RESEARCH ETHICS AND MISCONDUCT
- Free Paraphrasing tools make evading plagiarism detection tools easier, requiring manual review to identify problems. The article provides useful tips to help identify such work. However, how does one determine whether the awkward phrasing that the paraphrasing tools may create is due to the tool or to lack of English writing fluency?
A troubling new way to evade plagiarism detection software. (And how to tell if it’s been used.) (Retraction Watch)
- Retraction Watch and STAT announce the DiRT (do the right thing) award and the first recipient, apparently a judge who rejected a defamation lawsuit against a journal for expressions of concern.
Announcing the DiRT Award, a new “doing the right thing” prize — and its first recipient (Retraction Watch)
CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
- Challenges to trial integrity may occur when for-profit clinical research organizations (CROs) conduct international RCTs, as they’re doing more and more– as illustrated by the TOPCAT spironolactone study
Serious Questions Raised About Integrity Of International Trials (CardioBrief)
- A JAMA theme issue on conflicts of interest includes some commentaries [some restricted access]; the following seem especially relevant to editors:
(1) Why There Are No “Potential” Conflicts of Interest By McCoy and Emanuel, who argue that conflicts of interest aren’t potential; there are conflicts of interest and ways to mitigate them
(2) Strategies for Addressing a Broader Definition of Conflicts of Interest by McKinney and Pierce: “[Conflict of interest] disclosure is thus useful as a minimum expectation, but is fundamentally insufficient. It is one tool in a toolbox, but no more.”
(3) Conflict of Interest in Practice Guidelines Panels by Hal Sox, including guidance from the Institute of Medicine, useful to editors who review such guidelines. “To accept a recommendation for practice, the profession and the public require a clear explanation of the reasoning linking the evidence to the recommendations. The balance of harms and benefits is a valuable heuristic for determining the strength of a recommendation, but this determination often involves a degree of subjectivity because harms and benefits seldom have the same units of measure. Because of these subjective elements, guideline development is vulnerable to biased judgments.”
(4) How Should Journals Handle the Conflict of Interest of Their Editors? Who Watches the “Watchers”? by Gottlieb and Bressler, who discuss current recommendations for how editors should handle their conflicts of interest. As is usually the case the advice does not address small journals with very few decision-making editors; other solutions may be needed in those cases.
(5) Medical Journals, Publishers, and Conflict of Interest by JAMA‘s publisher Tom Easley. This article pertains primarily to large journal-publisher relationships, but many journals have a different arrangement and additional guidance is needed.
PREDATORY/PSEUDO-JOURNALS
- Predatory Indian journals apply to DOAJ in large numbers
“Since March 2014, when the new criteria for DOAJ listing were put out, there have been about 1,600 applications from Open Access journal publishers in India…Of these, only 4% (74) were found to be from genuine publishers and accepted for inclusion in the DOAJ directory. While 18% applications are still being processed, 78% were rejected for various reasons. One of the main reasons for rejection is the predatory or dubious nature of the journals.”
” ‘Nearly 20% of the journals have a flashy impact factor and quick publication time, which are quick give-aways….Under contact address, some journal websites do not provide any address but just a provision for comments. In many cases, we have written to people who have been listed as reviewers to know if the journal website is genuine.’ ”
Predatory journals make desperate bid for authenticity (The Hindu)
- A journal published by Gavin changes its name from Journal of Arthritis and Rheumatology in response to the American College of Rheumatology–to a name very similar to a different journal
Publisher backs down in dispute with society over journal name (Retraction Watch)
PEER REVIEW
BioMedCentral and Digital Science publish a report on “What might peer review look like in 2030?” and recommend:
- “Find new ways of matching expertise and reviews by better identifying, verifying and inviting peer reviewers (including using AI)
- Increase diversity in the reviewer pool (including early career researchers, researchers from different regions, and women)
- Experiment with different and new models of peer review, particularly those that increase transparency
- Invest in reviewer training programs
- Find cross-publisher solutions to improve efficiency and benefit all stakeholders, such as portable peer review
- Improve recognition for review by funders, institutions, and publishers
- Use technology to support and enhance the peer review process, including automation”
The Future of Peer Review (Scholarly Kitchen)
POST-PUBLICATION PEER REVIEW
Angela Cochran blogs about the apparent failure of online commenting, but she defines success as percentage of papers with comments. If few letters to the editor are published do we consider them a waste? Maybe the approach isn’t mature yet. Ultimately. all PPPR comments need to be compiled with the article. If they’re useful to the commenters, some readers, and maybe the authors, that’s sufficient.
Should we stop with the commenting already? (Scholarly Kitchen)
DATA SHARING
Figshare releases new platform to help authors share data more easily
Figshare Launches New Tool for Publishers To Support Open Research (PRWeb)
___
Newsletter #8, first circulated May 8, 2017. Sources of links include Retraction Watch, Stat News, Scholarly Kitchen. Providing the links does not imply WAME’s endorsement.
News and Views 