The punishment intensity for research misconduct and its related factors: An exploratory study on hospitals in Mainland China

Previous studies have found that factors such as gender and academic positions do not influence the severity of administrative actions taken by institutions. However, this study provides partly inconsistent evidence. It focuses on incidents of research misconduct in hospitals across Mainland China and explores factors related to punishment using a large cross-sectional dataset (N = 815). Regression analysis revealed a significant correlation between authorship order and the punishment intensity (p < 0.05). Under specific conditions, there was a significant correlation between the professional title (senior) and punishment intensity (p = 0.001), and an interaction between professional title and types of research misbehavior. Further analysis of simple effects showed that, in cases of fabrication and falsification, and combinations of multiple research misbehavior, researchers with senior titles received significantly lighter punishments compared to those with junior, intermediate, and associate senior titles (p < 0.05). The study unveils the potential accountability patterns (collective accountability and tiered punishment) that may be adopted by hospitals in Mainland China, as well as the challenges faced in ensuring fairness, emphasizing the importance of independent investigative bodies for incidents of research misconduct, and advocating for fairness as a priority in governance of research misconduct.

Perceptions of publication pressure among Hungarian researchers: Differences across career stage, gender, and scientific field

Excessive publication pressure has been associated with detrimental aspects for individual researchers and scientific integrity but has not been well-studied in Eastern European countries. The aim of this study is to assess perceived publication pressure and its relationship with career stage, scientific field, and gender in Hungary. The survey included demographic questions, such as gender, age, scientific field, career stage, and the Revised Publication Pressure Questionnaire (PPQr). A total of 408 respondents completed the survey, 46% were female, and 54% were male. 45% are PhD students, 17% are postdocs or assistant professors, and 38% are associate or full professors. 31% are from the Biomedical Sciences, 39% from Natural Sciences, 18% from Social Sciences, and 12% from Humanities. Our results showed no significant disciplinary differences in perceived publication pressure. PhD students perceived a greater lack of resources than postdocs and professors. The same applied to postdocs and assistant professors when compared to associate professors. The findings also showed that female researchers perceive greater stress than male researchers. Our study highlights the need to improve mentoring during the development of early-career researchers. It also emphasizes the importance of organizational structures developing policies or strategies to address gender differences in academia.

The risk of normative bias in reporting empirical research: lessons learned from prenatal screening studies about the prominence of acknowledged limitations

Empirical data can be an extremely powerful and influential tool in bioethical research. However, when researchers or policy makers look for answers to ethical questions by engaging with empirical research, there can be a tendency (conscious or unconscious) to shape, report, and use empirical research in a way that confirms their own preferred ethical conclusions. This skewing effect - what we call 'normative bias' - is often so subtle it falls short of clear misconduct and thus can be difficult to call out. However, we argue that this subtle influence of bias has the potential to significantly influence debate and policy around highly sensitive ethical issues and must be guarded against. In this paper we share the lessons we have learned through a journey of self-reflection around the effect that normative bias can have when reporting on and referring to empirical data relating to ethical issues. We use a variety of papers from our area of the ethics of routine prenatal screening to illustrate these subtle but often powerfully distorting effects of bias. Our aim in doing so is not to criticise the work of others, as we recognise our own normative bias, but to improve awareness of this issue, remind the need for reflexivity to guard against our own biases, and introduce a new criterion - the idea of a 'limitation prominence assessment' - that can work as a practical way to evaluate the seriousness of the limitations of an empirical study and thus, the risks of the study being misread or misinterpreted through superficial reading.

A Questionnaire Survey on Chinese Translation and Interpreting Scholars' Publication Pressure and Its Impact on Research Quality and Publishing Ethics

The issue of publishing ethics has been drawing attention from scholars of various fields, and this study focuses on the situation in translation and interpreting (T&I) studies. It surveys Chinese T&I researchers' publication pressure and its impact on their research quality and publishing ethics via an online questionnaire and follow-up telephone interviews. Altogether, 124 respondents filled out the questionnaire, and 14 of them took part in the interviews. Data analyses reveal that the pressure caused by the limited number of T&I journals is the highest, there is significant correlation between this type of pressure and publishing ethics, and there is also significant association between publication pressure and research quality. The follow-up interviews confirmed the findings, and the discussions with interviewees suggest that using alternative evaluation methods such as the representative work method might be a way out of the current publishing dilemma.

Retraction (mal)practices of elite marketing and social psychology journals in the Dirk Smeesters' research misconduct case

The Dirk Smeesters case is one of the most well-documented and widely publicized cases of research misconduct to date. We investigate, using a case study approach, which of Smeesters' articles were found to be unreliable and recommended for retraction, which were retracted, and which were not. We also investigate by whom, when, and how these fraudulent articles were retracted. We found that only six retraction notices exist for the seven Smeesters' fraudulent articles that were recommended for retraction. For four of the six retraction notices, there were no explicit markers that clearly indicated who wrote them (e.g., the editor and/or the publisher). Smeesters' flawed articles were retracted in 97.6 days on average by the retracting journals. Retraction practices in these elite marketing and social psychology journals ranged from a seeming failure to retract (i.e., no record of a retraction notice) to a fair (i.e., informative and transparent) retraction. We also emphasize the ramifications of failing to retract an article whose findings are based on fabricated data. We conclude by listing the lessons learned from the Smeesters case.

Understanding the increasing market share of the academic publisher “Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute” in the publication output of Central and Eastern European countries: a case study of Hungary

As the open access movement has gained widespread popularity in the scientific community, academic publishers have gradually adapted to the new environment. The pioneer open access journals have turned themselves into megajournals, and the subscription-based publishers have established open access branches and have turned subscription-based journals into hybrid ones. Maybe the most dramatic outcome of the open access boom is the market entry of such fast-growing open access publishers as Frontiers and Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute (MDPI). By 2021, in terms of the number of papers published, MDPI has become one of the largest academic publishers worldwide. However, the publisher’s market shares across countries and regions show an uneven pattern. Whereas in such scientific powers as the United States and China, MDPI has remained a relatively small-scale player, it has gained a high market share in Europe, particularly in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. In 2021, 28 percent of the SCI/SSCI papers authored/co-authored by researchers from CEE countries were published in MDPI journals, a share that was as high as the combined share of papers published by Elsevier and Springer Nature, the two largest academic publishers in the world. This paper seeks to find an explanation for the extensively growing share of MDPI in the publication outputs of CEE countries by choosing Hungary as a case study. To do this, by employing data analysis, some unique features of MDPI will be revealed. Then, we will present the results of a questionnaire survey conducted among Hungary-based researchers regarding MDPI and the factors that motivated them to publish in MDPI journals. Our results show that researchers generally consider MDPI journals’ sufficiently prestigious, emphasizing the importance of the inclusion of MDPI journals in Scopus and Web of Science databases and their high ranks and impacts. However, most researchers posit that the quick turnaround time that MDPI journals offer is the top driver of publishing in such journals.

When publication metrics become the fetish: The research evaluation systems’ relationship with academic work engagement and burnout

In this article, we focused on the nature of the relationship between research evaluation systems that are based on metrics and those that are based on a critical comprehensive judgment of scientific content with researchers’ burnout and work engagement. The research was conducted on a sample of 1,191 Polish researchers in the context of a highly metricized research evaluation system. Our contribution to the field of research evaluation is fourfold. First, we provide empirical support for the recent call for more nuanced views on publication metrics in research evaluation, showing that evaluations lacking in the judgment of scientific content are associated with higher demands and lower job resources. Second, our study focuses the attention of various policymakers on the fact that performance measurement should not be confused with performance management and that thoughtless use of performance publication metrics might lead to research performance deterioration instead of improvement. Third, our findings illustrate the tensions between different views on publication metrics as means of research evaluation; this tension might be observed among researchers and their supervisors but also within the research community as a whole. Fourth, our article may inspire further research of evaluation systems, as we design measures of demands and resources generated by the evaluation system based on Job Demands-Resources theory. Moreover, based on the Leiden Manifesto and Royal Society Resume for researchers, we have validated an evaluation based on a judgment scale that might be used in further research and practical settings to audit research evaluation systems.