Introducing the ‘Biological Science Practices’ article type

1. Introduction

Proceedings B is widening its scope by introducing a new article type, which will be of general interest to a broad range of biologists. The articles should address scientific practices within biology that influence research quality, scientific community health and the public understanding of science.

2. What are ‘Biological Science Practices’?

Biologists use a wide variety of different approaches, methods and research settings, all of which clearly affect and shape study outcomes and comprehension of scientific discovery. Study outcomes—and ultimately biological knowledge—are also affected by factors and mechanisms outside of the laboratory and research group, including (but not limited to) funding, science policies, peer review, research ethics, and practices and policies regarding data sharing and open science. It is this broader set of factors and mechanisms that we consider as ‘science practices’.

One of the most important factors in this context is the funding structure of biological research. As investigators, we typically need to apply for funding in order to conduct scientific projects. Precisely how such funding is structured—the type of calls, the budget and the time frames that are specified—can affect project outcomes. For example, project funding structures might mean that postdoctoral researchers collect and analyse data for only 2 years—after which they will probably move on to an entirely separate project. Such constraints can influence the process of knowledge creation; for example, the most robust insights in ecology and evolution typically come from long-term datasets. Budgetary constraints also limit the choice of technologies for investigation, which in turn are likely to affect project outcomes. These issues are highlighted by striking across-agency differences in grant scheme structures [1]. What would it mean for scientific quality and communities if funders shape science even more, as has recently been advocated [2]? For example, how does Plan S (the European funder-based push to make publications funded by these agencies open access) influence scientific knowledge-making, the future of scientific journals and learned societies [3]?

Or take the case of peer reviewing: how we structure the peer reviewing processes can influence which articles are published in which types of journals. Ideally, peer reviewing should filter out low-quality articles and help shape the high-quality ones. However, at least some journals seem to select entirely for novel science rather than for good science, which may be problematic [4]. By contrast, peer reviewing can be extremely conservative when conducted by funding agencies, illustrated by evidence that interdisciplinary proposals fare relatively poorly in funding panels and with external reviewers [5]. Does this connection between review outcomes and interdisciplinarity translate into a reduction in the fraction of interdisciplinary projects that are being conducted? Do interdisciplinary scientific papers face similar challenges?

There are many other important questions to be asked and investigated. Is it possible to predict where scientific breakthroughs actually come from [6]? What types of science are being promoted by current science trends? How should we use (open) data in biology, and what does sharing and curating these data mean for scientific quality and re-use of the material? How do we evaluate scientists in job interviews and for promotion within academic departments and research institutes, and are there better ways to do so? Should we use the h-index, and how is its use affecting scientific quality and community health?

We now invite articles investigating these issues in connection with scientific quality, scientific community health as well as the public understanding of biological insights. Such studies raise awareness regarding how wider science practices affect and shape our work and the knowledge we are making, and invite thoughtful reflection. Our goal is that these articles will provide new insights into what should be changed, and how these changes should be enacted, in order to produce the best biological science practices possible within a healthy community of scientists.

As an example of the types of paper that we envision for our new article type, see the first article we publish in this current issue: ‘Games academics play and their consequences’ by Chapman et al. [7]. This paper explores the use of h-index and journal impact factors, and their damaging consequences for science and community health in ecology and evolution. The authors urge that senior scientists should take the lead to change incentive and evaluation structures. We hope to receive more submissions of this kind.

3. Why is Proceedings B expanding its portfolio to include this new article type?

We have introduced this new article type at Proceedings B because we believe that it is important that the wider practices of the biological sciences are critically evaluated and discussed, and reach the scientific community itself. Today, such articles are often published in specialist journals concerning science policy, science and innovation, science and technology, bibliometrics or philosophy journals, which are often not read by biologists. Whereas some of these papers end up in general-interest journals, space is limited to the extent that the submission process is highly competitive (e.g. Nature or Science). Outlets that cover vast territories and have large numbers of papers also sometimes feature these article types, but the sheer volume of papers published in these outlets means that individual publications can get lost in the torrent of reading material (e.g. PLoS ONE). We consider it important that in-depth articles on such issues should be published in a manner that will increase their visibility for the scientific community of biologists. With this addition to our scope, we hope to raise awareness and catalyse change where appropriate and needed.

Proceedings B is also appropriate for our new article type because the time frame from submission to publication is typically short, which may be particularly important for articles that are aimed at changing science policies; indeed, there often exist specific time windows available for action.

4. How to submit an article: submission specifics

Articles submitted to ‘Biological Science Practices’ should address specific questions and hypotheses relevant to prevailing and potentially future scientific practices in biology. Relevant topics include (but are not limited to) the evaluation and discussion of practices concerning publication, peer review and open science, evaluation of scientific quality and relevance, data storage and sharing, outreach, science and public policy, careers, and research ethics. We particularly encourage submissions that present original data analysis and novel synthesis.

Manuscripts should typically be submitted to the journal as standard research articles or reviews, but could also be essays proposing best practices or commentaries, as long as they are clearly evidence-based. Submissions should be framed explicitly from the perspective of the biological sciences. Articles will be subject to the standard peer review process and a 10-page limit applies. Authors should follow the Royal Society Publishing instructions for authors when preparing articles for submission and can submit supporting material as supplementary data. All submissions will be handled by Proceedings B associate editor Dr Stephanie Meirmans. Manuscripts will be assessed along the following criteria: importance and timeliness of the topic, clarity, and novelty of perspective.

Data accessibility

This article has no additional data.

Competing interests

I declare I have no competing interests.

Funding

I received no funding for this study.