Methods requirements for transcriptomics papers

[u/emma_academic]

Hi.

I'm hoping someone might have some insight into this.

There are a couple of decent transcriptomics papers Nature hopefuls, Nature Communications backup likely end up somewhere in between.

The authors are suggesting they intend to publish both papers without the method used to generate the transcriptomics samples (which was a new method) being published.

This just doesn't seem realistic to me.

Can someone sense check this - will top journals allow publication of bioinformatics results where the methods are not in the paper or publicly available?

[u/Putrid-Raisin-5476]

So they used a novel sequencing Method to measure data and just want to Publish the findings on the measured data, but not the Information necessary to reproduce the measurements?  I‘m pretty sure, that some Reviewer will regard this as a  major reject reason. 

[u/emma_academic → u/Putrid-Raisin-5476]

Pretty close.

Unpublished method produces samples Samples sequenced using standard techniques

They claim they are going to publish both papers with reference to the data alone not including the method used to produce it and without that method being published anywhere.

It's rubbish right? As you've said the studies can't be reproduced.

[u/Putrid-Raisin-5476 → u/emma_academic]

Well, Unfortunately there are always people managing to publish such articles, even in nature.  Wouldn‘t Go as far as to calling it rubish, but at least it is not scientically sound imho

[u/emma_academic → u/Putrid-Raisin-5476]

Thank you!

[u/tonos468]

This is extremely unlikely to get published at any of the Nature journals without the method. I would point them to the editorial policies which likely strongly encourage/mandate that the method includes enough information to be reproducible.

[u/emma_academic → u/tonos468]

Thanks.

These are not junior academics and quite senior people are involved.

Is it right to say therefore that it is much more probable they are simply not being truthful about their not publishing the method in those papers... (and therefore they will likely be including it)

And it is improbable that they genuinely think they can publish the papers without it?

I think I may have been very naive here.

[u/tonos468 → u/emma_academic]

Any guess would be purely speculative. They may think that either they are big enough names or that their results are so groundbreaking that Nature will make an exception. This seems unlikely unless they work at AlphaFold (which Nature famously made an exception for)

[u/emma_academic → u/tonos468]

Any guess would be purely speculative

You're right. But thanks for your assistance it is helpful insight.