‘We asked them to honor our embargo, but they chose not to, which, given the circumstances, was certainly their right.’

Sometimes what looks like an embargo break is not an embargo break at all.

Embargo Watch readers may recall the story of Pat Anstett, who in 2002 was blacklisted by the Journal of the American Medical Association for publishing a story — based on independent reporting, rather than embargoed materials — on a major study that was about to come out in the journal.

So when I saw reference to the AMA releasing a report — on efforts to fight racism — a day earlier than it had planned because a news outlet had run a story on it, I was curious about the circumstances.

Guardian breaks embargo on mantis shrimp study

The Guardian broke the embargo early this morning on a study about mantis shrimp larvae, prompting the journal to lift the embargo early.

Kathryn Knight, the journal press officer working on the story, told Embargo Watch that the Guardian broke the embargo on the Journal of Experimental Biology study, which was scheduled to lift at 2300 BST tonight:

Science lifts embargo on dog breeding study early after break

via pxhere

From the Science Press Package at 12:45 p.m. Eastern today:

Effectively immediately, Science is lifting the embargo on the Report listed below because of an embargo violation.

“Arctic-adapted dogs emerged at the Pleistocene–Holocene transition,” by M.-H.S. Sinding et al.

The Science Press Package Team and EurekAlert! take such violations extremely seriously and will be investigating the circumstances leading to this embargo violation with the responsible media outlet. We apologize for the inconvenience this issue creates for our registrants globally. The SciPak entry for this paper can be found on the EurekAlert! portal here: https://www.eurekalert.org/s/jrnls/sci/

Remember, folks: It’s weird embargo time season

photo by Robbert van der Steeg via flickr

It’s like clockwork.

I wrote about “weird embargo time season” a decade ago, and here I am writing about it again.

Twice per year — once in March and once in November — parts of the world set their clocks either forward or backward on a different day than other parts of the world.

That means that for a total of four weeks per year, the standard embargo time for a journal may seem to be an hour different.

Science and its publisher, AAAS, no doubt know this, but even those of us who obsess think about embargoes a great deal can forget. Witness this message that went out from EurekAlert! yesterday:

UK Press Association breaks embargo on tiny study of potential endometriosis drug

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) has lifted the embargo early on a study of a potential drug for endometriosis, after the UK Press Association ran the story early.

PNAS tells Embargo Watch:

A wire story from the UK Press Association was published ahead of the scheduled embargo. We are investigating the circumstances.

Reuters banned from cardiology meeting after embargo break

The American College of Cardiology (ACC) has revoked press access for Reuters reporters to its next annual meeting, following an embargo break that the wire service said was inadvertent.

Last week, Embargo Watch reported that Reuters broke the embargo on two studies being presented at the ACC meeting last month in New Orleans but would not face sanctions from the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), which had published the papers.

The math prize embargo that didn’t add up

The Fields Medal

What a mess.

Last Wednesday, at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Rio, the International Mathematical Union announced the winners of the Fields Medal, which many consider the Nobel Prize of math. The announcements had been embargoed until 11:30 a.m. Rio time, which is 10:30 U.S. East Coast time.

But as David Castelvecchi, who covers math, physics, and other subjects for Nature, tells Embargo Watch:

Did an advocacy group just take a step toward a dreaded “close hold embargo?”

On Monday, an email from a reporter landed in my inbox with a subject line that began: “FOR EMBARGO WATCH.” My immediate reaction was one of guilt; as readers know, I have not been able to find a fraction of the time I’d like to write here. But then I opened the email, and saw a curious thing.

Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, which is more than a little media savvy, was sending a letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Office of Human Research Protections (OHRP), criticizing how studies of ketamine had been conducted. Nothing all that unusual there; it’s the kind of thing the Health Research Group does regularly.

This is what struck my correspondent as unusual:

PNAS lifts embargo early on study of narwhals after CBC breaks it

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) lifted the embargo early today on a study of which marine mammals were most vulnerable to sea vessels on newly opened parts of the Arctic, after a story appeared on the CBC before the originally scheduled embargo time.

From an email from PNAS to its media list:

Retraction Watch: When — and how — should journals flag papers that don’t quite meet retraction criteria?

This is a post from Retraction Watch, our sister blog that’s unfortunately facing technical issues that are taking a while to iron out. Until we sort those out, Retraction Watch is posting a few stories here.

Readers of Retraction Watch will be no strangers to the practice of issuing Expressions of Concern — editorial notices from journals that indicate a paper’s results may not be valid. While a good idea in theory — so readers can be aware of potential issues while an investigation is underway — in practice, it’s a somewhat flawed system. As we (and others before us) have shown, so-called EOCs can linger indefinitely, leaving researchers unsure how to interpret a flagged paper.

The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) agrees that the system has room for improvement. Although COPE has included advice on when to issue EOCs within its retraction guidelines, it has allotted time in the next COPE Forum (Feb 26) to discuss the topic. Some questions it’s considering: