Monetary offer to scientists incites accusations of product placement

Science : A recent offer by Cyagen, a company that provides genetically modified rodents for scientific experiments, has sparked outrage among researchers. The company says it will pay scientists if they mention in their published research that they used Cyagen’s animal models. The payment is $100 times the journal’s impact factor, so a mention published in a journal with an IF of 15 would be worth $1500. Although the scheme has been called “a seamy inducement” and “a kind of payola,” the company says the payment is in the form of store credit, not cash. And Cyagen says the citation it asks for is already required by most journals, which insist that researchers’ work, equipment, and methods be described in detail such that the experiment can be reproduced by others. Nevertheless, because a journal’s impact factor is a hot-button issue in itself, the company is thinking of altering its payment formula and simply offering a flat fee.