Pathogenic organization in science: Division of labor and retractions

Ambiguity in Ethical Standards: Global Versus Local Science in Explaining Academic Plagiarism

The past decade has seen extensive research carried out on the systematic causes of research misconduct. Simultaneously, less attention has been paid to the variation in academic misconduct between research fields, as most empirical studies focus on one particular discipline. We propose that academic discipline is one of several systematic factors that might contribute to academic misbehavior. Drawing on a neo-institutional approach, we argue that in the developing countries, the norm of textual originality has not drawn equal support across different research fields depending on its level of internationalization. Using plagiarism detection software, we analyzed 2,405 doctoral dissertations randomly selected from all dissertations defended in Russia between 2007 and 2015. We measured the globalization of each academic discipline by calculating the share of publications indexed in the global citation database in relation to overall output. Our results showed that, with an average share of detected borrowings of over 19%, the incidence of plagiarism in Russia is remarkably higher than in Western countries. Overall, disciplines closely follow the pattern of higher globalization associated with a lower percentage of borrowed text. We also found that plagiarism is less prevalent at research-oriented institutions supporting global ethical standards. Our findings suggest that it might be misleading to measure the prevalence of academic misconduct in developing countries without paying attention to variations at the disciplinary level.

Research Misconduct Investigations in China's Science Funding System

As stewards of public money, government funding agencies have the obligation and responsibility to uphold the integrity of funded research. Despite an increasing amount of empirical studies examining research-related misconduct, a majority of these studies focus on retracted publications. How agencies spot funding-relevant wrongdoing and what sanctions the offenders face remain largely unexplored. This is particularly true for public funding agencies in emerging science powers. To amend this oversight, we retrieved and analyzed all publicized investigation results from China's largest basic research funding agency over the period from 2005 to 2021. Our findings reveal that both the "police patrol" and "fire alarm" approaches are used to identify misconduct and deter funding-related fraud in China. The principal triggers for investigations are journal article retractions, whistleblowing, and plagiarism detection software. Among the six funding-related misconduct types publicized and punished, the top three are: (1) fraudulent papers, (2) information fabrication and/or falsification in the research proposal, and (3) proposal plagiarism. The most common administrative sanctions are debarment and reclamation of grants. This article argues that more systematic research and cooperation among stakeholders is needed to cultivate research integrity in emerging science powers like China. Specific training and education should be provided for young scientists to help them avoid the pitfall of academic misconduct.

A role for funders in fostering China's research integrity

Despite recent progress, challenges remain.

Replication and Reproduction: Crises in Psychology and Academic Labour

Discussions of the replication crisis in psychology require more substantive analysis of the crisis of academic labour and of social reproduction in the university. Both the replication crisis and the crisis of social reproduction in the university describe a failure in processes of reproducing something. The financial crisis of 2007–8 shortly preceded the emergence of the replication crisis, as well as exacerbated ongoing tendencies in the organisation and practices of university research (particularly the use of precarious contracts and the adjunctification of research). These provide two reasons to address these two named crises together. But many analyses of and responses to the replication crisis turn to research culture, often at the expense of adequate investigations of research labour. Today’s psychological sciences are made through multiple forms of labour: these include researchers, who range from senior principal investigators to sub-contracted, and exploited, research assistants; research participants/subjects, who include those providing labour for experiments via exploitative platforms including Amazon Mechanical Turk; and workers providing heterogeneous technical and administrative labour. Through understanding what is at stake for these multiple forms of labour, psychology might better analyse problems besetting psychology today, as well as develop different imaginaries and practices for how to address them.

Size of science team at university and internal co-publications: science policy implications

Scientific collaboration within a science team (unit, group, etc.) has been under scrutiny. Recently, science of team science has emerged to use science for deep understanding of the ways researchers jointly perform science to increase their team’s performance. This article analyses internal scientific outputs with respect to the size of university’s science team. The objective is to examine the science policy motive that is, if the team size increases, by encouraging academics to gather in larger teams, then their outputs increase. The method of the contrapositive of this conditional statement is adopted. Thus, 120 accredited teams, composed of about 1500 academics in four universities in Morocco, were analyzed using a cross-matrix of members’ co-publications, an intra-collaboration index, Lorenz curve of both internal co-publications and sole-publications, with respect to team’s size. Our findings show that internal co-publications and sole ones are higher for small size teams and that the Lorenz distributions of these two indicators are unequal in favor of small size teams. We discuss the implications of our findings for science policy, beyond size, such as the output- instead of input-based perspective to form a team, time requirement to build a collaborative team, inter- and intra-disciplinarity oriented research, team directorship, etc.

The Effects of Anti-corruption Campaign on Research Grant Reimbursement: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from China

Integrity and research ethics are cherished institutions in academic world. Although most societies have rules and codes that govern ethical conducts in research, few studies have provided quantitative evidence on the impacts of these regulations and codes on the behaviors of researchers. In the context of a nationwide anti-corruption campaign in China, this paper evaluates the changes of principal investigators' reimbursement behavior in a leading university when new reimbursement policies were introduced. Utilizing a novel grant dataset and a regression discontinuity design, we find that the new policies lowered PIs' monthly average amount of reimbursement from research grants by 35%, which can be interpreted as a reduction in grant misuse. Following speculations we argue that institutionalizing orchestrated efforts on grant management, payroll systems, and research integrity education is in the right direction toward building China into a true scientific power.

Retraction: The "Other Face" of Research Collaboration?

The last two decades have witnessed the rising prevalence of both co-publishing and retraction. Focusing on research collaboration, this paper utilizes a unique dataset to investigate factors contributing to retraction probability and elapsed time between publication and retraction. Data analysis reveals that the majority of retracted papers are multi-authored and that repeat offenders are collaboration prone. Yet, all things being equal, collaboration, in and of itself, does not increase the likelihood of producing flawed or fraudulent research, at least in the form of retraction. That holds for all retractions and also retractions due to falsification, fabrication, and plagiarism (FFP). The research also finds that publications with authors from elite universities are less likely to be retracted, which is particularly true for retractions due to FFP. China stands out with the fastest retracting speed compared to other countries. Possible explanations, limitations, and policy implications are also discussed.

Pathologies and Paradoxes of Co-Creation: A Contribution to the Discussion about Corporate Social Responsibility in Building a Competitive Advantage in the Age of Industry 4.0

Research problem: Revolution Industry 4.0. forces companies to face specific competence-related, technological, organizational and even ethical challenges. The use of innovative “tools” associated with that revolution not only brings new technological challenges, opportunities to build new competitive advantages, new areas of activity, and new types of business benefits but also doubts, questions, or even pathologies and paradoxes. Sometimes, entities that do not fully understand the essence of the new concepts, methods, or techniques use them incorrectly or abuse them for private goals and expose themselves to criticism—sometimes even social condemnation. These are examples of the lack of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) of these organizations. This situation also has reached co-creation. In theory, it is a very positive concept, aimed at building competitiveness, or various types of competitive advantages of companies by creating value for clients with their participation. In economic practice, unfortunately, it is not always successful. Purpose: The main purpose of this paper is to identify and characterize the key paradoxes and areas of potential pathologies of creating competitive advantage based on co-creation without CSR in the case of companies operating in the age of Industry 4.0. Originality/value of the paper: A theoretical study based on the extensive literature review describing paradoxes, ethical and CSR problems of co-creation in organizations creating competitive advantage in the age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and a qualitative methodology of research. This study attempts to systematize paradoxes of co-creation and the areas and industries in which the related pathologies of co-creation occur particularly often and distinctively in economic practice. The empirical studies were conducted as a review of case studies of companies that use the concept of co-creation in an irregular way (paradoxical or with pathologies). This study identified and characterized the key 31 paradoxes and pathologies of creating competitive advantage based on co-creation in the case of 14 companies operating in the age of Industry 4.0. Implications: The identification of main dilemmas, paradoxes and pathologies of co-creation; signaling the role of governance and CSR in processes of the valuable use of co-creation in the age of Industry 4.0. Based on the observations described in the paper, it is worth recommending that when becoming involved in co-creation, one should observe ethical standards and assumptions of CSR, and require the same from partners and other parties involved. Otherwise, the risk is that instead of co-creation, the result achieved will be exactly the opposite to that intended, which is co-destruction, and condemnation instead of glory. This is why it is worth considering the paradoxes that are key to co-creation and approaching solutions in a conscious way.