As it is very difficult to publish "negative" results in science, Crista Royal, Ph.D., of Evans, GA came up with the idea to co-found the Journal of Negative Results (JNegRes) along with Andrew Harmon of Richmond, KY. Even if experiments do not generate the desired outcome, negative results are still useful results. This kind of information is invaluable to research, but up to now -- unpublishable. Dr. Royal‘s team believes all findings should be shared. Sharing negative results as well as positive ones would help refine our collective knowledge and bring our ideas closer to the actuality of how the universe works. Each negative result, as well as each positive result, brings us closer to the truth.

JNegRes will provide free public access to ideas, data, and experiments that have had negative results, have been disproven, or, have had sufficient experiments done to demonstrate that the hypothesis tested is likely incorrect. It will also publish the results of studies that have sufficient data showing them to be unprofitable under contemporary conditions. Dr. Royal came up with the idea of a Journal of Negative Results when in graduate school at the Medical College of Georgia, now Georgia Regent's University, in Augusta, GA. "Out of 10 projects I worked on in grad school, seven had negative results and the results were never published...," she said.

Dr. Royal is currently adjunct faculty in biology at Augusta Technical Institute and plans to continue teaching part-time while starting the journal. The Journal of Negative Results will launch on October 1, 2014. JNegRes will be accepting article submissions throughout the coming year as they program the JNegRes.org website. They will need reviewers prior to launch as papers arrive in each discipline. For more information, email Crista@JNegRes.org.

Dr. Royal has been an ASPET member since 2007. She was a 2010 and 2011 recipient of the ISTCP Division's Graduate Student Best Abstract Award at the ASPET Annual Meeting at Experimental Biology.