A real Bear: Miscommunication about prolific author’s work leads to Neuron study embargo snafu

Mark Bear via MIT

Mark Bear is having a good year. The MIT neuroscientist and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator was scheduled to have two papers in Neuron within two months. But that kind of success can trip up busy press offices, as those at Neuron and Johns Hopkins — where one of Bear’s collaborators works — found out today.

At noon today, a Hopkins press release titled “Pavlov’s rats? Rodents trained to link rewards to visual cues” was set to come off embargo. The release — which included a picture of a rat in snazzy goggles — caught the attention of Motherboard writer Derek Mead, who wrote a post on the study. It was only after Mead posted his story at the scheduled embargo time that Bear’s Hopkins collaborator sheepishly told him that there’d been an error, and that the study was actually still embargoed, maybe until March.

Mead had apparently broken an embargo.

JAMA Psychiatry lifts embargo early on suicide study after New York Times breaks it

I find out about embargo breaks all sorts of ways. Today, I found out about one on Twitter.

At 6:05 p.m. Eastern today, Bloomberg’s Elizabeth Lopatto tweeted about a story in the New York Times on a study in JAMA Psychiatry that was embargoed until tomorrow at 4 p.m. Eastern.

It seemed that the Times had broken an embargo. So I asked JAMA — which recently changed the embargo times for its newly renamed Archives journals — whether this was a break. The Times would be taking the story down shortly, JAMA said, so the embargo would hold.

I told JAMA I found it surprising

Journal of Urology takes a few steps toward the Embargo Watch Honor Roll

In what seems like a good way to start the new year, I’ve just learned that the Journal of Urology has moved away — somewhat, anyway — from its version of a “freely available but embargoed” policy.

In October, I noted that many of the journal’s advance online publications included the following statement:

All articles printed in The Journal of Urology® are embargoed until 3 PM ET the day they are published as corrected proofs online. Studies cannot be publicized as accepted manuscripts or uncorrected proofs.

Retraction Watch readers may recall that the journal’s own executive editor and director of publications acknowledged that this policy was one for which the “rationale trumps logic.” And now the journal has made some changes. Accepted manuscripts posted on the journal’s site now include this statement instead of the one above:

JAMA to change Archives embargo schedule when names change in January

JAMA’s Archives journals will have a new embargo schedule when their names change next month.

Embargoes for the Archives journals — which as of January 1 will be known as JAMA (specialty), eg JAMA Pediatrics, instead of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine — have lifted for  years on Mondays at 3 p.m. Central Time. Starting on January 1, the embargoes for each of three titles will lift on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, also at 3 p.m. Central.

Canada’s QMI Agency slapped with six-month ban after breaking embargo

The QMI Agency, publisher of the Sun newspapers across Canada, has earned a six-month ban from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) after breaking an embargo last week.

Crystal Mohr, CIHI’s media coordinator, tells Embargo Watch it was the QMI Agency that broke the embargo. She sent this message to her press list Thursday:

How I got two embargoes lifted early: Cardiology journals do the right thing

Much of the time, when I hear about embargoes lifting early, I work backward, asking journals what happened, or trying to figure it out on my own when they can’t or won’t say. (Recently, I didn’t have to ask, because my own group had broken the embargo, accidentally.)

But last week, while working on a story, the early lifts came at my request. It’s the story of journals doing the right thing.

On Tuesday, November 27, at 12:51 p.m. Eastern, the American College of Cardiology (ACC) sent out this message:

Three’s a charm? AHA breaks its own embargo again, this time on Twitter

Be still, my tweeting heart.

The American Heart Association just sent this message to its press list:

EMBARGOED LIFTED ON AHA SCIENTIFIC STATEMENT FOR NOV. 15, 2012

TO:  Writers, editors and broadcasters
FROM:  American Heart Association Communications, Dallas
AHA Media Contacts
*** Embargoed is lifted on the following materials for Thurs., Nov. 15, 2012 *** American Heart Association Scientific Statement
The Measurement and Interpretation of the Ankle-Brachial Index: A Scientific Statement from the American Heart Association

The embargo, originally scheduled for 4 p.m. Eastern, appears to have been broken by a tweet from….the AHA:

Well, it’s happened: Reuters Health accidentally breaks JCO embargo

After more than two-and-a-half years of Embargo Watch, it was bound to happen.

Yesterday, the team I lead at Reuters Health unintentionally broke the embargo on a study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology (JCO), in a story titled “Early end-of-life talks tied to less aggressive care.” We set to the story to post at the JCO’s regular embargo time of 4 p.m. Eastern on Monday, but the study was actually embargoed until 4 p.m. today because of the Veteran’s Day holiday in the U.S.

ASCO, which publishes the JCO, sent this to reporters about an hour ago:

On Ruth Francis’s second-to-last day, Nature lifts embargo on battery-ear paper for “embarrassing” situation

Tomorrow is Ruth Francis’s last day as head of the Nature press office, before she begins in a similar role at BioMed Central. So perhaps appropriately for someone who is held in high regard for her straightforward and ethical approach to media relations, she’s going out with a bang, doing the right thing despite acknowledging that the situation is “embarrassing.”

Nature’s email to reporters today tells the story:

“I accidentally broke an embargo and it was all Hurricane Sandy’s fault”

John Platt is a good guy, and a talented writer and reporter. I know that because I offered him the chance to bring his blog Extinction Countdown over to ScientificAmerican.com when I was running that site. So when he emailed me yesterday with the subject line that makes up the title of this post, I wanted to give him the chance to tell the story of how he accidentally broke the embargo — thanks, Hurricane Sandy! — on a new paper about “the world’s rarest whale.”

Augh, I broke an embargo this morning on this story for Scientific American.