PLoS medicine
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Kass and colleagues explore the strengths and weaknesses of research ethics committees in Africa.
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Clinical Trial
Two-year morbidity-mortality and alternatives to prolonged breast-feeding among children born to HIV-infected mothers in Côte d'Ivoire.
Little is known about the long-term safety of infant feeding interventions aimed at reducing breast milk HIV transmission in Africa. ⋯ The 2-y rates of adverse health outcomes were similar among short-term breast-fed and formula-fed children. Mortality rates did not differ significantly between these two groups and, after adjustment for pediatric HIV status, were similar to those observed among long-term breast-fed children. Given appropriate nutritional counseling and care, access to clean water, and a supply of breast-milk substitutes, these alternatives to prolonged breast-feeding can be safe interventions to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV in urban African settings.
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Peer review is considered crucial to the selection and publication of quality science, but very little is known about the previous experiences and training that might identify high-quality peer reviewers. The reviewer selection processes of most journals, and thus the qualifications of their reviewers, are ill defined. More objective selection of peer reviewers might improve the journal peer review process and thus the quality of published science. ⋯ Our study confirms that there are no easily identifiable types of formal training or experience that predict reviewer performance. Skill in scientific peer review may be as ill defined and hard to impart as is "common sense." Without a better understanding of those skills, it seems unlikely journals and editors will be successful in systematically improving their selection of reviewers. This inability to predict performance makes it imperative that all but the smallest journals implement routine review ratings systems to routinely monitor the quality of their reviews (and thus the quality of the science they publish).
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The PLoS Medicine editors discuss a paper about the difficulties of identifying what makes a good peer reviewer, and the process of peer review in PLoS Medicine.
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The Worldmapper Web site is a collection of world maps where territories are re-sized according to the subject of interest.