Image illustrating the Policy Forum "Global Research Integrity Training" by Nicholas H. Steneck, Science, May 2013
Hi readers! This is Sarah here. As you might remember, I am a French pediatric oncologist and I arrived in Toronto for a fellowship a couple of months ago.
As a new fellow arriving at the Hospital for Sick Children, I had to go through a mandatory introduction to research integrity led by our Research Integrity Office. I spent a very interesting hour and learned a lot - so I thought of sharing a few key learning points with you, SIOP young investigators and future high-level researchers!
Research Integrity
One major document to know about is the Singapore Statement on Research Integrity, which was drafted at the Second World Conference on Research Integrity, which took place in Singapore in 2010. The four principles of the statement are honesty in all aspects of research, accountability in the conduct of research, professional courtesy and fairness in working with others, and good stewardship of research on behalf of others. From these principles, fourteen “responsibilities” follow that you can read about in detail in the statement.
Scientific misconduct can wear many forms. By scientists and authors, it can be data or figure fabrication / falsification, plagiarism, duplicate publication, authorship violations such as ghost authors or on the contrary, omitted authors, failure to disclose conflicts of interest or ethics violations.
Misconduct can also come from reviewers or editors. Some of this is detailed in this excellent poster from the American Physiological Society.
A lot is at stake when scientific misconduct happens: reputations of colleagues and institutions, further research funds if they are misused, trust of the scientific community and the general public and maybe even patient health? Eventually progress in the field may be halted.
What is very interesting is that scientists are more keen on reporting others' misbehaviour than their own, as reported by Fanelli in a 2009 meta-analysis and review.
Authorship
As young investigators, we might struggle to have our input in a future article recognized, see ghost authors appearing on the authors list or end up in a position we don't think we deserve (hopefully none of this ever happened/will ever happen to you!).
The International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recommends that authorship be based on the following four criteria (note the "AND" in between)
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 committee then explains : "All those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors. Those who do not meet all four criteria should be acknowledged. These authorship criteria are intended to reserve the status of authorship for those who deserve credit and can take responsibility for the work. The criteria are not intended for use as a means to disqualify colleagues from authorship who otherwise meet authorship criteria by denying them the opportunity to meet criterion #s 2 or 3. Therefore, all individuals who meet the first criterion should have the opportunity to participate in the review, drafting, and final approval of the manuscript."
We were also told about authorship disputes and how to try to avoid them, with one basic intervention: plan ahead.
There are many changes that can occur during the research or article writing that can lead to authorship disputes, such as
1) change in team members (such as a new graduate student or post doc - oh that's YOU! Or your frenemy)
2) change in research direction (such as a new or additional hypothesis, a new population)
3) change in material and methods (such as changing methodology, data collected)
4) change in manuscript content (such as changes resulting from article revisions based on peer review process)
Your plan should be to discuss authorship criteria as early as possible, or to ask your mentor to do so (no that's not rude or pretentious). Deciding who will be an author and the role of authors early in
the research process can help address expectations for being an author. Ideally you would write it down in the form of an agreement. Some clinical protocols now include a "Publication Policy" section that provides guidance on this topic.
We were even advised to try and agree with co-authors about what to do if there is an authorship dispute - you might need an extra cup of coffee for this part.
Predatory journals
How do you decide where to submit? Publish or perish, so they say. In some countries, defending your PhD will be very difficult/impossible if you haven't published some of your results.
Still, should you go with that open access journal that is asking you for money to actually publish your data?
To avoid what are called "predatory journals", you could ask yourself a few questions:
- Is the journal listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ)?
- Is the journal a member of COPE (Committee On Publication Ethics)?
- What is the frequency and quality of what has already been published by the journal?
This Think.Check.Submit. video also brings excellent advice on the right steps to take before submitting a paper.
Hope this post will be helpful to you - looking forward to your comments!
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