#83 Publishing Ethics

Hey friends,

Recently, I conducted a webinar on retractions. (you can watch the recording here in case you missed it)

I got lots of questions on publishing practices and ethics
During the webinar I talked about a few reasons why papers get retracted and the impact of retractions on someone’s career

Publication ethics is one of those topics most researchers don’t really think about
Until something goes wrong.

• A paper gets rejected
• An editor or some researchers raise a red flag
• Or a reviewer points out an issue you genuinely didn’t know was a problem
• Then comes an investigation

And then you think:
If I don’t even know this was an ethical issue… how am I supposed to avoid it?

The goal of my recent webinar was to raise awareness.

Most of us want the same things:
To write good papers.
To publish in reputable journals
To move our research forward with no drama

But academic publishing comes with rules
Ethical rules.
These rules apply to how the research is done and how it is written & published

A few examples of problems you might have heard of:

• Plagiarism
• Authorship issues
• Undeclared funding or conflicts of interest
• Unclear or questionable data practices

All of this impact trust
The trust in researchers and the trust in science so others can rely on it and build on it

Here, I want to talk about the issues researchers most commonly run into.

Plagiarism is one of the top reasons papers are rejected
Especially for early-career researchers and non-native English speakers
Plagiarism is when you present someone else’s work as your own without proper acknowledgement

Some journals check your manuscript to see how similar it is with existing papers. If the similarity score is quite high, they will investigate and ask for explanations.
If they are not convinced you manuscript gets rejected

So how do you avoid plagiarism?

• Get permission before reusing figures or tables
• Use quotation marks if you quote someone
• Cite sources clearly in the text and reference list

Conflicts of interest are another area for ethical issues.

Imagine you work in the pharmacology field, you do your research but do not mention that you get funding from a large pharma company.
You need to disclose that even if you believe they do not influence your study and results

Be as transparent as possible here

Data integrity is equally important
Now, it’s relatively easy to make up data, to fabricate information

You will see more and more journals asking for raw data, supplementary files
the goal is to make sure the results you present are accurate and reproducible

If false data or fabricated data is suspected, editors may open an investigation or reject the paper

Now you will see that across all of these issues, the common pillar is transparency.

No one is perfect but the main point here is to be clear, honest, and responsible

Well, that’s all for this week.

See you next Sunday
Jamal