Policies and initiatives aimed at addressing research misconduct in high-income countries

Perceptions of plagiarism among PhDs across the sciences, engineering, humanities, and arts: Results from a national survey in Brazil

Plagiarism allegations are not rare in the history of science, and credit for prior work was and continues to be a source of disputes, involving notions of priority of discovery and of plagiarism. However, consensus over what constitutes plagiarism among scientists from different fields cannot be taken for granted. We conducted a national survey exploring perceptions of plagiarism among PhD holders registered in the database of the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). This survey was sent to 143,405 PhD holders across the fields, including biologists, physicists, mathematicians, and engineers as well as linguists, philosophers, and anthropologists, with a 20% response rate. The results suggest that core principles about plagiarism are shared among this multidisciplinary community, thus corroborating Robert K. Merton's observations that concerns over plagiarism and priority disputes are not field specific. This study offers insight into the way plagiarism is perceived in the research community and sheds light on the problem in the context of international collaborative research networks. The data focus on a particular research system in Latin America, but, given the cultural similarities that bind most Latin-American nations, these results may be relevant to other PhD populations in the region and should provide an opportunity for comparison with studies from other emerging, non-Anglophone regions.

Estimating the prevalence of text overlap in biomedical conference abstracts

BACKGROUND

Scientists communicate progress and exchange information via publication and presentation at scientific meetings. We previously showed that text similarity analysis applied to Medline can identify and quantify plagiarism and duplicate publications in peer-reviewed biomedical journals. In the present study, we applied the same analysis to a large sample of conference abstracts.

METHODS

We downloaded 144,149 abstracts from 207 national and international meetings of 63 biomedical conferences. Pairwise comparisons were made using eTBLAST: a text similarity engine. A domain expert then reviewed random samples of highly similar abstracts (1500 total) to estimate the extent of text overlap and possible plagiarism.

RESULTS

Our main findings indicate that the vast majority of textual overlap occurred within the same meeting (2%) and between meetings of the same conference (3%), both of which were significantly higher than instances of plagiarism, which occurred in less than .5% of abstracts.

CONCLUSIONS

This analysis indicates that textual overlap in abstracts of papers presented at scientific meetings is one-tenth that of peer-reviewed publications, yet the plagiarism rate is approximately the same as previously measured in peer-reviewed publications. This latter finding underscores a need for monitoring scientific meeting submissions - as is now done when submitting manuscripts to peer-reviewed journals - to improve the integrity of scientific communications.

Survey study of research integrity officers' perceptions of research practices associated with instances of research misconduct

BACKGROUND

Research on research integrity has tended to focus on frequency of research misconduct and factors that might induce someone to commit research misconduct. A definitive answer to the first question has been elusive, but it remains clear that any research misconduct is too much. Answers to the second question are so diverse, it might be productive to ask a different question: What about how research is done allows research misconduct to occur?

METHODS

With that question in mind, research integrity officers (RIOs) of the 62 members of the American Association of Universities were invited to complete a brief survey about their most recent instance of a finding of research misconduct. Respondents were asked whether one or more good practices of research (e.g., openness and transparency, keeping good research records) were present in their case of research misconduct.

RESULTS

Twenty-four (24) of the respondents (39% response rate) indicated they had dealt with at least one finding of research misconduct and answered the survey questions. Over half of these RIOs reported that their case of research misconduct had occurred in an environment in which at least nine of the ten listed good practices of research were deficient.

CONCLUSIONS

These results are not evidence for a causal effect of poor practices, but it is arguable that committing research misconduct would be more difficult if not impossible in research environments adhering to good practices of research.

Institutional Approaches to Research Integrity in Ghana

Research misconduct (RM) remains an important problem in health research despite decades of local, national, regional, and international efforts to eliminate it. The ultimate goal of every health research project, irrespective of setting, is to produce trustworthy findings to address local as well as global health issues. To be able to lead or participate meaningfully in international research collaborations, individual and institutional capacities for research integrity (RI) are paramount. Accordingly, this paper concerns itself not only with individuals' research skills but also with institutional and national policies and governance. Such policies and governance provide an ethical scaffold for the production of knowledge and structure incentives. This paper's operational definition of research therefore draws from Institute of Medicine's articulation of health research as an inquiry that aims to produce knowledge about the structure, processes, or effects of personal health services; and from an existing health systems framework. The paper reviews the research regulatory environment and the ethics apparatus in Ghana, and describes a project jointly undertaken by Ghanaian researchers in collaboration with New York University to assess the perceived adequacy of current institutional practices, opportunities, and incentives for promoting RI.

Preprint Servers' Policies, Submission Requirements, and Transparency in Reporting and Research Integrity Recommendations

This study describes the policies, submission requirements, and transparency in reporting and research integrity recommendations of academic preprint servers.

Causes of the plagiarism: A grounded theory study

BACKGROUND

Plagiarism is an ethical and academic issue, which is affected by several factors.

OBJECTIVES

This study is an attempt to introduce a model for elaborating on the causes of plagiarism in Iran.

RESEARCH DESIGN

The study was carried out as a grounded theory study.

PARTICIPANTS AND RESEARCH CONTEXT

Data were collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews with 32 university professors and postgraduate students at Iranian universities of medical sciences. The participants were selected through purposeful and theoretical sampling. Data analysis was done following Strauss et al.'s work. To ensure study rigor, Lincoln and Guba's measures were used.

ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

RESULTS

A conceptual model of the causes of plagiarism was developed based on analyzing and coding the data. The main core of the model was the emergence of plagiarism, and other cores were (1) causal condition: lack of skills, pressure by education system, and lack of awareness; (2) intervening factors: technological advances, legal gaps, and lack of efficient supervision; (3) ground factors: personal traits and attitudes of the academic community; (4) strategy and interventions: role model, supervision, national/international coordination, and higher awareness; (5) outcomes: regeneration of plagiarism and negative attitudes toward Iranian authors in the world academic communities.

CONCLUSION

Several factors affect plagiarism. Among the approaches to attenuate plagiarism in Iranian academic communities are improving self-esteem and self-efficacy in Iranian researchers, emphasizing on quality rather than quantity of published works, discouraging boasting attitudes in the practitioners, denouncing intense competition among researchers, and introducing clear laws and severe punishments for plagiarism.

Advancing research integrity: a programme to embed good practice in Africa

In Africa, training programmes as well as institutional policies on research integrity are lacking. Institutions have a responsibility to oversee research integrity through various efforts, including policies and training. We developed, implemented and evaluated an institutional approach to promote research integrity at African institutions, comprising a workshop for researchers ("bottom-up") and discussions with senior faculty on institutional policies ("top-down"). During the first day, we facilitated a workshop to introduce research integrity and promote best practices with regards to authorship, plagiarism, redundant publication and conflicts of interest. We used a variety of interactive teaching approaches to facilitate learning, including individual and group activities, small group discussions and case-based learning. We met with senior faculty on the following day to provide feedback and insights from the workshop, review current institutional policies and provide examples of what other research groups are doing. We evaluated the process. Participants actively engaged in discussions, recognised the importance of the topic and acknowledged that poor practices occurred at their institution. Discussions with senior researchers resulted in the establishment of a working group tasked with developing a publication policy for the institution. Our approach kick-started conversations on research integrity at institutions. There is a need for continued discussions, integrated training programmes and implementation of institutional policies and guidelines to promote good practices.

Correcting duplicate publications: follow up study of MEDLINE tagged duplications

INTRODUCTION

As MEDLINE indexers tag similar articles as duplicates even when journals have not addressed the duplication(s), we sought to determine the reasons behind the tagged duplications, and if the journals had undertaken or had planned to undertake any actions to address them.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

On 16 January 2013, we extracted all tagged duplicate publications (DPs), analysed published notices, and then contacted MEDLINE and editors regarding cases unaddressed by notices. For non-respondents, we compared full text of the articles. We followed up the study for the next 5 years to see if any changes occurred.

RESULTS

We found 1011 indexed DPs, which represented 555 possible DP cases (in MEDLINE, both the original and the duplicate are assigned a DP tag). Six cases were excluded as we could not obtain their full text. Additional 190 (35%) cases were incorrectly tagged as DPs. Of 359 actual cases of DPs, 200 (54%) were due to publishers' actions (e.g. identical publications in the same journal), and 159 (46%) due to authors' actions (e.g. article submission to more than one journal). Of the 359 cases, 185 (52%) were addressed by notices, but only 25 (7%) retracted. Following our notifications, MEDLINE corrected 138 (73%) incorrectly tagged cases, and editors retracted 8 articles.

CONCLUSIONS

Despite clear policies on how to handle DPs, just half (54%) of the DPs in MEDLINE were addressed by journals and only 9% retracted. Publishers, editors, and indexers need to develop and implement standards for better correction of duplicate published records.

Whistle blowing and research integrity: Potential remedy for research misconduct in Malaysian institutions of higher education

This study found that less than half of the respondents are willing to blow the whistle. The results reveal that a lack of protection with regard to the whistleblower's identity, the tedious investigative process, and the notion of avoiding confrontation, which is more apparent in Asian cultures as compared to the West, are among the reasons why individuals who witnessed misconduct chose to remain silent. Adhering to the Asian cultural upbringing where the young must respect the old, those of lower rank must obey those with higher authority, and subordinates do not question the actions of their superior, has become a norm even in the working environment. Therefore, emphasize the need for better protection for whistleblowers including using experienced individuals with a research ethics background to handle allegations from whistleblowers. In addition, established guidelines and procedures for whistleblowers with regard to voicing their allegations against colleagues engaged in research misconduct is still lacking or, to a certain extent, is still unknown to researchers. Thus, the concern indicates a need for institutions to create awareness among researchers regarding the existing platform for whistleblowers, or to develop a systematic and clear procedure which is reliable and independent to promote professionalism in academia.

Research Misconduct in the Croatian Scientific Community: A Survey Assessing the Forms and Characteristics of Research Misconduct

The prevalence and characteristics of research misconduct have mainly been studied in highly developed countries. In moderately or poorly developed countries such as Croatia, data on research misconduct are scarce. The primary aim of this study was to determine the rates at which scientists report committing or observing the most serious forms of research misconduct, such as falsification , fabrication, plagiarism, and violation of authorship rules in the Croatian scientific community. Additionally, we sought to determine the degree of development and the extent of implementation of the system for defining and regulating research misconduct in a typical scientific community in Croatia. An anonymous questionnaire was distributed among 1232 Croatian scientists at the University of Rijeka in 2012/2013 and 237 (19.2 %) returned the survey. Based on the respondents who admitted having committed research misconduct, 9 (3.8 %) admitted to plagiarism, 22 (9.3 %) to data falsification, 9 (3.8 %) to data fabrication, and 60 (25.3 %) respondents admitted to violation of authorship rules. Based on the respondents who admitted having observed research misconduct of fellow scientists, 72 (30.4 %) observed plagiarism, 69 (29.1 %) observed data falsification, 46 (19.4 %) observed data fabrication, and 132 (55.7 %) respondents admitted having observed violation of authorship rules. The results of our study indicate that the efficacy of the system for managing research misconduct in Croatia is poor. At the University of Rijeka there is no document dedicated exclusively to research integrity, describing the values that should be fostered by a scientist and clarifying the forms of research misconduct and what constitutes a questionable research practice. Scientists do not trust ethical bodies and the system for defining and regulating research misconduct; therefore the observed cases of research misconduct are rarely reported. Finally, Croatian scientists are not formally educated about responsible conduct of research at any level of their formal education. All mentioned indicate possible reasons for higher rates of research misconduct among Croatian scientists in comparison with scientists in highly developed countries.

Best Practice to Order Authors in Multi/Interdisciplinary Health Sciences Research Publications

Misunderstanding and disputes about authorship are commonplace among members of multi/interdisciplinary health research teams. If left unmanaged and unresolved, these conflicts can undermine knowledge sharing and collaboration, obscure accountability for research, and contribute to the incorrect attribution of credit. To mitigate these issues, certain researchers suggest quantitative authorship distributions schemes (e.g., point systems), while others wish to replace or minimize the importance of authorship by using "contributorship"-a system based on authors' self-reporting contributions. While both methods have advantages, we argue that authorship and contributorship will most likely continue to coexist for multiple ethical and practical reasons. In this article, we develop a five-step "best practice" that incorporates the distribution of both contributorship and authorship for multi/interdisciplinary research. This procedure involves continuous dialogue and the use of a detailed contributorship taxonomy ending with a declaration explaining contributorship, which is used to justify authorship order. Institutions can introduce this approach in responsible conduct of research training as it promotes greater fairness, trust, and collegiality among team members and ultimately reduces confusion and facilitates resolution of time-consuming disagreements.

An international study of research misconduct policies

Research misconduct is an international concern. Misconduct policies can play a crucial role in preventing and policing research misconduct, and many institutions have developed their own policies. While institutional policies play a key role in preventing and policing misconduct, national policies are also important to ensure consistent promulgation and enforcement of ethical standards. The purpose of this study was to obtain more information about research misconduct policies across the globe. We found that twenty-two of the top forty research and development funding countries (55%) had a national misconduct policy. Four countries (18.2%) are in the process of developing a policy, and four (18.2%) have a national research ethics code but no misconduct policy. All twenty-two countries (100%) with national policies included fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism in the definition of misconduct, but beyond that there was considerable diversity. Unethical authorship was mentioned in 54.6% of the misconduct definitions, followed by unethical publication practices (36.4%), conflict of interest mismanagement (36.4%), unethical peer review (31.8%), misconduct related to misconduct investigations (27.3%), poor record keeping (27.3%), other deception (27.3%), serious deviations (22.7%), violating confidentiality (22.7%), and human or animal research violations (22.7%). Having a national policy was positively associated with research and development funding ranking and intensiveness. To promote integrity in international research collaborations, countries should seek to harmonize and clarify misconduct definitions and develop procedures for adjudicating conflicts when harmonization does not occur.

Critical evaluation of the guidelines of the Finnish Advisory Board on Research Integrity and of their application

We have national guidelines for the responsible conduct of research (RCR) and procedures for handling allegations of misconduct in Finland. The guidelines have been formulated and updated by the Finnish Advisory Board on Research Integrity (TENK). In this article, we introduce and evaluate the national RCR guidelines. We also present statistics of alleged and proven RCR violation cases and frequency of appeals to TENK on the decisions or procedures of the primary institutions. In addition, we analyze the available data on seven investigated cases in more detail. Positive aspects in the Finnish system are a fairly good infrastructure to investigate suspected RCR violations and a wide concept of RCR violations, which consists of fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, misappropriation, and other misbehaviors. However, the guidelines contain poorly elaborated definitions, do not treat the complainant and the suspect in an equal way, and need to be revised. Confusion about the concepts and criteria of the RCR violations seems to be common in primary institutions and among the complainants. Even if research institutions and universities have officially adhered to the national RCR guidelines, slipping from the guidelines occurs quite commonly. All these factors lead to frequent dissatisfaction with the decisions or procedures applied, high rate of appeals to TENK, and far from optimal functionality of the system.

A Proposed Strategy for Research Misconduct Policy: A Review on Misconduct Management in Health Research System

BACKGROUND

Today, with the rapid growth of scientific production, research misconduct has become a worldwide problem. This article is intended to introduce the successful experience on the management of research paper misconducts in the field of health research.

METHODS

Our aim was to design and develop the strategy for research misconduct policy. Focusing on the national regulatory system, we developed a hierarchical model for paper misconduct policy in all the medical sciences universities and their affiliated research units.

RESULTS

Through our regulatory policy for paper misconduct management, specific protocol was followed in the field of health research publications through which the capabilities of covering the four main elements of prevention, investigation, punishment, and correction have come together.

CONCLUSIONS

Considering the proposed strategy, regarding the strengths and weaknesses, utilization of evaluation tool can be one of the best strategies to achieving the prospective of health research papers by 2025.

Research Misconduct: The Peril of Publish or Perish

There is a spurt of interest in research productivity in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to lay the foundation for national development. From a global perspective, increased research productivity could conceivably be accompanied by an exponential increase in research misconduct (RM). Inevitably, erroneous or falsified data will be expected to adversely affect public health by misleading policy makers and clinicians alike into embarking on health policy and allocation of resources that are byproducts of RM. This will contribute significantly to the emerging crisis of confidence of the public in the integrity of scientific research. For a long time, RM has been considered only as plagiarism or data fabrication and falsification. However, the concept of RM nowadays encompasses more and, in this review, we discuss its possible implications in emerging economies, such as those of the GCC countries. We suggest that GCC countries ought to consider implementing remedial and punitive policies to deal with RM.

Scientists Admitting to Plagiarism: A Meta-analysis of Surveys

We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of anonymous surveys asking scientists whether they ever committed various forms of plagiarism. From May to December 2011 we searched 35 bibliographic databases, five grey literature databases and hand searched nine journals for potentially relevant studies. We included surveys that asked scientists if, in a given recall period, they had committed or knew of a colleague who committed plagiarism, and from each survey extracted the proportion of those who reported at least one case. Studies that focused on academic (i.e. student) plagiarism were excluded. Literature searches returned 12,460 titles from which 17 relevant survey studies were identified. Meta-analysis of studies reporting committed (N = 7) and witnessed (N = 11) plagiarism yielded a pooled estimate of, respectively, 1.7% (95% CI 1.2-2.4) and 30% (95% CI 17-46). Basic methodological factors, including sample size, year of survey, delivery method and whether survey questions were explicit rather than indirect made a significant difference on survey results. Even after controlling for these methodological factors, between-study differences in admission rates were significantly above those expected by sampling error alone and remained largely unexplained. Despite several limitations of the data and of this meta-analysis, we draw three robust conclusions: (1) The rate at which scientists report knowing a colleague who committed plagiarism is higher than for data fabrication and falsification; (2) The rate at which scientists report knowing a colleague who committed plagiarism is correlated to that of fabrication and falsification; (3) The rate at which scientists admit having committed either form of misconduct (i.e. fabrication, falsification and plagiarism) in surveys has declined over time.

Post-approval monitoring and oversight of U.S.-initiated human subjects research in resource-constrained countries

The history of human subjects research and controversial procedures in relation to it has helped form the field of bioethics. Ethically questionable elements may be identified during research design, research implementation, management at the study site, or actions by a study's investigator or other staff. Post-approval monitoring (PAM) may prevent violations from occurring or enable their identification at an early stage. In U.S.-initiated human subjects research taking place in resource-constrained countries with limited development of research regulatory structures, arranging a site visit from a U.S. research ethics committee (REC) becomes difficult, thus creating a potential barrier to regulatory oversight by the parent REC. However, this barrier may be overcome through the use of digital technologies, since much of the world has at least remote access to the Internet. Empirical research is needed to pilot test the use of these technologies for research oversight to ensure the protection of human subjects taking part in research worldwide.

Authorship ethics in global health research partnerships between researchers from low or middle income countries and high income countries

BACKGROUND

Over the past two decades, the promotion of collaborative partnerships involving researchers from low and middle income countries with those from high income countries has been a major development in global health research. Ideally, these partnerships would lead to more equitable collaboration including the sharing of research responsibilities and rewards. While collaborative partnership initiatives have shown promise and attracted growing interest, there has been little scholarly debate regarding the fair distribution of authorship credit within these partnerships.

DISCUSSION

In this paper, we identify four key authorship issues relevant to global health research and discuss their ethical and practical implications. First, we argue that authorship guidance may not adequately apply to global health research because it requires authors to write or substantially revise the manuscript. Since most journals of international reputation in global health are written in English, this would systematically and unjustly exclude non-English speaking researchers even if they have substantially contributed to the research project. Second, current guidance on authorship order does not address or mitigate unfair practices which can occur in global health research due to power differences between researchers from high and low-middle income countries. It also provides insufficient recognition of "technical tasks" such as local participant recruitment. Third, we consider the potential for real or perceived editorial bias in medical science journals in favour of prominent western researchers, and the risk of promoting misplaced credit and/or prestige authorship. Finally, we explore how diverse cultural practices and expectations regarding authorship may create conflict between researchers from low-middle and high income countries and contribute to unethical authorship practices. To effectively deal with these issues, we suggest: 1) undertaking further empirical and conceptual research regarding authorship in global health research; 2) raising awareness on authorship issues in global health research; and 3) developing specific standards of practice that reflect relevant considerations of authorship in global health research.

SUMMARY

Through review of the bioethics and global health literatures, and examination of guidance documents on ethical authorship, we identified a set of issues regarding authorship in collaborative partnerships between researchers from low-middle income countries and high income countries. We propose several recommendations to address these concerns.

Getting closer to a fully correctable and connected research literature

The PLOS Medicine Editors discuss the need for a dynamic publishing system that enables linkage to corrections of errors in scientific literature (whatever their source) and full integration of articles with post-publication commentary.