Accentuating the positive in negative results

It is good to see greater encouragement and support of researchers in communicating negative results (“Stop binning negative results, researchers told”, News, 29 March). A number of journals, including BioMed Central’s BMC series, are open to publishing negative results; but my own conversations with researchers have indicated that there is not always enough encouragement to submit such papers, or that they can feel under pressure to focus on getting something “positive” published.

We discussed the importance of negative results in an editorial in BMC Research Notes in February. (Conflict of interest statement: I am publisher for the BMC series of journals.)

Diana Marshall
Via timeshighereducation.com

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