Until the mid-1990’s there was no doubt on how a biomedical science researcher should proceed to start solving a problem or providing explanation to a natural phenomenon: use the “scientific method”. As taught in undergraduate science training programs, the “scientific method” consists of observing a fact or identifying a relevant question, formulate a hypothesis, collect data obtained under rigorous experimental set up, analyse these data with appropriate statistical methods, discuss them in view of the current knowledge, draw conclusions and finally (ideally) make a decision to reject or not reject the hypothesis. From the viewpoint of a bench lab researcher…

In 2013 the biomedical research community saw the birth of its first preprint server, the bioRxiv (https://www.biorxiv.org/). Since then, we have witnessed both the growing of repositories dedicated to the fast and non-peer-reviewed publication of scientific articles (preprint articles) and the community mind changing about the benefits (and risks!) of the immediate release of research results. It is a new scenario for biomedical and biological researchers but not for the physics research community whose arXiv physics has been publishing preprints since 1991. In view of current challenges, we may say that scientific publishing is now living under the "disruption of…

The scientific practice is one of the few human activities that do not require high amounts of financial rewards to attract talented people. Due to a peculiar feature of this activity, i.e., a feeling of being constantly challenged by problems whose solution appears far from simple makes some people get involved without expecting to make a lot of money. Of course, in some scientific fields there are many opportunities to start a business that might lead to big financial returns, for example, biotechnology, nanotechnology or molecular biology. Yet for the skilled and talented people not interested in making money through…

  In the biomedical sciences timeline, 2021 will be marked by two major events: (a) the second year of Covid-19 pandemics and its huge impact on our society; (b) the consolidation of new vaccine technology to deal with emergent infectious agents. For the Brazilian community of researchers in tropical medicine nonetheless, it is also a year that will be remembered as the farewell to José Rodrigues Coura (1927-1921), medical doctor, professor and researcher in human infectious diseases, director of the Instituto Oswaldo Cruz (IOC), vice president of research at Fiocruz, author of hundreds of scientific articles, editor and enthusiastic collaborator…

 The COVID-19 pandemic has affected human activities on a scale never seen before. In the scientific world it has been particularly hard: people involved in the activity of generating new knowledge have been under both huge demand and maximum expectation of proposing solutions to stop the spread of SARS-CoV-2. Under these exceptional circumstances, the research community has sought alternatives for the rapid dissemination of their work. An example of such alternative is the “fast track publication”, which was proposed by WHO during the epidemics caused by the Ebola and Zika viruses in 2015-16 (1). Many funding agencies and journals, including…

Last year, we published a possible scenario for scientific journals, or, as we stressed in that post—our turn to fail miserably in the art of predicting the future (Brandao & Pirmez, 2018). Now it is time for a little incremental change (or adjustment?) to this forecast doomed to fail miserably, which noted a large shift in journal function and operational structure. There is a chance that journals will lose control over both the dissemination of research results and the reviewing process. These scenarios are projected from initiatives which are underway and are giving a new shape to scientific publishing, particularly…

We present a decentralized solution for managing scientific communication based on distributed ledger technologies also called Blockchains.The proposed system aims at solving the incentive problems displayed by traditional systems for scientific communication and publication. A minimal working model is presented defining roles, processes and expected results from the novel system. The proposed solution is viable given the current status of blockchain technology and should lead to a rethink of current practices and their consequences to scientific communication. The current model of scientific publishing is in crisis (De Wit, Altbach, & Leask, 2018; Horton, 2016). Even without looking at the numbers,…

Memorias do Instituto Oswaldo Cruz was officially created by federal decree 1.802, on December 12, 1907 (click here for the Portuguese version of this decree). Memorias effectively started its life as scientific publishing journal only two years later. This start could not have been better: in the second issue of the journal (August 1909), Dr. Carlos Chagas reported the discovery of a new human trypanosomiasis, including both its infectious agent (the protozoan Trypanosoma cruzi) and the vector (the triatomine bugs). This trypanosomiasis is currently known as Chagas Disease. Because of the breath and impact of this discovery to tropical medicine…

Predicting the consequences of current events in the medium to long term has only one certainty: in the overwhelming majority of cases, the prediction will fail!  That rate of failure is the reason why future studies scholars always caution that the main goal of a future analysis is to delimit "probable and desirable outcomes" of current events under social, demographic and technological aspects of human society. Computers are a good example of how difficult it is to predict future developments from the current standards. If we went back to the computer industry in the 1950s, took its concepts, hardware and…

The analysis of scientific articles by peers has changed throughout the centuries, evolving from occasional external opinion in the science journals of the mid-seventeenth century to the lengthy, anonymous and formal peer review procedure of current journals. Until the beginning of the 1970s, prestigious European journals such as Nature did not use the peer review methodology as a requirement for screening manuscripts for publication (Baldwin, 2015). The editor's sole opinion seemed to be much more relevant for deciding the fate of manuscripts than the expert’s comments and critiques. If this is entirely correct, then there was a time when the…