Evaluating research: ‘A multidisciplinary approach to assessing research practice and quality’. In this article, P. Martensson et al. developed a concept model of research, which was used as a basis for determining and discussing different aspects of quality and evaluation in research. According to their concept hierarchy, research quality was defined by four main areas labeled ‘Credible’, ‘Contributory’, ‘Communicable’ and ‘Conforming’. The intention was to create a platform for evaluations of research quality within and across specific disciplines and thereby to contribute to efforts to improve research quality and understanding (Research Policy, Volume 45, Issue 3, April 2016, Pages 593–603).

Reproducible Research Practices and Transparency across the Biomedical Literature. A team of authors, led by John P.A. Ioannidis, analyzed a randomly chosen set of 441 PubMed-indexed papers related to biomedicine which were published between 2000 and 2014. Among these 441 publications, 268 included empirical data. Of these 268, only one study provided a complete and full protocol. None of the selected 268 papers provided means to access full datasets; only one mentioned making complete raw data available upon request. The majority of studies did not contain any conflict of interest statement (69.2%) and only half of all papers included funding information (51.7%). Interestingly, only 1.5% of papers with empirical data were replication studies. Altogether these results demonstrate the continued need for improving reproducibility and transparency practices in the biomedical literature. (PLOS Biology, DOI:10.1371/journal.pbio.1002333 January 4, 2016).