An Ethical Decision‐Making Model to Determine Authorship Credit in Published Faculty–Student Collaborations

Publishing research is imperative to both counselor educators and students in counseling programs. Furthermore, faculty–student publication collaborations can often be a mutually beneficial professional endeavor. However, determining order of authorship can be a complex ethical issue. The authors review prior research to illustrate the complexities of authorship and suggest a decision‐making model and considerations for preventing and resolving these ethical dilemmas. Implications for counselors include future research studies on complex issues regarding authorship of faculty–student collaborations, future incidence studies investigating occurrence of ethics violations, and incorporation of publication ethics into course work in counselor education programs.     

Perceptions of Ethical Problems with Scientific Journal Peer Review: An Exploratory Study

This article reports the results of an anonymous survey of researchers at a government research institution concerning their perceptions about ethical problems with journal peer review. Incompetent review was the most common ethical problem reported by the respondents, with 61.8% (SE = 3.3%) claiming to have experienced this at some point during peer review. Bias (50.5%, SE = 3.4%) was the next most common problem. About 22.7% (SE = 2.8%) of respondents said that a reviewer had required them to include unnecessary references to his/her publication(s), 17.7% (SE = 2.6%) said that comments from reviewers had included personal attacks, and 9.6% (SE = 2.0%) stated that reviewers had delayed publication to publish a paper on the same topic. Two of the most serious violations of peer review ethics, breach of confidentiality (6.8%, SE = 1.7%) and using ideas, data, or methods without permission (5%, SE = 1.5%) were perceived less often than the other problems. We recommend that other investigators follow up on our exploratory research with additional studies on the ethics of peer review.     

Ethics in Publication

Summary

This article highlights ethical issues in publication. It addresses the provenance of ideas, problems with joint authorship, plagiarism, and the practice of duplicate submission of material for publication. Confidentiality and privacy matters, and the protection of human subjects in publication of research and clinical case studies are also discussed. The article further examines biases in literature reviews, and in the biased selection of one's best results for publication, intentional misinterpretation of data and the slanting of discussion, summary, and conclusions. Finally, the article deals with ethical problems that can arise in the publication of sponsored research, and the ethical responsibilities of editors and readers.     

Elliott’s Ethics of Expertise Proposal and Application: A Dangerous Precedent

In a recent paper in Science and Engineering Ethics (SEE) Elliott proposed an ethics of expertise, providing its theoretical foundation along with its application in a case study devoted to the topic of hormesis. The application is based on a commentary in the journal Nature, and it includes assertions of ethical breaches. Elliott concludes that the authors of the commentary failed to promote the informed consent of decision makers by not providing representative information about alternative frequency estimates of hormesis in the literature, thereby hindering the capacity of the scientific community to promote informed consent relating to chemical regulation. This paper argues that Elliott should have incorporated due process into his system of evaluation. His argument is also seriously deficient technically, in that it misinterprets the toxicological issues, misrepresents the scientific literature with respect to the frequency of hormesis, and incorrectly assesses the extent to which the Nature paper revealed opposing/alternative views on hormesis. Given the seriousness of assertions of noncompliance to ethical norms, there must be procedures to protect those whose ethics were called into question, to fairly evaluate the technical justification for an assertion, and to enable corrections in the event of errors. If a journal is willing to publish assertions that individuals acted in an ethically questionable way, it should be guided by a documented code of ethics and meet a standard of responsibility far greater than normal peer-review processes for papers that do not entail such ethical judgments.     

Clinical Audit and Reform of the UK Research Ethics Review System

There is an international consensus that medical research involving humans should only be undertaken in accordance with ethical principles. Paradoxically though, there is no consensus over the kinds of activities that constitute research and should be subject to review. In the UK and elsewhere, research requiring review is distinguished from clinical audit. Unfortunately the two activities are not always easy to differentiate from one another. Moreover, as the volume of audit increases and becomes more formal in response to the demand for evidence-based practice in medicine, the overlap between research and audit grows more acute. Arguably, similar ethical standards and systems for ensuring that those standards are met should be applied regardless of whether or not a project is classified as research or audit. At a time when the research ethics review system in the UK is undergoing significant reform it is important that the opportunity is not missed to address the longstanding research-audit problem. We discuss suggestions for further reform that addresses this issue.     

THE FILE DRAWER EFFECT AND PUBLICATION RATES IN MENSTRUAL CYCLE RESEARCH

The file drawer problem refers to a publication bias for positive results, leading to studies which support the null hypothesis being relegated to the file drawer. The assumption is that researchers are unable to publish studies with nonsignificant findings. A survey of investigators studying the menstrual cycle showed this assumption to be unwarranted. Much of the research did not lend itself to a hypothesis-testing model. A more important contribution to the likelihood of publication was research productivity, and researchers whose first study was published were more likely to have continued their work.     

Publishing Ethical Research: A Step‐by‐Step Overview

To publish ethical research, one must conduct research responsibly, making ethical choices from the inception of the research idea and throughout the research process. Conducting and publishing ethical research is important because of the impact the results will have on the counseling profession. Steps to consider are discussed.     

Evaluation of publication bias in response interruption and redirection: A meta-analysis

Publication bias is the disproportionate representation of studies with large effects and statistically significant findings in the published research literature. If publication bias occurs in single-case research design studies on applied behavior-analytic (ABA) interventions, it can result in inflated estimates of ABA intervention effects. We conducted an empirical evaluation of publication bias on an evidence-based ABA intervention for children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, response interruption and redirection (RIRD). We determined effect size estimates for published and unpublished studies using 3 metrics, percentage of nonoverlapping data (PND), Hedges' g, and log response ratios (LRR). Omnibus effect size estimates across all 3 metrics were positive, supporting that RIRD is an effective treatment for reducing problem behavior maintained by nonsocial consequences. We observed larger PND for published compared to unpublished studies, small and nonsignificant differences in LRR for published compared to unpublished studies, and significant differences in Hedges' g for published compared to unpublished studies, with published studies showing slightly larger effect. We found little, if any, difference in methodological quality between published and unpublished studies. While RIRD appears to be an effective intervention for challenging behavior maintained by nonsocial consequences, our results reflect some degree of publication bias present in the RIRD research literature.     

Can authorship policies help prevent scientific misconduct? What role for scientific societies?

The purpose of this article is to encourage and help inform active discussion of authorship policies among members of scientific societies. The article explains the history and rationale of the influential criteria for authorship developed by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, examines questions about those criteria that emerge from authorship policies adopted by several U.S. medical schools, and summarizes the arguments for replacing authorship with the contributor-guarantor model. Finally, it concludes with a plea for scientific societies to play a prominent role in the ongoing debates about authorship and the alternatives as part of their efforts to encourage ethical conduct among their members. Whether or not scientific societies develop authorship policies of their own, they should undertake vigorous educational efforts to keep their new members adequately informed about the importance of authorship practices in ethical scientific research and publication.     

An introduction to research ethics

Practical issues throughout scientific research can be found to have an ethical aspect. There is a gray area in which scientific error (“honest error”) may be difficult to distinguish from unacceptably poor research practice or an unethical failure to follow scientific norms. Further, there is no clear margin between deceptive practices which are widely accepted and those which must be considered fraudulent. Practical problems arise in matters of data management and presentation, authorship, publication practices, “grantsmanship”, and rights of research trainees, as well as the well-recognized areas of human and animal experimentation. Beyond the gray areas, the legal definition of research misconduct is discussed in relation to research fraud, and the latest proposed definition of the Commission on Research Integrity is briefly reviewed. It is noted that the standards of ethical research are changing. Finally, there is a comment on the idea of institutional integrity in research, and the critical role of the mentor in transmitting research standards to the next generation.     

Twenty years of experimental philosophy research

This paper reports the first study in the literature that adopts a bibliometric approach to systematically explore the scholarship in the young and fast-growing research field of experimental philosophy. Based on a corpus of 1,248 publications in experimental philosophy from the past two decades retrieved from the PhilPapers website, the study examined the publication trend, the influential experimental philosophers, the impactful works, the popular publication venues, and the major research themes in this subarea of philosophy. It found, first, an overall growing trend in publications in experimental philosophy, encompassing four developmental stages. Second, it found that significant changes in topics of interest have taken place, with some gaining increasing attention, others seemingly going out of fashion, and still others remaining popular constantly. Third, the study identified lists of leading philosophers, frequently cited publications, and popular journals helpful for researchers and newcomers to get a quick start in learning about the field.     

What Should I Be Doing, and Where Are They Doing It? Scholarly Productivity of Academic Psychologists

ABSTRACT— Scholarly productivity is used to index faculty achievement, but normative data on publication rates among academic psychologists are scarce. This article presents the results of a study of 1,216 faculty members from 96 schools, ranging from elite research universities to minor undergraduate colleges. As expected, faculty members at research universities publish the most, followed by those at elite 4-year schools and other doctoral institutions. Institutional prestige has little effect on productivity, except that elite universities employ a greater proportion of truly eminent scholars than other schools do. The fact that many of these scholars are hired by elite schools after achieving eminence elsewhere suggests that financial prowess, rather than institutional climate, produces the latter effect. Academics at all of these types of schools tend to continue publishing throughout their careers; achieving tenure has little effect on their subsequent scholarship. Faculty members at master's universities and lesser 4-year schools publish less than others and tend to cease publication activity after about 10 years, presumably upon receiving tenure. Males tend to publish more than females during the initial push for tenure, but not thereafter; females, unlike males, tend to increase their publication rates as they mature professionally. A subset of highly productive males who are moving toward more prestigious types of schools accounts for much of the remaining gender difference. The number of predoctoral publications is a relatively weak predictor of postdoctoral scholarship.     

论临床试验中的治疗性误解及对策

研究和临床治疗在根本目的、基本方法、风险的正当性,以及应遵循的伦理原则等多方面都存在着根本性的区别。在临床试验的理论与实践中,混淆治疗与研究两者的区别,就会造成治疗性误解,从而违背科研伦理的知情同意原则,损害受试者的利益。以研究和治疗的区分为出发点,对治疗性误解的原因、引起的主要伦理问题及对策加以讨论。     

Publication visibility of sensitive public health data: When scientists bury their results

What happens when the scientific tradition of openness clashes with potential societal risks? The work of American toxic-exposure epidemiologists can attract media coverage and lead the public to change health practices, initiate lawsuits, or take other steps a study’s authors might consider unwarranted. This paper, reporting data from 61 semi-structured interviews with U.S. toxic-exposure epidemiologists, examines whether such possibilities shaped epidemiologists’ selection of journals for potentially sensitive papers. Respondents manifested strong support for the norm of scientific openness, but a significant minority had or would/might, given the right circumstances, publish sensitive data in less visible journals, so as to prevent unwanted media or public attention. Often, even those advocating such limited “burial” upheld openness, claiming that less visible publication allowed them to avoid totally withholding the data from publication. However, 15% of the sample had or would, for the most sensitive types of data, withhold publication altogether. Rather than respondents explaining their actions in terms of an expected split between “pure science” and “social advocacy” models, even those publishing in the more visible journals often described their actions in terms of their “responsibility”. Several practical limitations (particularly involving broader access to scientific literature via the Internet) of the strategy of burial are discussed, and some recommendations are offered for scientists, the media, and the public.     

Beyond Data Collection: Ethical Issues in Minority Research

This article examines ethical concerns surrounding research on minority issues. Specifically, it addresses whether researchers have an obligation to consider (a) the impact that minority research can have on vulnerable populations and (b) their own backgrounds before conducting or assessing minority research for publication. The article argues for such an obligation mainly from a consequentialist perspective and then explores possible strategies for assessing and meeting that obligation. Finally, it explores the possible negative secondary effects of those strategies and censorship concerns.     

Publication rates of Australian academic psychologists

This study focused on publication rates of Australian academic psychologists. A random selection of 12 of the 36 Australian universities with psychology programs produced a total of 272 academics with the academic ranks of lecturer, senior lecturer, associate professor, or professor. A search of the PsycINFO database provided lists of publications for each academic. Using all listed publications except corrections and dissertations, the search found approximately a doubling pattern for number of publications going up each step of the rank ladder. Academics from universities that are members of the research‐intensive Group of Eight universities had significantly higher publication averages at every rank than academics at other universities. Male academics had higher publication rates than female academics, but gender differences accounted for only a small amount of variance in the number of publications. The publication rates have potential value in allowing academic psychologists to compare their publication rate with that of their peers, in helping universities make hiring and promotion decisions, and in helping organisations that provide research grants evaluate the publications records of grant applicants.     

Redundant publication in biomedical sciences: Scientific misconduct or necessity?

Redundant publication in biomedical sciences is the presentation of the same information or data set more than once. Forms of redundant publication include “salami slicing”, in which similar text accompanies data presented in disaggregated fashion in different publications and “duplicate or multiple publication” in which identical information is presented with a virtually identical text. Estimates of prevalence of the phenomenon put it at 10 to 25% of published literature. Redundant publication can be considered unethical, or fraudulent, when the author(s) attempt to conceal the existence of duplicate publication from editors and readers. Redundant publication in the area of clinical trials is potentially dangerous as it tends to overestimate the effects of interventions. The scientific community at large and governments should take urgent steps to safeguard the public from the possible effects of fraudulent multiple publications.     

Scientific societies and research integrity: What are they doing and how well are they doing it?

Scientific societies can play an important role in promoting ethical research practices among their members, and over the past two decades several studies have addressed how societies perform this role. This survey continues this research by examining current efforts by scientific societies to promote research integrity among their members. The data indicate that although many of the societies are working to promote research integrity through ethics codes and activities, they lack rigorous assessment methods to determine the effectiveness of their efforts. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the AAAS-Office of Research Integrity (ORI) meeting in Washington DC on the theme: “The Role and Activities of Scientific Societies in Promoting Research Integrity” held on April 10–11, 2000.