Challenges in Resposible Conduct in Research

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»The project will be implemented in line with the Operational Programme for Human Resources Development 2007-2013, 3rd priority axis: Development of human resources and lifelong learning, activity 3.3: Quality, competitiveness and responsiveness of higher education.«

Challenges in Resposible Conduct in Research

Professor Zdravko Lackovic, MD, PhD University of Zagreb School ofMedicine

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In the ethics of science questions of scientific misconduct and fraud are very important they include:

fabrication and falsification: differences are merely quantitative: fabrication means that the data are completely made up, while falsification sometimes could be only results of “polishing” existing results. Consequences of fabrication and falsification could be very serious from economic losses to damage of human health or even death plagiarism is a sort of steeling the work (without citing the source), violating copyright (research results, illustration etc). In digital age some form of plagiarism becomes very frequent; for example stilling the illustrations from Internet without citing the source.

Damage to peers sometimes could be very serious. Self plagiarism is reproduction of someone own work trice or more without citing that it was communicated before (in research usually it has a form of “double publication” of the same work without acknowledging this fact. Damage, is done mostly to peers who behave in a honest way.

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Authorship

…”explicit way giving credit for intellectual work but assigning responsibility as well. Authorship is important to the reputation, academic promotion, and grant support of the individuals

involved as well as to the strength and reputation of their institution”.

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Cont.

„In practice, various inducements have fostered authorship practices that fall short of these standards.

Junior investigators may believe that including senior colleagues as authors will improve the credibility of their work and its chances of publication, whether or not those colleagues have made substantial intellectual contributions to the

work. They may not want to offend their chiefs, who hold substantial power over their employment, research opportunities, and recommendations for jobs and promotion.

Senior faculty might wish to be seen as productive researchers even though their other responsibilities prevent them from making direct contributions to their colleagues' work. They may have developed their views of authorship when

senior investigators were listed as authors because of their logistic, financial, and administrative support alone.

Disputes sometimes arise about who should be listed as authors of an intellectual product and the order in which they should be listed.

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Questionable authorship practice; ghost and guest authors

“Ghost writers”, authors who write scientific papers for others without being listed as authors (for example professional “medical writers”). “Ghost

authors” on the other hand are authors who did research and planned it e.g.

statistician, young scientist but are not mentioned on the list of authors.

Often people put on the papers name of authors who did not at all participate in the research or if they did their contribution was insignificant- “gift authors”,

“guest authors”. Honorary authorship is the authorship of the person who is a project leader and as a part of whose project a paper was written. This type of authorship is usually regarding to be acceptable and for this type of authorship a term “senior author is used”.

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Motivation to commit scientific misconduct

Career pressure. Science is still a very strongly career-driven discipline. Scientists depend on a good reputation to receive ongoing support and funding, and a good reputation relies largely on the publication of high-profile scientific papers. Hence, there is a strong

imperative to "publish or perish". Clearly, this may motivate desperate (or fame-hungry) scientists to fabricate results. Ease of fabricationIn many scientific fields, results are often difficult to reproduce accurately, being obscured by noise, artifacts, and other extraneous data. That means that even if a scientist does falsify data, they can expect to get away with it – or at least claim innocence if their results conflict with others in the same field. There are no "scientific police" who are trained to fight scientific crimes; all investigations are made by experts in science but amateurs in dealing with criminals. It is relatively easy to cheat although difficult to know exactly how many scientists fabricate data.

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Retraction in Science

In science, a retraction of a published scientific article indicates that the original article should not have been published and that its data and conclusions should not be used as part of the

foundation for future research. The most common reasons for the retraction of articles are scientific misconduct including plagiarism, serious errors, and duplicate/concurrent publishing (self-plagiarism).

Linda B Buck: 2004 Nobel Prize laureate together with Richard Axel"for their discoveries of odorant receptors and the organization of the

olfactory system„

Zou Z, Li F, Buck LB. Odor maps in the olfactory cortex. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2005;102(21):7724-9.

Zou Z, Buck LB. Combinatorial effects of odorant mixes in olfactory cortex. Science. 2006;311(5766):1477-81.

Retraction Watch

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The Top 10 Retractions of 2014

A look at this year’s most memorable retractions

By Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky | December 23, 2014

Khalid Zaman

MOST ORIGINAL: Sixteen papers are being retracted across three Elsevier journals after the publisher discovered that one of the authors, Khalid Zaman, orchestrated fake peer reviews by submitting false contact information for his suggested reviewers (all with non-institutional addresses).

MOST TRAGIC: STAP stem cell paper retractions from Nature. Readers detected significant problems with the research, and Haruko Obokata, who led the studies, was ultimately unable to replicate the findings. One co-author Yoshiki Sasai, was not responsible for any misconduct, but committed suicide following the scandal.

IS IT UNUSUAL? In July, the publisher SAGE retracted 60 articles from the Journal of Vibration and Control after an investigation revealed a “peer review and citation ring” in which at least one professor in Taiwan, Peter Chen, allegedly assumed false identities to promote his own work.

STRIKE BACK: Circulation retracted a 2012 study by a group of Harvard heart specialists over concerns of corrupt data, and the university is investigating. The group was led by P. Anversa, a leading cardiologist, who along with a colleague filed suit against the institution on the grounds that the inquiry was damaging to his career...

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According to the ICMJE, overlapping publications are acceptable if:

a) The second publication includes more than 10% of new test subjects which have confirmed the results of the previous publication

b) The second publication includes more than 15% of new test subjects which have confirmed the results of the previous publication

c) One is published in English and another one in German

d) You have been given written consent from the editors of both journals e) None of the above justifies overlapping publications

Examples from questionnaire used at PhD Program Zagreb University

School of Medicine

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Examples from questionnaire used at PhD Program Zagreb University

School of Medicine

An author of the publication must be:

a) Someone who has secured the biggest part of the research funding b) Head of the laboratory, department or institution

c) Someone who has done the majority of physical work

d) Someone who has made a key contribution to the idea and writing e) None of the above

f) All of the above

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A student helped you with a laboratory experiment considerably but has not, because of the time spent, managed to study the literature or the reasons behind research. You have mentioned him in the acknowledgements but did not put him as the co-author. This was a mistake

because

this is the violation of intellectual property.

Examples from questionnaire used

at PhD Program Zagreb University

School of Medicine

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Authorship

1. Everyone who is listed as an author should have made a substantial, direct, intellectual contribution to the work. For example (in the case of a research report) they should have contributed to the conception, design, analysis and/or interpretation of data. Honorary or guest authorship is not acceptable. Acquisition of funding and provision of technical services, patients, or materials, while they may be essential to the work, are not in themselves sufficient contributions to justify authorship.

2. Everyone who has made substantial intellectual contributions to the work should be an author. Everyone who has made other substantial contributions should be acknowledged.

3. When research is done by teams whose members are highly specialized, individuals' contributions and responsibility may be limited to specific aspects of the work.

4. All authors should participate in writing the manuscript by reviewing drafts and approving the final version.

5. One author should take primary responsibility for the work as a whole even if he or she does not have an in- depth understanding of every part of the work.

6. This primary author should assure that all authors meet basic standards for authorship and should prepare a concise, written description of their contributions to the work, which has been approved by all authors. This record should remain with the sponsoring department.

December 17, 1999

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Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals

The ICMJE recommends that authorship be based on the following 4 criteria:

1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND

2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content;

AND

3. Final approval of the version to be published; AND

4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

the same principles apply to all intellectual products: words or images; in paper or

electronic media; whether published or prepared for local use; in scientific disciplines or the humanities; and whether intended for the dissemination of new discoveries and ideas, for published reviews of existing knowledge, or for educational programs.

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Due to its importance for scientific advancement, authors often reference their own papers without just cause in order to increase the number of their own citations

Citation as a challange of

scientific integritiy

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LIMITATION OF CITATIONS: Impact of autocitations (real exmples), data from Scopus 2015

Total citations: 655 H index: 11

Without

selfcitations: 619 H index: 10

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Total citations: 1587 H indeks: 24

Without

selfcitations: 323 H index: 9

LIMITATION OF CITATIONS: Impact of autocitations

(real exmples, 2015), data from Scopus 2015

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MISCONDUCT BY JOURNALS:

Scientific, technical, and medical (STM) literature is a large industry which generated

$23.5 billion in revenue

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Beall’s List: Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers

Editor and Staff

 The journal does not identify a formal editorial / review board…

 No academic information is provided regarding the editor, editorial staff, and/or review board members (e.g., institutional affiliation).

 Evident data exist showing that the editor and/or review board members do not possess academic expertise to reasonably qualify them to be publication

gatekeepers in the journal’s field… etc…

Integrity

 The name of a journal is incongruent with the journal’s mission.

 The journal falsely claims to have an impact factor, or uses some made up measure (e.g. view factor), feigning international standing…etc…

Some characteristics of predatory publishers and journals

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Some predatory Journals in Health Sciences (Beall’s List)

American Journal of Pharmacy and Health Research (AJPHR)

American Journal of PharmTech Research (AJPTR)

American Journal of Phytomedicine and Clinical Therapeutics

Archives of Pharmacy Practice

Asian Journal of Health and Medical Sciences

Asian Journal of Pharmaceutical and Health Sciences

 Asian Journal of Pharmacy and Life Science

 Asian Journal of Pharmaceutical Research and Health Care (AJPRHC)

 Australasian Journal of Herpetology

 British Biomedical Bulletin

 Bulletin of Pharmaceutical Research

 Case Studies Journals

Global Journal of Medicine and Public Health

Indian Journal of Applied-Basic Medical Sciences

Indo American Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

 Indo-Global Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences

International Journal of Biomedical Science

 International Journal of Health Research International Journal of Life science and Pharma Research

 International Journal of Medical Science and Public Health (IJMSPH)

 International Journal of Medical Sciences and Health Care (IJMSHC)

 International Journal of Medical Research & Health Sciences (IJMRHS)

 International Journal of Medicine and Biomedical Research

 International Journal of Medicine and Biosciences

 International Journal of Medicobiologial Research

 ternational Journal of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Research International Journal of Pharmacy

 International Journal of Pharmacy and Technology (IJPT)

 International Journal of Research in Ayurveda and Pharmacy Journal of Advances in Internal Medicine

 Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (JPANDS