The state of null results

As a publisher, Springer Nature is committed to truly serving the advancement of knowledge by communicating all categories of research with scientific rigour. This is achieved by employing robust research integrity practices, and recognising that all validated research, regardless of the outcome, plays a crucial role in advancing learning and the pace of innovation.  

Researchers need access to both ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ results to fully understand a research topic. Yet the scientific community appears to have created a research environment where researchers either feel little point in writing up null results and/or struggle to publish such findings. This means that, due to a lack of awareness, many researchers are wasting time, effort, and funding by duplicating research that is later proven to be negative as well as not sharing data that may challenge published findings. An assumption is also being made that these results hold little value. But surely if only one researcher is inspired, and the negative finding contributes to a new scientific discovery, then that value should be recognised?  

Springer Nature is dedicated to communicating all forms of research and we publish a range of inclusive journals that aim to publish all in-scope, technically sound research that has undergone rigorous peer review and validation. These journals provide a platform for null results, foundational and fundamental advances, as well as more descriptive papers on experimental design and data studies which support reproducibility and data sharing.  

We wanted to better understand why negative results are not regularly being reported. The state of null results white paper, based on survey responses from over 11,000 researchers, presents insights into researchers’ attitudes towards, and experiences with, sharing null results. 98% of researchers recognise the value of shared negative results and yet so few null results papers are published. 

A key insight from the survey data underscores the urgent need to reform current research assessment practices. Thirty years ago, the research landscape was more regionally focused, with fewer and predominantly western researchers, who had a greater awareness of others in their field, and who could share knowledge such as null results through personal communication. Today, we have a research landscape that is around three times larger, with roughly forty percent of research contributed by researchers from western nations and around forty percent from Asia. To share research globally, it needs to be validated and published. 

The traditional research practice of writing papers, focusing on citing incremental positive advances, also means null papers are not cited. Encouraging new mechanisms that recognise and reward the sharing of null results could help address this imbalance. We hope that all stakeholders across the research ecosystem will work towards addressing researchers’ needs and better supporting the publication of null results.   

Ritu Dhand
Chief Scientific Officer
Springer Nature