Postpub

Scientific understanding progresses through incremental steps and experimental results have to be reproduced after initial publication, particularly in the variable world of the life sciences. Often we feel that post-publication process currently lacks coherence, resulting in unnecessary duplication of work and frustration for experimentalists. Here is why and how we can help. The first step in the discovery process is to plan and perform a set of experiments that support a hypothesis. Based on those experiments, a paper is submitted to a journal for review. At the journal, the process of peer-review is the gold standard to assess a paper's scientific merit. If the paper is published, the discovery is read and assimilated. Here’s the catch. In the competitive world of ‘get your paper out ASAP’, many scientists do not have the luxury to confirm a discovery from every angle. It is possible that a published results may not hold true for certain circumstances. Hence the need for other labs to reproduce a published finding to determine if the result is a general or specific truth. However, independently repeated experiments confirming, coloring, or contradicting published work are often not published. PostPub.org is where we would like to help.