Scholarly publishing: The elephant (and other wildlife) in the room
https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org...-the-elephant-and-other-wildlife-in-the-room/
The clichéd notion of ‘publish or perish’ has gotten so deep into our scholarly DNA that we religiously follow it without questioning. Unless there is a massive mutation in our journal-based communication system, we cannot expect transformative change....
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Exposing predatory journals: anonymous sleuthing account goes public (interview with
Jeffrey Beall)
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03321-5
I think the term predatory publishing doesn’t adequately capture the scope of what we’re now facing. For one thing, there’s no single definition that everybody agrees on, and there are many other areas which might be a larger threat to the scientific archive.
I think “unethical publishing” better captures these challenges, with predatory publishing being just one of them. I think the situation has gotten a lot worse. Artificial intelligence has blown the world apart in lots of ways, but certainly in publishing. Papers and peer-review reports can now be easily generated and passed off as original work. In my opinion, the only positive change is that more people are getting interested in trying to uncover unethical publishing practices...
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Scientists who object to animal testing claim they are frozen out by peers
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...ting-experiment-science-medical-b2623434.html
Researchers say they are being forced to carry out experiments with animals if they want their work to be published, after their studies were rejected because they did not include an animal test. However, a UK-based defender of animal testing said claims of a divide between scientists were being exaggerated by animal rights campaigners...
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Academic integrity—a brief history, a proposed definition, guidelines, and violations
https://www.bmj.com/content/387/bmj.q2303
INTRO: Although the concept of academic integrity has been long with us, and violations of it not uncommon, formal research into the topic began only in the 1990s, particularly by a pioneer in the field Donald McCabe of Rutgers University, whose main interest lay in the US collegiate system. In recent years concern about academic integrity, or rather the lack of it, has increased markedly, particularly in the area of research integrity.
Having failed to find a satisfactory definition of academic integrity, I propose the following: uncorrupted moral virtue in relation to truth, uprightness, honesty, and sincerity in the pursuit of research, education, and scholarship. Several codes of conduct outline what is expected of academic researchers, of which the European Charter for Researchers is an example.
A companion publication, the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity, which deals in greater detail with the principles outlined in the European Charter for Researchers, and which itself refers to many other codes of practice, also outlines a range of possible violations of academic integrity, i.e. matters of academic dishonesty or misdemeanours. These include fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism, misuse of statistics, concealing the use of AI, withholding information, and selective or inaccurate citation.
Other matters of concern include predatory journals, paper mills, and the large increase in the numbers of papers being retracted after publication...
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Unveiling scientific integrity in scholarly publications: a bibliometric approach (paper)
https://edintegrity.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1007/s40979-024-00164-5#Abs1
EXCERPT: These findings should raise concerns about the potential outcomes of embracing assessment systems that gauge research accomplishments based on bibliometric measures and that encourage a publish-or-perish mindset. Such strategies are the prime catalyst for fostering the spread of research misconduct.
The consequences of scientific misconduct can be severe and damaging for both the researchers and the scientific community. These misconducts may result in losing funding, restrictions to supervised research, job loss, failure to receive promotions, drying up of research grants, and undermine the researchers and the public’s trust in science (Poutoglidou et al. 2022).
This study is a part of a research project of ‘Factors influencing scientific integrity of the university research scholarly publishing’ in the latest five-year duration. The objective of this research is to identify the top sources and most cited documents, analyze collaboration networks, and explore themes and trends related to scientific integrity in scholarly publishing over the last 20 years...
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