Scientific misconducts and authorship conflicts: Indian perspective

Author misrepresentation of institutional affiliations: protocol for an exploratory case study

INTRODUCTION

University ranking systems and the publish-or-perish dictum, among other factors, are driving universities and researchers around the world to increase their research productivity. Authors frequently report multiple affiliations in published articles. It is not known if the reported institutional affiliations are real affiliations, which is when the universities have contributed substantially to the research conducted and to the published manuscript. This study aims to establish whether there is an empirical basis for author affiliation misrepresentation in authors with multiple institutional affiliations.

METHODS AND ANALYSIS

This individual secondary data exploratory analysis on Scopus-indexed articles for 2016 will search all authors who report multiple institutional affiliations in which at least one of the affiliations is to a Chilean university. We will consider that misrepresentation of an affiliation is more likely when it is not possible to verify objectively a link between the author and the mentioned institution through institutional websites. If we cannot corroborate the author affiliation, we will consider this a finding of potential misrepresentation of the affiliation. We will summarise results with descriptive statistics.

ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION

The study protocol was approved by the institutional ethics committee of Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Resolution No. 261, and dated January 15, 2018. Results will be submitted to the World Conference on Research Integrity, among other meetings on publication ethics and research integrity, and will be published in scientific, peer-reviewed journals.

Instructions to Prospective Authors by Indian Biomedical Journals: An Opportunity to Promote Responsible Conduct of Research

Journals provide instructions to prospective authors to facilitate the process of manuscript publication. The information provided under such instructions could be a potential opportunity to promote responsible conduct of research (RCR). We analyzed 74 Indian biomedical journals for the type of information provided in the “instructions to authors” section and adherence to the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommendations. Among the 71 journals that had an “instructions to authors” section, 53 journals adhered to ICMJE recommendations. We discuss sections of the ICMJE recommendations detailed by Indian biomedical journals under the “instructions to authors” section and emphasize components that require greater exposure.

Faculty promotions in medical institutions in India: Can we improve the criteria?

Research publications are desirable for academic promotion in medical colleges as per the current rules of the Medical Council of India (MCI). These rules reflect an endeavour to improve the academic standards. We strongly believe that every medical college teacher should conduct true research and contribute to good peer-reviewed publications. However, it is felt that the MCI rule has the potential to lead to undesirable consequences, and the quality of teaching and learning could take a back-seat. There is an urgent need to adopt more objective criteria and better guidelines as followed by well-known global institutes. In our own country, the University Grants Commission has formulated specific guidelines for this purpose in the form of Academic Performance Indicators which, it appears, are not taken into consideration by the MCI. This article discusses the adverse impact of the rule and suggests ways for the adoption of a more scientific assessment system for faculty appointment and promotion.