Archives des mots-clés : research misconduct

Publication and collaboration anomalies in academic papers originating from a paper mill: Evidence from a Russia-based paper mill

Posté le par

Author : Anna Abalkina

This study attempts to detect papers originating from the Russia-based paper mill ‘International Publisher’ LLC. A total of 1,063 offers to purchase co-authorship on a fraudulent papers published from 2019 to mid-2022 on the 123mi.ru website were analysed.

This study identifies at least 451 papers that are potentially linked to the paper mill, including one preprint, a duplication paper and 16 republications of papers erroneously published in hijacked journals.

Evidence of suspicious provenance from the paper mill is provided: matches in title, number of co-authorship slots, year of publication, country of the journal, country of a co-authors and similarities of abstracts. These problematic papers are co-authored by scholars from at least 39 countries and are submitted to both predatory and reputable journals.

This study also demonstrates collaboration anomalies in questionable papers and examines indicators of the Russia-based paper mill. The value of co-authorship slots offered by ‘International Publisher’ LLC from 2019 to 2021 is estimated at $6.5 million. Since this study only analysed a single paper mill, it is likely that the number of papers with forged authorship is much higher.

URL : Publication and collaboration anomalies in academic papers originating from a paper mill: Evidence from a Russia-based paper mill

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1574

NSF Fellows’ perceptions about incentives, research misconduct, and scientific integrity in STEM academia

Posté le par

Authors : Siddhartha Roy, Marc A. Edwards

There is increased concern about perverse incentives, quantitative performance metrics, and hyper-competition for funding and faculty positions in US academia.

Recipients of the prestigious National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships (n = 244) from Civil and Environmental Engineering (45.5%) and Computer Science and Engineering (54.5%) were anonymously surveyed to create a baseline snapshot of their perceptions, behaviors and experiences. NSF Fellows ranked scientific advancement as the top metric for evaluating academics followed by publishing in high-impact journals, social impact of research, and publication/citation counts.

The self-reported rate of academic cheating was 16.7% and of research misconduct was 3.7%. Thirty-one percent of fellows reported direct knowledge of graduate peers cheating, and 11.9% had knowledge of research misconduct by colleagues. Only 30.7% said they would report suspected misconduct.

A majority of fellows (55.3%) felt that mandatory ethics trainings left them unprepared for dealing with ethical issues. Fellows stated academic freedom, flexible schedules and opportunity to mentor students were the most positive aspects of academia, whereas pressures for funding, publication, and tenure were cited as the most negative aspects.

These data may be useful in considering how to better prepare STEM graduate trainees for academic careers.

URL : NSF Fellows’ perceptions about incentives, research misconduct, and scientific integrity in STEM academia

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-32445-3

For how long and with what relevance do genetics articles retracted due to research misconduct remain active in the scientific literature

Posté le par

Authors : Rafael Dal-Ré, Carmen Ayuso

We aimed to quantify the number of pre- and post-retraction citations obtained by genetics articles retracted due to research misconduct. All retraction notices available in the Retraction Watch database for genetics articles published in 1970–2016 were assessed.

The reasons for retraction were fabrication/falsification and plagiarism. The endpoints were the number of citations of retracted articles and when and how journals reported on retractions and whether this was published on PubMed.

Four hundred and sixty retracted genetics articles were cited 34,487 times; 7,945 (23%) were post-retraction citations. Median time to retraction and time to last citation were 3.2 and 3 years, respectively. Most (96%) had a PubMed retraction notice, One percent of these were totally removed from journal websites altogether, and 4% had no information available on either the online or PDF versions.

Ninety percent of citations were from articles retracted due to falsification/fabrication. The percentage of post-retraction citations was significantly higher in the case of plagiarism (42%) than in the case of fabrication/falsification (21.5%) (p<0.001). Median time to retraction was shorter (1.3 years) in the case of plagiarism than for fabrication/falsification (4.8 years, p<0.001).

The retraction was more frequently reported in the PDFs (70%) for the fabrication/falsification cases than for the plagiarism cases (43%, p<0.001). The highest rate of retracted papers due to falsification/fabrication was among authors in the USA, and the highest rate for plagiarism was in China.

Although most retractions were appropriately handled by journals, the gravest issue was that median time to retraction for articles retracted for falsification/fabrication was nearly 5 years, earning close to 6800 post-retraction citations. Journals should implement processes to speed-up the retraction process that will help to minimize post-retraction citations.

URL : For how long and with what relevance do genetics articles retracted due to research misconduct remain active in the scientific literature

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2020.1835479

Rethinking success, integrity, and culture in research (part 2) — a multi-actor qualitative study on problems of science

Posté le par

Authors : Noémie Aubert Bonn, Wim Pinxten

Background

Research misconduct and questionable research practices have been the subject of increasing attention in the past few years. But despite the rich body of research available, few empirical works also include the perspectives of non-researcher stakeholders.

Methods

We conducted semi-structured interviews and focus groups with policy makers, funders, institution leaders, editors or publishers, research integrity office members, research integrity community members, laboratory technicians, researchers, research students, and former-researchers who changed career to inquire on the topics of success, integrity, and responsibilities in science.

We used the Flemish biomedical landscape as a baseline to be able to grasp the views of interacting and complementary actors in a system setting.

Results

Given the breadth of our results, we divided our findings in a two-paper series with the current paper focusing on the problems that affect the integrity and research culture. We first found that different actors have different perspectives on the problems that affect the integrity and culture of research.

Problems were either linked to personalities and attitudes, or to the climates in which researchers operate. Elements that were described as essential for success (in the associate paper) were often thought to accentuate the problems of research climates by disrupting research culture and research integrity.

Even though all participants agreed that current research climates need to be addressed, participants generally did not feel responsible nor capable of initiating change. Instead, respondents revealed a circle of blame and mistrust between actor groups.

Conclusions

Our findings resonate with recent debates, and extrapolate a few action points which might help advance the discussion.

First, the research integrity debate must revisit and tackle the way in which researchers are assessed.

Second, approaches to promote better science need to address the impact that research climates have on research integrity and research culture rather than to capitalize on individual researchers’ compliance.

Finally, inter-actor dialogues and shared decision making must be given priority to ensure that the perspectives of the full research system are captured. Understanding the relations and interdependency between these perspectives is key to be able to address the problems of science.

URL : Rethinking success, integrity, and culture in research (part 2) — a multi-actor qualitative study on problems of science

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s41073-020-00105-z

Rethinking success, integrity, and culture in research (part 1) — a multi-actor qualitative study on success in science

Posté le par

Authors : Noémie Aubert Bonn, Wim Pinxten

Background

Success shapes the lives and careers of scientists. But success in science is difficult to define, let alone to translate in indicators that can be used for assessment. In the past few years, several groups expressed their dissatisfaction with the indicators currently used for assessing researchers.

But given the lack of agreement on what should constitute success in science, most propositions remain unanswered. This paper aims to complement our understanding of success in science and to document areas of tension and conflict in research assessments.

Methods

We conducted semi-structured interviews and focus groups with policy makers, funders, institution leaders, editors or publishers, research integrity office members, research integrity community members, laboratory technicians, researchers, research students, and former-researchers who changed career to inquire on the topics of success, integrity, and responsibilities in science.

We used the Flemish biomedical landscape as a baseline to be able to grasp the views of interacting and complementary actors in a system setting.

Results

Given the breadth of our results, we divided our findings in a two-paper series, with the current paper focusing on what defines and determines success in science. Respondents depicted success as a multi-factorial, context-dependent, and mutable construct.

Success appeared to be an interaction between characteristics from the researcher (Who), research outputs (What), processes (How), and luck. Interviewees noted that current research assessments overvalued outputs but largely ignored the processes deemed essential for research quality and integrity.

Interviewees suggested that science needs a diversity of indicators that are transparent, robust, and valid, and that also allow a balanced and diverse view of success; that assessment of scientists should not blindly depend on metrics but also value human input; and that quality should be valued over quantity.

Conclusions

The objective of research assessments may be to encourage good researchers, to benefit society, or simply to advance science. Yet we show that current assessments fall short on each of these objectives. Open and transparent inter-actor dialogue is needed to understand what research assessments aim for and how they can best achieve their objective.

URL : Rethinking success, integrity, and culture in research (part 1) — a multi-actor qualitative study on success in science

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s41073-020-00104-0

On the Willingness to Report and the Consequences of Reporting Research Misconduct: The Role of Power Relations

Posté le par

Authors : Serge P. J. M. Horbach, Eric Breit, Willem Halffman, Svenn-Erik Mamelund

While attention to research integrity has been growing over the past decades, the processes of signalling and denouncing cases of research misconduct remain largely unstudied.

In this article, we develop a theoretically and empirically informed understanding of the causes and consequences of reporting research misconduct in terms of power relations.

We study the reporting process based on a multinational survey at eight European universities (N = 1126). Using qualitative data that witnesses of research misconduct or of questionable research practices provided, we aim to examine actors’ rationales for reporting and not reporting misconduct, how they report it and the perceived consequences of reporting.

In particular we study how research seniority, the temporality of work appointments, and gender could impact the likelihood of cases being reported and of reporting leading to constructive organisational changes.

Our findings suggest that these aspects of power relations play a role in the reporting of research misconduct. Our analysis contributes to a better understanding of research misconduct in an academic context.

Specifically, we elucidate the processes that affect researchers’ ability and willingness to report research misconduct, and the likelihood of universities taking action.

Based on our findings, we outline specific propositions that future research can test as well as provide recommendations for policy improvement.

URL : On the Willingness to Report and the Consequences of Reporting Research Misconduct: The Role of Power Relations

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-020-00202-8

Should research misconduct be criminalized?

Posté le par

Authors : Rafael Dal-Ré, Lex M Bouter, Pim Cuijpers, Pim Cuijpers, Christian Gluud, Søren Holm

For more than 25 years, research misconduct (research fraud) is defined as fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism (FFP)—although other research misbehaviors have been also added in codes of conduct and legislations.

A critical issue in deciding whether research misconduct should be subject to criminal law is its definition, because not all behaviors labeled as research misconduct qualifies as serious crime. But assuming that all FFP is fraud and all non-FFP not is far from obvious.

In addition, new research misbehaviors have recently been described, such as prolific authorship, and fake peer review, or boosted such as duplication of images. The scientific community has been largely successful in keeping criminal law away from the cases of research misconduct.

Alleged cases of research misconduct are usually looked into by committees of scientists usually from the same institution or university of the suspected offender in a process that often lacks transparency.

Few countries have or plan to introduce independent bodies to address research misconduct; so for the coming years, most universities and research institutions will continue handling alleged research misconduct cases with their own procedures. A global operationalization of research misconduct with clear boundaries and clear criteria would be helpful.

There is room for improvement in reaching global clarity on what research misconduct is, how allegations should be handled, and which sanctions are appropriate.

URL : Should research misconduct be criminalized?

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1177/1747016119898400