To the Editor:
I write to argue that Zebrafish Science Monitor (ZSM) should continue to remain invisible in the "official" published scientific literature. As I recall, our initial guideline was that the ZSM was not to be cited. But here are some happenings:
Recently I persuaded to a colleague to remove a ZSM citation from a draft of a review article. The citation was innocuous, we both agreed, but I argued that including it would set a precedent that could turn out to be dangerous to the community and the primary role that the ZSM plays in facilitating communication within it.
I then heard indirectly that another colleague was reluctant to put an abstract of interesting work into the ZSM, not because he wanted to hide the work, but because he was worried that a top journal would not be then be interested in publishing it later, since the work was already announced in a publication. This is just what the no citation policy is meant to head off.
Lastly, a paper that I anonymously reviewed cited among the regular references, an innocuous technical contribution in the ZSM from their own lab. I suggested in my review that this was not an appropriate citation. If we stick to the no citation policy then some techniques already described in the ZSM will have to be described again in the formal literature. This seems unavoidable.
I hope that in a "sharing and caring" spirit, the use of ZSM to abstract new unpublished work of scientific as well as technical interest will continue to increase. The no citation policy is crucially important to help this happen. It might be appropriate if the ZSM included in each issue a reminder notice of the policy.
Chuck Kimmel
Institute of Neuroscience
University of Oregon
Eugene, OR 97403 USA
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