ: How do you normally manage negative results on your lab?

 Just as positive. I report both.

ARJ: We're proud to be the first TOTAL Open Access publishers (no fee to authors or readers to publish or download), what do you think are the biggest advantages of Open Access?

Probably Freedom of Mind and lack of economic burdens.

ARJ: The All Results Journals is totally open, we try to uncover the soft spots of other journals. Normally, how other journals work is by financial and economic issues all the time… but we are a non-profit organization. We want to show results that are new, helpful to scientists so they don’t waste their time repeating experiments that were already performed by another researcher. What is the main objection, from your point of view, preventing the researcher from submitting negative results?

I do not know. A hipothesis may proven or disproven by the results. Both are equally valid.

ARJ: Government Agencies (GAs) normally promotes positive results, Should they also promote the publication of negative results?

I am not sure what they promote. They should promote good science and this requires accurate results, either positive or negative.

ARJ: Thank you for your time and your valuable insights.


Contact Info:

Prof. Sebastián Cerdan
Instituto de Investigaciones Biomédicas "Alberto Sols"
C/Arturo Duperier 4.
28029 Madrid. (Spain)
website

Interview made by Dr. David Alcantara for The All Results Journals

Interview with Prof. Huba Kalasz

We have interviewed last week Professor Huba Kalasz. 

Prof. Kalasz is affiliated with the Department of Pharmacology and Pharmacotherapy at Semmelweis University, Budapest (Hungary). Dr Kalasz is Ph.D. (chemistry), D.Sc. (chemistry), med habil (pharmacology). He served as visiting Professor at the University of Cincinnati, College of Medicine, USA and Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, UAE University. His scientific career started on 1963.

Prof. Kalasz’s research interests are: pharmacokinetics and drug metabolism, determination of small molecular size metabolites, determination of drug excipients, bioequivalence studies and stability studies of various drugs. Prof. Kalasz is member of the editorial board of many reputed journals like “Journal of Liquid Chromatography and Related Technologies” or “Pharmacology and Pharmacy”.

ARJ: What do you think about The All Results Journals and their scope?
 It is an unusual and pioneering type of publication.

ARJ. What is your opinion about the publication of negative results?
Any kind of reliable results/opinion should be published.

ARJ. Since you have been in editorial board of many reputed journals, what is your opinion about the researchers complain that editors don’t want the negative results and it is the editor who does not accept the negative results manuscript and not the researcher.

I don’t think that this statement is generally valid. Editors’ duty and privilege are to accept any result that is well supported by both experiments and theory. However, any author should keep all formal requirements including to concentrate on the project (in Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results and Discussion). It means if Introduction and Discussion gives statements on positive results, his/her experiments indicate negative ones, the author has to explain all contradictions in an evident/understandable manner.


ARJ. How easily an experienced researcher like you distinguishes between a negative result and a false negative (experimental inconsistency)?
We have to do several experiments (e.g. 5 parallel tests) to check reproducibility; we should also use cooperation with other labs to do inter-laboratory tests.

ARJ. When you get a negative result what comes immediately in your mind, discard the result, keep it in your file drawer or proceed to publish?
We double-check it. Always.

ARJ. How do you normally manage negative results in your lab/team?
In my lab/team we often manage unexpected results. Our duty is to confirm them, and to explain these so-called negative results. We are doing it regularly.

ARJ. As a senior member of the research community, would you recommend other to publish genuine negative results at The All Results Journals?
Yes, I am going to do it.

ARJ: Thank you for your time and for sharing your thoughts with us!


Prof. Kalasz was interviewed by our collaborator Dr. Syed M. Nurulain for The All Results Journals.


NOTE FROM DAVID ALCANTARA: Please post your comments below trying to add something with some value. Contribute to this conversation with an insight, a practice, or a resource that we can all use to create more value. Thank you!

Interview with Prof. Ahmed H. Al-Marzouqi.

We have interviewed last week Dr. Ahmed H. Al-Marzouqi.


Dr. Al-Marzouqi has received his PhD in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology from the Pennsylvania State University (2002). He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences and has been working in the area of Molecular and Cellular Biology for the past 16 years. His research interests focus on understanding the basic concepts of how genes are controlled by epigenetic marks and how that affects cancer initiation and progression.


ARJ: What do you think about The All Results Journals and their scope?

I think there is a lot of data that is not published because researchers and scientists feel it is negative, so having the journal like this could provide a scope for all such data to be published. I am sure that the amount of negative data is generated more than the positive data in many fields. So the scope is good if it has a good indexing and reasonable impact factors. It is important to publish all those data. For example, I have some negative data and somebody else also comes up with the same result, then we know it is true and real.

ARJ:  What is your opinion about the publication of negative results?

I have previously answered most of it earlier. It is very important to publish negative results. When others get the similar results, one gets satisfied that this is not due to experimental inconsistency and is a true result. Secondly, publication of negative results will help to improve in making the hypothesis.

ARJ: Why are we still using the words“negative result”? Don’t you think that whatever comes after a research is itself a result?

People have hypothesis when they do the experiments. When you have the hypothesis and questions; one does experiments to address such questions. The answer is either Yes or No. Hence when the answer is yes, it is referred to as positive results and in case of no, it is a negative result. In short, positive or negative result is based on hypothesis.

ARJ: How easily an experienced researcher like you distinguishes between a negative result and a false negative (experimental inconsistency)?

Experiments should have the proper controls like positive controls and negative controls. Moreover, the controls and the experiments should be reproducible.

ARJ: Do you have any experimental methodology to isolate false negatives?

Use of proper positive and negative controls and review of hypothesis is useful in isolating the false negative results.

ARJ: When you get a negative result what comes immediately in your mind, discard the result, keep it in your file drawer or proceed to publish?

Normally and personally I do not publish the negative results unless it is part of a bigger picture. At the first instance re-do the experiments with proper controls, then review the hypothesis and then use some alternate hypothesis as the negative results might be due to wrong assumptions. I keep all such records in the laboratory note book.

ARJ: How do you normally manage negative results in your lab/team?

Repeat the experiment and obviously it is recorded in the laboratory note book of the students and technical staff. If there is any similar case, you have to go back. After a long period, say after six months or a year another question comes up then this record helps in solving the problem. It helps to answer the new question and design the new experiment.

ARJ: As an associate dean for research, would you recommend other faculty members to publish genuine negative results in The All Results Journals?

Yes, I definitely recommend the faculty members to publish genuine negative results in any journal obviously as long as they are confident that their results are not false negative. As I said it is important to publish the negative results because it could help other researchers to design their experiments in better way, to think in the right direction so that money and time should not be wasted.

Contact info:

Prof. Ahmed H. Al-Marzouqi, Ph.D.
Department of Biochemistry
Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences
P.O. Box: 17666
United Arab Emirates University
Al Ain, United Arab Emirates
Phone: +971-50-713 2850
Fax: +971-3- 767 2033
E-mail: ahmedh@uaeu.ac.ae
http://www.fmhs.uaeu.ac.ae/?ahmedh&f




Prof. Al-Marzouqi was interviewed by our collaborator Dr. Syed M. Nurulain for The All Results Journals.


NOTE FROM DAVID ALCANTARA: Please post your comments below trying to add something with some value. Contribute to this conversation with an insight, a practice, or a resource that we can all use to create more value. Thank you!

Interview with Dr Habibollahi

We have interviewed last week Dr. Peiman Habibollahi. Dr. Habibollahi has received his MD from Tehran University of Medical Science.

Before graduation, Dr. Habibollahi focused in the field of medicine, molecular biology, and genetics as a young researcher in the faculty of advanced medical technology at his university. Following graduation, he was awarded a research fellowship at the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG) in the Netherlands. Inspired by his previous experience in the field of molecular medicine and his passion for translating these techniques into humans for improving and changing current diagnostic approaches, he joined the Center for Translational Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital. There he works to develop novel molecular imaging technology in the field of stroke and molecular imaging of tumor microenvironment.

ARJ: Could you please do a brief introduction of your research?

My current research involves several areas but my focus is molecular imaging of stroke and tumor microenvironment. In the last few years, there has been growing interest for discovering novel neuroprotective drug regimens to be used as prophylaxis to decrease the extent of disabilities following stroke and CVA (cerebral vascular accidents). We have hypothesized that these neuroprotective therapies might affect the infarct size through altering the metabolic pathways in neural tissue and augmenting tissue tolerance against hypoxia. Though, developing a novel brain imaging technique for real-time in vivo monitoring of metabolism would enable us to acquire invaluable information about any of these medications and perform high throughput imaging for monitoring potential candidate therapies. Currently, it is not possible by any available experimental modalities.

Developing novel multimodal approaches for the early detection of esophageal lesions in preclinical models of human disease is my other field of interest. I am working on protease activated fluorescent agents and multimodal imaging agents like fluorescent labeled nano-particles for this purpose. These agents along with methods to perform preclinical experiments on mice, which is highly challenging according to the relatively small size of mouse esophagus, would enable us to study the time course of changes leading to esophageal cancer in mouse models and to develop molecular imaging approaches for the early detection, which have the potential to be used for screening the esophageal lesions in future.

ARJ: We're proud to be the first TOTAL Open Access publishers (no fee to authors or readers to publish or download), what do you think are the biggest advantages of Open Access?

I think Total Open Access publishing provides equal worldwide access to published material and makes science transfer much easier, especially for countries in poor economic conditions.

ARJ: What do you think of publishing negative results? How can they improve our actual scientific methods?

Negative results can have a great impact, especially by saving a lot of valuable time and, in these days, scarce resources. These results can avoid retesting wrong hypothesis and might help researchers to modify their strategies according to both positive and negative results.

ARJ: What makes negative results so different for not being usually published?

I think there is a myth among researchers that negative results equals failure, which is absolutely wrong but one can not only blame the researchers for holding this belief while many journals are not interested in publishing such articles. I think this makes your work so important and outstanding that you are one of a few journals that has dedicated its scope to negative results.

ARJ: Why is it that clinical field researchers have the most probability to deal with negative results?

As a physician, I can tell you that being aware of negative experimental treatments and trials can have an even more important impact. In the clinical field negative results are just as important as positive results. For instance when more comprehensive studies prove that previous treatments or medical managements are of no benefit for the patients.

ARJ: Do you think big pharma companies and their sponsored trials might contribute to not publishing clinical negative results?

Conflict of interest has always been an issue between research and pharma companies due to huge investments in such projects, there exists a potential tendency to not share such results with public. This is not always the case because many novel therapeutics are currently being tested in well known institutes that warrant publicizing the negative results, because those institutes would never let any company ruin their fame and credit in the field.

ARJ: Everybody is talking about the "file drawer" problem: those experiments that fail to prove an idea aren't normally published. What are the consequences of this problem?

As I mentioned before, it would result in wasting a lot of resources, time, and energy. Many people would test an incorrect idea over and over while no one publishes it. All these problems can be easily avoided by just publishing negative results.

ARJ: What might be the causes of the file drawer problem in clinical research?

Again the tendency of journals to publish positive results is the main factor, but this can be potentially dangerous. Sometimes a huge amount of negative results about a correlation, which does not really exist, are not being published but in contrast, a few studies are being reported where the correlation is observed by chance. This could potentially introduce bias to many decisions in health care and even resource allocation.

ARJ: How do you normally manage negative results in your lab? Are (NR) common on a regular daily basis?

Any research lab deals with huge amount of negative results on daily basis. That is part of our job and our intellectual challenge. Our research is mostly about developing new imaging technology and testing it. Negative results here mean that we need to modify our approach until we find the correct method. By publicizing our results we avoid wasting resources, but still sometimes there is a dead end or a strategy completely fails. In those circumstances, reporting is essential, but to be honest we do not usually do so.

ARJ: What feature of The All Results Journals do you like most?

The fact that you are paying attention to negative results is very important for me plus it is an open access journal. I am really interested in publishing some of my findings in All Results Journal in a near future.

ARJ: Thank you for your time!

NOTE FROM DAVID ALCANTARA: Please post your comments below trying to add something with some value. Contribute to this conversation with an insight, a practice, or a resource that we can all use to create more value. Thank you!

Interview with Prof. Lee Josephson

We have interviewed Prof. Lee Josephson (Harvard Medical School, USA).
Dr. Josephson received his Ph.D. in biochemistry from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Following a postdoctoral fellowship in the laboratory of Guido Guidotti (Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard), he was a co-founder of AMAG Pharmaceuticals (formerly Advanced Magnetics), and served as its Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer. In 1998 he joined Dr. Ralph Weissleder at the Center for Molecular Imaging Research at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and in 2008 he joined the Center for Translational Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging as the Director of New Probe Chemistry.



ARJ: Could you please do a brief introduction of your research?

My work involves several areas. One is the uses of magnetic particles in biosensors, as MR contrast agents, and for the separation and purification of materials. A second is an interest in probes for imaging cell death including agents which bind to necrotic or apoptotic cells.

ARJ: We're proud to be the first TOTAL Open Access publishers (no fee to authors or readers to publish or download), what do you think are the biggest advantages of Open Access?

Open access allows the world to read your studies, regardless of financial status.

ARJ: What do you think of publishing negative results? How can they improve our actual scientific methods?

Negative results can be extremely important if they are systematically obtained with reproducible experiments. Negative results can also be every important if there is a strong, well-based expectation of positive results. However, negative results need to be carefully screened to be sure that they are reproducible, and systematic, with proper experimental design. There needs to be a minimum body of data to make a negative result really significant. So I would set up an evaluation system:

1. Expectation of positive results

2. Quality of experimental materials and methods

3. Experimental design, including controls, statistics, etcs. Could positive really have been obtained or was that impossible because the experimenter was naïve?

4. Significance. This should be based on the likely reward of determining the (unknown) cause of the negative results.

ARJ: What makes negative results so different for not being usually published?

There is a strong tendency to accept the first publication as correct in almost any field. Then those who attempt to repeat the published result, and fail, are wrong and are penalized. However, this is not logical, since either the first or second result might be correct if both are done at the same scientific quality.

Negative results need to be screened for correctness by many of the same methods used to evaluate positive results. Are the materials and methods clear? Were the right techniques used? Could positive results really have been obtained?

ARJ: Are researchers used to publish negative results?

No. They're used to journals that require positive results.

ARJ: How do you normally manage negative results on your lab?

First, I screen them very carefully to see that the experiments were properly designed and properly performed. Second, I evaluate the significance of the negative result. If the reason for the negative result were known, what would its effect be on the field?

ARJ: What are the reasons, from your point of view, that negative results are usually not reported (or published)?

People assume that negative results are likely due to experimental incompetence or poor experimental design.

ARJ: Do the government agencies promote the publication of negative results?

No, they do not.


ARJ: Thank you for your time!



Contact info:

Prof. Lee Josephson
Massachusetts General Hospital
Building 149
Charlestown, MA, 02129
Mailstop: 5406
Phone: 617-726-6478
Fax: 617-726-5708
ljosephson@mgh.harvard.edu

NOTE FROM DAVID ALCANTARA: Please post your comments below trying to add something with some value. Contribute to this conversation with an insight, a practice, or a resource that we can all use to create more value. Thank you!

Interview with Prof. Ana Alcudia

Dr. Ana Alcudia has an extensive experience in the field of Asymmetric Synthesis using chiral sulfoxides as inducers of chirality. In 1999 she obtained her Ph.D. at the University of Seville (Spain) with honors, under the supervision of Dr. Jose Luis García Ruano and Dr. Inmmaculada Fernández. She later moved for a postdoctoral stay in the group of Dr. Lanny Liebesking in USA (Atlanta) working in the field of organometallic molybdenum complexes for nearly three years. She returned to Spain for working at  various pharmaceutical companies such as Janssen-Cilag and PharmaMar. In 2004 she moved to the University of Seville and currently holds a position of University Lecturer. Her research is focus on asymmetric organic synthesis of products with biological interest. 

ARJ: Could you please do a brief introduction of your research?

AA: We are currently developing new research projects in which we use methods developed previously in our research group to obtain enantiomerically pure sulfoxides (DAG methodology) for the synthesis of new compounds with biological interest.

ARJ: In order to publish your results, what do you think are the biggest advantages of Open Access?

AA: Obviously, the information can reach more people, especially scientific communities of countries that do not invest enough to conduct research, as its population can barely cover their most basic needs.

ARJ: Our journals are the first with a Total Open Access policy and this will improve the access to developing countries as you pointed out. But, how did you find out about The All Results Journals?

AA: A colleague told me a few months ago about this new and enthusiastic project.

ARJ: What do you think of publishing negative results? Will it improve our actual scientific methods? How?

AA: It's a great and exiting idea that has been around for years in organic synthesis laboratories that will give more information about projects we couldn't conclude, saving time and efforts to other research groups.
This idea will evaluate more positively the background work is done in laboratories and that is lost until now.

ARJ: What are the reasons, from your point of view, that negative results are usually not reported?

AA: We all want to show other people that we are capable of having success in a direct and easy way. If you show you've had many problems others may think that the project was not well planned at the beginning.

ARJ: What role do you think our journals and our web should play in science?

AA: It is a selfless work that is a good complement to the scientific community.

ARJ: We hope to grow our impact, but we need the collaboration of the whole scientific community. Would you recommend The All Results Journals to your colleagues?

AA: Certainly

ARJ: Would you submit an article to one of The All Results Journals?

AA: I promise to do it in a near future!

ARJ: Thank you for your time!

Interview done by our volunteer Dr. Victoria Valdivia for The All Results Journals