Have you ever received peer review feedback from a leading journal that your work is not ground-breaking or novel? Some journals will flatly refuse to publish negative findings. However, in your research journey, it is not uncommon to be faced with negative findings. Results that may be considered “negative” tend to be less likely to be submitted, accepted, published or made public in other ways. But do you know that you can—and should—have your negative findings (or any other type of finding contrary to what you were hoping for) published?
Let’s discuss why sharing and publishing negative results is important and how you can do so.
Negative results do not mean failure
An unusually high proportion of publications reporting positive results does not paint a true picture of research findings. It might even indicate subtle forms of misconduct. Researchers yearn for significant findings, often going to great lengths just to achieve the magical P-values that will deem a result “significant”. In the quest for significant findings, never resort to unethical practices like post-hoc rationalisation or hypothesising after obtaining results (HARKing).
Negative, null, or inconclusive findings do not mean bad science. Results that do not confirm a research hypothesis, do not reproduce published findings, or contradict published data still hold valuable information. For example, reporting a failed experiment may prevent other researchers from wasting time and resources by going down the same path. It may help them modify their research plans or identify confounding factors or reporting errors. Studies reporting negative findings can even promote new directions and actions for further studies.
Negative results should be made known
According to the World Health Organization’s statement on public disclosure of clinical trial results, “Researchers have a duty to make publicly available the results of their research... Negative and inconclusive as well as positive results must be published or otherwise made publicly available.”
Consider a study that finds that a compound has no effect on treating a disease. This important information needs to be shared with the research community so that others can explore other applications of the compound or modify the molecule instead of wastefully repeating the failed exercise.
How (and where) to share negative findings
To disseminate negative findings, you can share the work as a preprint. As a preprint, your pre-reviewed work will be visible and citable. In this manner, you can share your findings early, before formal peer review, which can take months (particularly in journals that are reluctant to publish negative findings).
What’s more, you can even get your negative results published in peer-reviewed academic journals. The publishing community is opening up to the idea of publishing negative results. Some journals are placing more emphasis on the empirical strategy of the study and not just on the results. Authors now have numerous options for publishing such findings.
Open access journals f1000Research and PeerJ publish both positive and negative results.
Meanwhile, certain journals are dedicated to publishing only negative results, e.g.:
· New Negatives in Plant Science,
· Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine,
· Journal of Negative Results — Ecology and Evolutionary Biology,
· Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis,
· Journal of Pharmaceutical Negative Results.
Conclusion
The “filing away” of non-significant and negative findings puts a burden on the academic community by making researchers unnecessarily perform experiments that have failed or have non-significant results but were never reported.
In the scenario of increasing competition for funding and citations, do not let negative findings pull you down. The recognition of the need for transparency and dissemination of negative results has paved the way for plenty of venues for having such results published.