The Mitigation Working Group of the COLAAB is investigating ways to improve fairness in the review of nonanimal biomedical research studies. In Phase 1 of this initiative, launching in November 2024, we are reaching out to editors and publishers of scientific journals to gather feedback on potential bias mitigation interventions. The goal of this outreach is to adjust and prioritize interventions according to their feasibility, cost, and impact. In Phase 2 of this initiative, we will approach editors and publishers to advocate for change to help mitigate animal methods bias.
Proposed Interventions
- Removing explicit requirements for animal in vivo experiments in journal author guidelines
- Incorporating reviewer guidelines that describe best practices for evaluating in vitro studies, such as PRIVAT and RIVER.
- Offering registered report article types and requiring authors to follow experimental reporting standards.
- Mandating that reviewer requests for addition of animal experiments be scrutinized by editors or other reviewers.
- Implementing bias mitigation training for editors and reviewers, or adding information about methods bias to existing training materials.
- Conducting internal investigations of peer review reports for possible occurrences of animal methods bias in various research fields and demographics
- Making peer review reports available for external meta-researchers to investigate possible occurrences of animal methods bias in various research fields and demographics
- Exploring the development and implementation of other policies to discourage animal methods bias during manuscript review.
Are you an editor or other scholarly publishing professional interested in ways to promote fairness in the review of biomedical research methods? We want your feedback!