Publication bias is a type of bias with regard to what academic research is likely to be published, among what is available to be published. Publication bias is of interest because literature reviews of claims about support for a hypothesis, or values for a parameter will themselves be biased if the original literature is contaminated by publication bias. While some preferences are desirable—for instance a bias against publication of flawed studies—a tendency of researchers and journal editors to prefer some outcomes rather than others e.g. results showing a significant finding, leads to a problematic bias in the published literature.