Shunning the scoop: Sidestepping the race to publish

What happens when a researcher finds out that research very similar to their own is already being conducted? What if they find out that the said research is also very close to being published? First, there is probably anxiety and panic. Maybe, there are frantic calls to collaborators. Perhaps Twitter rants about the phenomenon of scooping that plagues all researchers, especially those early-career researchers who often feel they are in a race to get their best work out to the world. What happens when a researcher finds out that research very similar to their own is already being conducted? What if they find out that the said research is also very close to being published? First, there is probably anxiety and panic. Maybe, there are frantic calls to collaborators. Perhaps Twitter rants about the phenomenon of scooping that plagues all researchers, especially those early-career researchers who often feel they are in a race to get their best work out to the world. I’ve never seen such a convergence of research. In a fast moving research field you have to expect you will eventually scoop someone on an idea and be scooped in return. But none of us had ever seen such a perfectly timed case. It was true independent scientific replication in every sense of the phrase.I think the ‘gentle(wo)mans’ agreement we made between the two teams when we became aware of each other’s studies meant a lot to both teams as we ventured into this very unfamiliar territory of coordinating article submission, peer-review, publication, and press with a team that we at first had seen as competitors.Scooping someone on an idea is not fun. In a race, someone has to lose. We did not want anyone involved to be in that situation. Working together was better for the research and better for all the people involved.I remember people not talking about their results at conferences or keeping parts of their methods hidden so they wouldn’t be scooped. I didn’t ever receive any input about how positive working with your “rivals” could be. In this Backstory, we discuss with the authors of two recent Current Biology works (Clare et al., 2022Clare E.L. Economou C.K. Bennett F.J. Dyer C.E. Adams K. McRobie B. Drinkwater R. Littlefair J.E. Measuring biodiversity from DNA in the air.Curr. Biol. 2022; 32: 693-700.e5https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2021.11.064Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (10) Google Scholar; Lynggaard et al., 2022Lynggaard C. Bertelsen M.F. Jensen C.V. Johnson M.S. Frøslev T.G. Olsen M.T. Bohmann K. Airborne environmental DNA for terrestrial vertebrate community monitoring.Curr. Biol. 2022; 32: 701-707.e5https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2021.12.014Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (13) Google Scholar) about what happened when they became aware of their concurrent studies happening at the same time in two different countries related to airborne DNA and the prospects of using it to monitor biodiversity. Instead of racing to publish their works to “beat” out the other group, they simply reached out to each other and made the agreement that they would coordinate the publication process, so that each of their independent works could get the publicity it deserved. The authors discuss here how they shunned the scoop and worked together to bring forward two independent, but complementary, pieces pushing forward the field of airborne DNA, as well as offering advice to other researchers who might find themselves in a similar precarious situation. Elizabeth L. Clare (York University/Queen Mary University of London): It was a coincidence of events that led to the project for the UK team. I was commissioned by the UK Environment Agency to write a “think piece” on the use of DNA to monitor biodiversity in the terrestrial biome (Environment Agency, 2021Environment AgencyUnderstanding Ecosystems and Resilience Using DNA. Science Report SC190006/R, Environment Agency, Bristol2021Google Scholar). In this document I described all the sources of eDNA on land and listed “air” because I just assumed it was used. I went looking for case studies for my report and was very surprised how little was out there. I found a couple of reports about plant material in dust and some work on pathogens but for animal life on land it seemed to be all speculation. It was a couple of months after this, that our institution in London advertised a fund for “high risk, high impact” ideas. My group had a history of working on novel ways to collect eDNA, so I contacted some likely partners and end users from industry, government regulators, and academic colleagues, and we made a pitch to the grant funding committee. Joanne E. Littlefair (Queen Mary University of London): Our earlier proof of concept study was a risky project. We didn’t necessarily think that we could sequence DNA out of thin air, but we thought that a laboratory population of mammals would give us the best chance of doing so. After that success (Clare et al., 2021Clare E.L. Economou C.K. Faulkes C.G. Gilbert J.D. Bennett F. Drinkwater R. Littlefair J.E. eDNAir: proof of concept that animal DNA can be collected from air sampling.PeerJ. 2021; 9e11030https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.11030Crossref Scopus (17) Google Scholar), we knew we wanted to scale up to a seminatural system using non-native animals, so a zoo was a perfect next step (Clare et al., 2022Clare E.L. Economou C.K. Bennett F.J. Dyer C.E. Adams K. McRobie B. Drinkwater R. Littlefair J.E. Measuring biodiversity from DNA in the air.Curr. Biol. 2022; 32: 693-700.e5https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2021.11.064Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (10) Google Scholar). Beth is really good at pulling together a team with different strengths, so for the zoo project we had technicians, a postdoc, members of staff from the zoo and me doing the bioinformatic and statistical analyses. I was on maternity leave while we were doing this project, so the analyses were conducted while my daughter had naps or went down to sleep in the evenings. Kristine Bohmann (University of Copenhagen): Our work was also supported by a high risk-high gain grant, the Danish VILLUM Foundation. They have a funding instrument called VILLUM Experiment, which, in their own words: “support the ideas which have a limited chance of succeeding, but hold great potential if they do”. In 2018, we applied for this grant for a project where we suggested using airborne environmental DNA to monitor terrestrial vertebrates. But following peer-review, our proposal was rejected. We reapplied the following year, were awarded the grant, and started the project in early 2020. We quickly realized that although we have knowledge of environmental DNA in my group at Globe Institute at University of Copenhagen, we had limited knowledge about bioaerosols and vacuuming animal DNA out of thin air. We therefore started collaborating with Professor Matthew Johnson and his student who works on air particles. Further, we established a collaboration with Professor and Zoological Director of Copenhagen Zoo, Mads Frost Bertelsen, who contributed with essential knowledge about the zoo, the animals kept there, and animal conservation efforts. Christina Lynggaard (University of Copenhagen): This project was very interdisciplinary as we needed people with knowledge about environmental DNA, air particles, zoo animals, and conservation efforts. We were very fortunate to end up with a very good group of researchers who were interested in the study in Copenhagen. Although we started collecting samples in Copenhagen Zoo in September 2020, we were in the middle of the COVID pandemic and got the results in Spring (2021). Clare: The coordination bewteen the two teams happened much later in the project. We had completed our work, written our paper, and posted it on a preprint server when we became aware of the “other paper”. We were shocked to discover that Kristine and Christina had done the same experiment at the same time and written almost the same paper. It was astonishing. You could have swapped paragraphs between them and not noticed it. I’ve never seen such a convergence of research. In a fast moving research field you have to expect you will eventually scoop someone on an idea and be scooped in return. But none of us had ever seen such a perfectly timed case. It was true independent scientific replication in every sense of the phrase. We were left with a choice: have a race to see who could publish first or find a different way forward. We had the benefit of knowing each other. Kristine and I had published together before. We called them up on Zoom and as a group we decided that we did not want to compete for publication and we were actually happy to see perfect replication of the “crazy idea.” It made it easier to feel confident about what we were doing, when we realized someone else had found exactly the same thing. We saw this as an asset rather than a competition. We needed to be unorthodox about our attempt to publish, but the potential for success in the long run could be high. Bohmann: We got the first results in the Spring of 2021, and we could not believe our own eyes! We thought that our first sampling in Copenhagen Zoo would be for us to test out three air filtering samplers, sampling times, air volumes, etc. Besides, we thought that we would use this to get a hint on which direction we should go for optimizing the sampling. We never thought we would get such robust results in the first go! After an intense period of analyses and writing it all up, we were ready to submit the article. Literally two days before we planned to submit, we were contacted by colleagues saying that there was another study out in preprint very similar to ours. We were shocked! I reached out to several colleagues who I knew had experienced competition regarding publication of research results in the past to get their perspective. To have them share their experiences and give the long-term perspective on this calmed me down after the initial shock had settled. Then we got in touch with the other group and decided to “join forces” and approach a journal together for publication back to back. Going this route had two main benefits:1)the two papers would strengthen each other’s message, and2)each team would get to sleep at night because we no longer had to worry that the other article would suddenly be out in a peer-reviewed journal and the novelty of the other study would be lost. Clare: I think the teams were on the same page about our goal. We were helped by mutual trust (we were not strangers) and confidence in each other’s teams (we knew both sets of data were of good quality). Our results were remarkably similar; for example, we both identified species of zoo animals as we had hoped, but both groups also identified items for the animal feed (e.g., cow, chicken, pig, and horse fed to carnivores) and animals from the surrounding wildlife (e.g., squirrels and hedgehogs). Slight differences in one relationship between variables existed; however, both teams started with different methods of collection of the eDNA and both found the exact same thing. This actually suggested that the idea was more robust than we had hoped. Not such a “crazy” idea after all. Bohmann: I think the ‘gentle(wo)mans’ agreement we made between the two teams when we became aware of each other’s studies meant a lot to both teams as we ventured into this very unfamiliar territory of coordinating article submission, peer-review, publication, and press with a team that we at first had seen as competitors. In addition, both teams tried their best to coordinate everything. We would even wait for each other to be ready for the different stages, e.g., submission, and be in contact so we could submit more or less at the same time. Lynggaard: The dialogue was very good between both groups and it was easy to coordinate the submissions. I think that in this case, the impact of our studies was higher because we published both papers at the same time. Littlefair: The two teams worked separately until our preprints were released; so although our methods and results are similar, they were developed separately from one another. Clare: From our side, after the initial discovery of the twin papers, we deliberately did not compare them. We did not read each other’s revisions or reviewer comments at any stage. We didn’t want them to become more similar during review, and we did not want to combine them. At one stage, an editor asked if we had considered making them into one paper. We did not want to do that. We saw real value in the replication aspect of this. I think of this as coordination, not collaboration. All scientific aspects have been totally independent. What we did coordinate was writing to editors on behalf of both teams to explain the very unusual situation. We coordinated timing, submitting the initial papers, and then revisions on the same day. One team would wait for the other to be ready so that everything was synchronized. We didn’t want anyone to “win” in the publication game. It was always about sharing the outcome. Even to the point of writing the press release to be a conversation between teams, trying our best to share any media inquiries, making sure to copy the other team on important emails, and suggesting reporters contact the other team. We think the “two papers” part of this story is as much fun as the research itself. Bohmann: We only knew about the UK study when it turned up as a preprint. And even after knowing about the other team’s article, we did not coordinate anything regarding the actual research - for that part, each of our two teams just focused on their own studies. The only way we influenced the other team was that we agreed to cite each other’s article where appropriate. In that sense, I do not see any ethical implications - it’s also important to say that each article went through independent peer-review process. Clare: Initially … well panic! When we first realized there were twin papers we had no idea what stage the other team had reached. I have minimal experience with preprint servers and the number one worry was that if theirs had already been accepted somewhere, then ours would probably never get published. Journals always want you to explain what is novel … in this case they were so similar it would have been very hard to reframe it as anything other than a replication. It’s a funny problem. In science we are supposed to make all our procedures replicable. It’s supposed to be that way … and yet replicating someone’s work is of almost no value in the publication world where novelty wins out. Bohmann: I do not think I have ever heard about a case where two teams joined forces when faced with competition. This was only possible because the UK team put their research out in preprint; had they not done that, we would not have known about each other’s work and we would not have been able to coordinate submission to a journal. The reason we decided to join forces with the UK group was that we could take two routes: either join forces or race to see who would be published first in a peer-reviewed journal. If we had taken the latter approach, then even if we had gotten across the finish line first, I am not sure we would have enjoyed it as much knowing that we had then taken the novelty from the other team. In addition, there would of course be the risk that the other team would get published first. As the senior author on the Danish study, I felt a great deal of responsibility toward the postdoc, the first author of our study, and to ensure that she got as much out of hard work on the article as In that sense, it also did not feel to and to we have an experience in collaboration rather than competition. Lynggaard: My first was that one study would get more than the however, as as I can both studies have gotten the same from both the media and the scientific We decided to submit together and publish together because it was a better use of our than each which would more to our Clare: Our approach - to coordinate publication was for two think that for a novel proof of concept independent replication is one was more surprised about how well our data turned out than that someone else was able to do the same and get the same us confidence in what we had research teams have worked together before and we to do so in the It was important to that and we did not want anyone who had put so much into this to be left out. We wanted both teams to get for what they had someone on an idea is not fun. In a race, someone has to lose. We did not want anyone involved to be in that situation. Working together was better for the research and better for all the people Bohmann: in the same journal and with the same editor would us to the of publication and press work much I think Current Biology the publication so that I would think it was they more often than I think is the case. Lynggaard: more of studies being published could to make research that not researchers think it is a possible and are left with the idea that the only is each other. science is and so it is a to a study or leave the in a when another group out with similar results as in a preprint. and good can be the way forward. Clare: It a so much as the only to the had been made not to the only was to We contacted two using the unorthodox approach of writing to the one from both teams trying to explain how unusual it was and that our was to have two papers published together at the same time. We to how we could submit our papers for but have them all the way through the process. One journal never One editor agreed to read the papers but to them. It was actually someone not on either author team that to Current Biology to explain the us as being very in our approach to our problem. We even part of that initial contact but the editor us on for example, talking about both papers in the After that it was just any other peer-review experience other than that we tried to everything timed The impact has been I think the papers have gotten more because there is a story of research and a very story of the we interested in both and colleagues … did you to this I think there is a or funding that can this. We did not would out to do this. In it would not work, and in papers there would not be much value in this of replication. It did down the of publication so there was a I would not want to see to of research. In I think we are better to put our into not replicating it. But in some such as a totally idea that has potential to a I think the replication is Littlefair: are some which value results or will your even if there is not a high of studies out after the publication of the first and not But although there is to publish high impact papers and value it is to time into even when are so for our In the field of eDNA, studies on the same (e.g., eDNA release to the of are really important because this up our to us to do are so environmental variables eDNA that replication and will be for the really important which eDNA in I in to is as we to replication. Instead of talking to your about the of your results and how you are of being we can about the of teams and the of replication to science forward. Bohmann: It will be a of which route would be best to racing or When I think the important is a and that both teams see the of down this and of course a good editor and journal. Lynggaard: I with not all are the If trust is not there, will be Littlefair: I was surprised and really by how positive this experience has I think the from Beth to out to the Danish team was but very out to to Kristine and Christina we found rather than of them as our which is so often the way that are to I remember people not talking about their results at conferences or keeping parts of their methods hidden so they wouldn’t be scooped. I didn’t ever receive any input about how positive working with your “rivals” could be. Clare: I with When we of the paper, I contacted colleagues for was only one that made any we We have been with how this We have been more as two teams coordinating than two teams I have my about this case. I have the story of the two teams to reporters and The has been how science should Measuring biodiversity from DNA in the et is by all species and can be collected to monitor in Clare et collect vertebrate eDNA from the air to terrestrial and Airborne eDNA was of from that be at a terrestrial PDF environmental DNA for terrestrial vertebrate community et et that airborne environmental DNA with and can be to terrestrial vertebrates. The species are known to in or the zoo study in to the and in have higher PDF

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