Ethical Publication Issues and Solutions in Research Publishing

Group 4 Chapter 6 Publishing research results Huimin Zhu, Daniel Bermejo, Mariia Pavliuk, Roger Jiang.

Why Ethical publication issues are important, because: 1. Ethical violations, especially less serious ethical violations, are prevalent; 2. Rates of detection are low, but when detected consequences are serious; 3. Ethical violations affect the quality and integrity of science Ethical problems examples solutions Affected individual or organization Carelessness Citation bias, Request for correction, understatement letter to editor Researcher or editor community Undeclared Conflict Failure to cite funding source Notification in the journal, Editor community and financial support organizations of Interest possibly retraction of the article Plagiarism Reproducing others work or Retraction of manuscript & ideas without as one s own notification of employer Researchers and the supervisors Fraud behavior Fabrication of falsification of data Retraction of manuscript, Researchers, the supervisors and the editor community notification of employer & publication ban

By using these solutions: Values and interests... 1 Intellectual honesty in reporting research. 2 Accuracy in representing contributions of other scientists. 3 Collegiality in scientific interactions, including communications and sharing of information. 4 Transparency in conflicts of interest or potential conflicts of interest. Effects of these solutions have on each of the values above Strengths/possibilities: The solutions may improve the researchers sense of honesty, accuracy the contributions of other scientists and also forbid the ethical violations, such as plagiarism and fraud, as the punishments are serious. Weakness/risks: It takes time and energy to correct, and makes reseachers anxiety. We need to analysis the risks and interests about all related organizations, based on this we can decide one solution is the optimal one.

Outreach through the media Society support research and deserved quality information about what is going on Media Concerned on presenting important research (Urge to be the first in report findings, tendency to stress the dramatic) Researchers Interest in reaching the general public (oversimplify, tempt to fall into the media pressure, premature results, exaggerate the importance) The public Critical thinking (persecute verify research results and scientific discussion)

Open access publications Publish on internet: alternative to traditional journals. Traditional journals (lose power and benefit from scientific society) Researches free access to information and publication, less control over publish results (influence in their career and reputation, avoid parallel publication) Public, student, teachers free access to information

Multiple Authors Scientific community conflicts Multiple Authors Possible Positive Negative Random/Honorable distribution Are not accepted Frustration and disappoint- ment Less energy to think about authors position in the paper Does not pay tribute to the main author(s) (e.g., PhD student) Alphabetic order Will not know who has done more contribution Will know who contributed most Not satisfied people with their place in a list Open question who is still first In case of equal contribu- tion no one will fill offend- ed regarding place which supervisor has given Group of people who did most are acknowledged All articles will be recognized by Dr. Aa All possible solutions Equal contribution mark to several authors Sometimes makes expression that other authors did nothing According to Uniform requirements Accepted by international community Much less if everyone accepts it Give credits to the main author (first as a rule), PI (last as a rule), etc. Is not sufficient if authors contributed less and can be just acknowledged The real contribution may differ from the expected Informing about position in a paper at the beginning Accepted by community None unless another person contributed more later on Everyone knows their position in the list and accepts it prior work is completed

Authors Responsibility Is considered responsible for content of a book/paper For methods, validity and reliability of the results To ensure that one and the same manuscript is not simultaneously submitted to /or published in several different journals To interpret results in the light of previously published findings and other investigator s results cited where relevant To check all the references To write clearly and precisely For the quality of the manuscript in total

Should you split a study into multiple papers? Why do this? # publications important for career Why can this (sometimes) be bad? Incomplete results may be misleading Duplicate publishing is bad Citations > publications What if multiple papers gives more citations?

OLE Should you split a study into multiple papers (in cases solution is unclear)? 1. Possibly. Co-authors may/may not want to split papers 2. Possibly. Co-authors may dispute final decision by corresonding author. 3. Irrelevant. No solutions were suggested. 4. Main author, co-authors, research groups of authors, research institute of co-authors 5.6. (split) Research quality, bibliometric number, author credibility (no split) more publications 7. Get 3rd opinion i.e. Peer review regarding to split or not.

Responsibility of publishers/editors Following existing rules (in research ethics and current legislation) Review by ethics comittee or equivalent Human/animal experimentation Ensuring scientific quality of articles Clarifying method, results, analysis, etc (via reviewers) Identifying conflicts of interest Fair assessment of negative results E.g. promoting disproval of contested hypotheses

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