Editorial
Ethics in Scientific Publishing: A 21st Century Primer Suzanne D. Dixon, MD, MPH
W
ith the incursion of cyberspace into scientific publishing, many things have changed for authors, reviewers, editors, and publishers. But the basic ethics remain the same. The rules in life and in publishing go back to the lessons of childhood: Play fair. Do not lie. Do not be sneaky. Do not copy your neighbor’s work. Do not say you did things when you did not. And do not say you did not do something when you did. I will discuss how these tenets play out in the current legitimate world of the words of science.
DUPLICATE PUBLICATION AND PLAGIARISM The submission of an article to a journal implies that it is original work, submitted to only this one venue at this time. This structure is formalized in the copyright release form that must be signed by authors. This is a binding contract. If the work has already been published elsewhere or is under consideration elsewhere, then the new contract is in a violation of copyright law. When such an article slips by the editors and/or reviewers, then we have duplicate publication. The same rule applies for articles published in another country, language, or discipline (e.g., Education vs Pediatrics). In this day and age, we have multiple ways of checking the originality of an article and if an author is caught, then that is lethal for that article and may be for that author as well for most journals including this one. We require an Englishlanguage abstract be submitted on articles from authors of non-English articles that seem to have overlap with the current one. Cyberspace and all its search tools help in the hunt for all these evil twin articles. Well, you say, there are many parts of the project you have been working and so multiple articles should come out of it. True. But the separate articles must be significantly different in theoretical foundation, specific research question, measures, and/or conclusions. Dividing the data too finely may be unethical or if not unethical, it could just be unprofessional. Unprofessional conduct labels stick to a person like gum on a shoe, really hard to move ahead and hard to remove. Most journals will consider pairs of articles to be published together (if they both pass review) because the overlap is explicit. Then it is not sneaky. (J Dev Behav Pediatr 35:347–348, 2014) Index Terms: publishing, ethics.
Received April 2014; accepted April 2014. Disclosure: The author declares no conflict of interest. Copyright 2014 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
Vol. 35, No. 5, June 2014
That brings us to plagiarism. This is the copying of another’s work and presenting it as your own. Such stealing could be a career ending decision. We now do plagiarism checks on all accepted articles. Citation of others’ work with appropriate attribution is just a matter of quotes and a line in the reference list. Do not risk this one; you will get caught. Plagiarism is on the rise massively because access to material worldwide is now so easy. Better and better tools are under development to address this issue. Similarly, an author is not allowed to quote himself without citation. Generally, if about 15% of an article duplicates a previous article, we label this self-plagiarism and require correction. This is not so important in describing a population of subjects, context, or even methods but it is better to cite previous work specifically and let the reviewers and editors decide on whether this is legit. Data, results, and conclusions must be different. Again, this transgression can be avoided easily by references, quotes, and an explanation in the accompanying letter to the editor.
AUTHORS The push for authorship is the currency of professional fame, fortune, and promotion. So it is no surprise that the author designation is the holy grail of academic life. We generally want to include all our friends, mentors, helpers, and consultants in the list because we want to play nice and because we hope for reciprocity on the next group article. However, it is a lie to say you did something when you did not. Authorship requires that you really do something substantial on this particular article and that you have read the final, not first, version and can attest that the whole content is true and original. An author has to have made an intellectual contribution to this particular article. As put forward by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICJME), “the ICMJE recommends that authorship be based on the following 4 criteria: • Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; and • Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and • Final approval of the version to be published; and • 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. www.jdbp.org | 347
Authors should meet conditions 1, 2, 3, and 4” (http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/ roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authorsand-contributors.html#two). Acquisition of funding, collection of data, general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship. Research assistants, the chairman of the division or department, the fellowship director, the administrative assistant who got everybody and everything together or participants on other parts of the project that are not the subject of this report are not authors automatically unless, in addition, they have contributed as outlined above. They should not be included on the “team photo” if they do not play on that team at that time. Persons or groups of persons who have contributed to the article but whose participation does not justify authorship designation as described above should be listed under such a heading as “clinical investigators” or “participating investigators” and the specific contribution of each listed in the Acknowledgments. In Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, as in many journals, the number of authors on an individual article is limited to 12. For all articles, each author’s specific contribution and endorsement of the submitted work as a whole must sign off before consideration of the article. Further information about authorship is available from ICJME.
REVIEWERS What about reviewers? Confidentiality is clearly at the core of things in the review process because this insures candid and fair appraisals of the work. Putting identifying information in a review or, even worse, going outside of the review channels (e.g., sending a separate e-mail to an author about a disagreement with the editorial decision, suggestions as to alternate venues if the work is rejected, or requests to cite the reviewed work before publication
348 Editorial
are all “no, no’s” I have experienced). That’s called speaking out of turn and not being fair to the other reviewers and editors. Other reviewers’ violations are to use articles that one has reviewed as teaching tools, to share with colleagues, to borrow specific methodology, or to copy and paste reference lists, well, I am sure you get the idea.. No stealing. No telling tales out of school. No tattling. Reviewers must recuse themselves from reviewing if they bring a bias to the process. Most journals require that one attest to not having a preconceived idea on the worth of the article or authors. You are not allowed to review the work of special friends or established enemies. In addition to personal feelings, one must also back off if there is an essential disagreement about the theoretical foundation of the work, if it directly refutes one’s own work or, conversely, supports your work. Clearly, if you have a commercial interest in the success or failure of the article, put yourself in timeout. If you have seen the article before, sent by another journal, perhaps, and are aware of all the warts identified in that process, consider backing off. However, there are exceptions: Sometimes a field is so narrow or so specialized that the panel of qualified reviewers is small. If one cannot get beyond a bias, then dropping out is a good idea. However, if a reviewer can provide an objective appraisal, he or she should identify that close alignment to the editor so that the other selected reviewers are diverse. We all want to guard the integrity of the process of scientific publishing despite academic pressures, ease of search for materials, and access to everything, everywhere, anytime. Temptation abounds. We need to hold each other to the highest standards possible. And, thankfully, there is increasing awareness of these issues and new tools to identify and remediate problems. So, play nice, behave, and always keep your hands clean.
Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics
Ethics in Scientific Publishing: A 21st Century Primer Suzanne D. Dixon, MD, MPH
W
ith the incursion of cyberspace into scientific publishing, many things have changed for authors, reviewers, editors, and publishers. But the basic ethics remain the same. The rules in life and in publishing go back to the lessons of childhood: Play fair. Do not lie. Do not be sneaky. Do not copy your neighbor’s work. Do not say you did things when you did not. And do not say you did not do something when you did. I will discuss how these tenets play out in the current legitimate world of the words of science.
DUPLICATE PUBLICATION AND PLAGIARISM The submission of an article to a journal implies that it is original work, submitted to only this one venue at this time. This structure is formalized in the copyright release form that must be signed by authors. This is a binding contract. If the work has already been published elsewhere or is under consideration elsewhere, then the new contract is in a violation of copyright law. When such an article slips by the editors and/or reviewers, then we have duplicate publication. The same rule applies for articles published in another country, language, or discipline (e.g., Education vs Pediatrics). In this day and age, we have multiple ways of checking the originality of an article and if an author is caught, then that is lethal for that article and may be for that author as well for most journals including this one. We require an Englishlanguage abstract be submitted on articles from authors of non-English articles that seem to have overlap with the current one. Cyberspace and all its search tools help in the hunt for all these evil twin articles. Well, you say, there are many parts of the project you have been working and so multiple articles should come out of it. True. But the separate articles must be significantly different in theoretical foundation, specific research question, measures, and/or conclusions. Dividing the data too finely may be unethical or if not unethical, it could just be unprofessional. Unprofessional conduct labels stick to a person like gum on a shoe, really hard to move ahead and hard to remove. Most journals will consider pairs of articles to be published together (if they both pass review) because the overlap is explicit. Then it is not sneaky. (J Dev Behav Pediatr 35:347–348, 2014) Index Terms: publishing, ethics.
Received April 2014; accepted April 2014. Disclosure: The author declares no conflict of interest. Copyright 2014 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
Vol. 35, No. 5, June 2014
That brings us to plagiarism. This is the copying of another’s work and presenting it as your own. Such stealing could be a career ending decision. We now do plagiarism checks on all accepted articles. Citation of others’ work with appropriate attribution is just a matter of quotes and a line in the reference list. Do not risk this one; you will get caught. Plagiarism is on the rise massively because access to material worldwide is now so easy. Better and better tools are under development to address this issue. Similarly, an author is not allowed to quote himself without citation. Generally, if about 15% of an article duplicates a previous article, we label this self-plagiarism and require correction. This is not so important in describing a population of subjects, context, or even methods but it is better to cite previous work specifically and let the reviewers and editors decide on whether this is legit. Data, results, and conclusions must be different. Again, this transgression can be avoided easily by references, quotes, and an explanation in the accompanying letter to the editor.
AUTHORS The push for authorship is the currency of professional fame, fortune, and promotion. So it is no surprise that the author designation is the holy grail of academic life. We generally want to include all our friends, mentors, helpers, and consultants in the list because we want to play nice and because we hope for reciprocity on the next group article. However, it is a lie to say you did something when you did not. Authorship requires that you really do something substantial on this particular article and that you have read the final, not first, version and can attest that the whole content is true and original. An author has to have made an intellectual contribution to this particular article. As put forward by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICJME), “the ICMJE recommends that authorship be based on the following 4 criteria: • Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; and • Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; and • Final approval of the version to be published; and • 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. www.jdbp.org | 347
Authors should meet conditions 1, 2, 3, and 4” (http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/ roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authorsand-contributors.html#two). Acquisition of funding, collection of data, general supervision of the research group alone does not constitute authorship. Research assistants, the chairman of the division or department, the fellowship director, the administrative assistant who got everybody and everything together or participants on other parts of the project that are not the subject of this report are not authors automatically unless, in addition, they have contributed as outlined above. They should not be included on the “team photo” if they do not play on that team at that time. Persons or groups of persons who have contributed to the article but whose participation does not justify authorship designation as described above should be listed under such a heading as “clinical investigators” or “participating investigators” and the specific contribution of each listed in the Acknowledgments. In Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics, as in many journals, the number of authors on an individual article is limited to 12. For all articles, each author’s specific contribution and endorsement of the submitted work as a whole must sign off before consideration of the article. Further information about authorship is available from ICJME.
REVIEWERS What about reviewers? Confidentiality is clearly at the core of things in the review process because this insures candid and fair appraisals of the work. Putting identifying information in a review or, even worse, going outside of the review channels (e.g., sending a separate e-mail to an author about a disagreement with the editorial decision, suggestions as to alternate venues if the work is rejected, or requests to cite the reviewed work before publication
348 Editorial
are all “no, no’s” I have experienced). That’s called speaking out of turn and not being fair to the other reviewers and editors. Other reviewers’ violations are to use articles that one has reviewed as teaching tools, to share with colleagues, to borrow specific methodology, or to copy and paste reference lists, well, I am sure you get the idea.. No stealing. No telling tales out of school. No tattling. Reviewers must recuse themselves from reviewing if they bring a bias to the process. Most journals require that one attest to not having a preconceived idea on the worth of the article or authors. You are not allowed to review the work of special friends or established enemies. In addition to personal feelings, one must also back off if there is an essential disagreement about the theoretical foundation of the work, if it directly refutes one’s own work or, conversely, supports your work. Clearly, if you have a commercial interest in the success or failure of the article, put yourself in timeout. If you have seen the article before, sent by another journal, perhaps, and are aware of all the warts identified in that process, consider backing off. However, there are exceptions: Sometimes a field is so narrow or so specialized that the panel of qualified reviewers is small. If one cannot get beyond a bias, then dropping out is a good idea. However, if a reviewer can provide an objective appraisal, he or she should identify that close alignment to the editor so that the other selected reviewers are diverse. We all want to guard the integrity of the process of scientific publishing despite academic pressures, ease of search for materials, and access to everything, everywhere, anytime. Temptation abounds. We need to hold each other to the highest standards possible. And, thankfully, there is increasing awareness of these issues and new tools to identify and remediate problems. So, play nice, behave, and always keep your hands clean.
Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics
