Publication Ethics: Overview

Why publish?
 Without publications, science cannot
progress
 Without publication, you may not get a
placement or promotion
 You may not get your project sanctioned if
you have no publications
 Publications keep you ahead of your
colleagues: publication makes you
‘Immortal’!
2

PubMed search
 Ayurveda: 5,000
 Traditional Chinese medicine:
40,000
 Panchakarma: 100
 Acupuncture: 24,000

Reasons?
 Limited awareness regarding the importance
 No training is given in scientific writing during
formal Ayurveda education
 Differences between Magazines, Newsletters,
Journals and Books are not clearly understood
 Not aware of the important guidelines while
planning the research protocols and while
writing the manuscripts
4

The Peer Review
ProcessStudy
conducted
Study communicated
to a journal
Editors send article
for
peer review
Reviewer comments are
communicated to the authors.
Article is rejected or revised and
resubmitted.
Reviewers read the
article
and provide
feedback
If the article finally
meets the editorial
and peer standards,
it is published.
1
2
3
4
5 6
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Purpose of peer review:
 Technical: Quality of science
 Subjective: Interesting, important, and
relevant ?
 Influences what science enters the
public domain
 Assists authors and editors in publishing
quality research.
http://www.parliament.uk/documents/post/pn182.pdf
6

What is a ‘Good’ journal?
(Minimum essential requirements)
 Must be available online
(Searchable/Easy to locate/share)
 Must be ‘Peer-reviewed’ (Refereed)
 Must be indexed with some widely consulted
database (e.g., PubMed Central, Medline, Web of
Science, Scopus)
 Google Scholar is NOT an indexing database
8
http://the-aps.org/trainees/Symposia/2010%20talks/Barrett-web.ppt

‘Better’ journal
(Optional requirements):
 Has got a good Impact Factor
 ‘National’ / ‘International’
 Has got good SNIP/SJR ranking/Cite-Score
 It is an ‘Open Access’ journal (Sometimes a requirement)
9

‘Convenient’:
 Takes minimum time for editorial decision
 Provides easy online submission process, /manuscript
tracking facility
 Known Acceptance Rate
 No article processing fee / color printing charges/ reprint
charges / submission fee
10

Be careful
 Fake Impact Factors / Fake Journal Metrics
 ‘Author Pays’ model of Open Access
 Fake Peer-Review process
 Don’t fall prey to ‘Call for papers’
 Claims such as ‘Under the process of PubMed indexing’
 Claims such as ‘Indexed in Elsevier’
11

Bogus journal metrics (Examples)
 Advanced Science Index
 Directory of Journal Quality Factor
 International Scientific Indexing
 International Impact Factor Services
 GISI Impact Factor
 Global Impact Factor
 Universal Impact Factor
 SJIF Impact Factor
13

When to publish?
 You have completed your study methodically, data
analysis is over, and you have results with you
(original article)
 You have made some observation that adds
significantly to the existing knowledge (Case study/
case series)
 You strongly feel like responding to something that
you have read / experienced recently (Letter to the
editor)
 You have some unique and different explanation to
some important phenomenon (Review/ hypothesis)

Before writing a manuscript, ensure:
 You have followed all the standard
guidelines while planning your study
 You have executed the study according to
the protocols
 You have ethical clearance / all the original
case sheets / duly signed consent forms /
investigation reports / photographs / slides
with you

 You have license / permissions for
reproducing pictures/figures with you
 You have no conflict of interest in
publishing the results
 You have selected the journal to which
you are going to submit the manuscript
 You have read

Authorship
 Responsibilities of an author
 Originality (No Plagiarism)
 Good record keeping
 Integrity, Honesty, Objectivity,
 Openness / Transparency
 Respect for IPR
 Declaring Conflict of interest/ Disclosures
 Copyright Agreements
 Consent to reuse published content
 Responsibility (Corrections/ Withdrawing/ Retracting)
17

Authorship
 First Author:
 The one who has carried out the actual work, and
has written the manuscript
 Corresponding Author (Usually the senior
most/last author):
 The one who originally conceived the study,
planned it and approved the final manuscript to
be published
 Second/ third/.. authors:
 Who helped in carrying out the work and also in
manuscript preparation

What about…..
 Those who did not contribute to your
study, but helped you in writing the
manuscript ?
 Those who contributed to your study, but
did not help you in writing the manuscript
?
 Acknowledgement?
 Author?

Authorship: Ethical considerations
Included in
acknowledgments
InvolvementinStudy
Involvement with Manuscript
High
High
Low
Low
Cramer and Rieger, 2001
Included in
acknowledgments
NOT included in
acknowledgments:
NOT listed as author
List as author

Revision of the manuscript
 Editor communicates the Reviewers’ specific
comments, (numbered) on the design,
presentation of data, results, and discussion
etc.
 Read carefully all the comments
 Don’t be in a hurry to re-submit your
manuscript
 Do rigorous homework on the manuscript at
this point
21

Responding to reviewer comments
 Corresponding author’s responsibility
 Revise manuscript thoroughly as per reviewer
recommendations
 Follow reviewers’ instructions as far as possible
 Deny politely, if you have to
 Give your point- by- point response
 Highlight the changes in the manuscript with yellow
color
 Re-submit only after consulting your co-authors
 Stick to the time frame
22

What if reviewers fail to detect some errors?
 Errors may be detected after the publication
 Authors are encouraged to write to the editor if
they find errors after publication
 Communicate the sufficiently detailed Erratum
to rectify the errors.
 http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/errata.
html
23

Violations of Research Ethics
24

Falsification: German cancer research
 In 1998, German research funding agency looked
at 347 papers published by two researchers,
F.Herrmann and M.Brach.
 It concluded that 29 of these contained falsified
material and found evidence of data
manipulation leading to a suspicion of fraud in a
further 65 papers.
 In most cases the falsification of illustrations of
blood and other cells was noted.
25
https://www.parliament.uk/documents/post/pn182.pdf

Fabrication: The Pearce case
 In August 1996, Malcom Pearce, published a paper
in the British Journal of Obstetrics and
Gynaecology.
 He claimed to have rescued an ectopic pregnancy
by transferring it into the uterus, resulting in a
successful birth.
 The work had never taken place and the ‘patient’ did
never exist.
 Four other fraudulent papers were discovered after
investigation, two of which had been published in
the BMJ.
26

Plagiarism: US National Science Foundation
 A researcher was asked to peer review a proposal
for research, which was later rejected on the basis
of his comments.
 This reviewer subsequently submitted his own
research proposal to another funding body, which
was accepted for funding.
 This proposal was found to have plagiarised the
original proposal.
 The researcher had submitted a number of other
research proposals plagiarised from proposals he
had been asked to peer review.
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 Failure to disclose conflicts of interest: A study conducted in
1986 found that 96% of studies had financial relations with the drug
manufacturer.
 Multiple Submissions: Simultaneous submission of same paper
to multiple journals
 Redundant / Duplicate publication (Duplicate publication/
undisclosed publication)
 Authors publish the same paper in a number of different
journals
 Suggesting Bogus Reviewers: Giving an alternative email id of
the author so that the author himself becomes a reviewer
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Other forms of Violation of research ethics:

 Guest authorship: Including an author only because it may improve
the chances of acceptance
 The senior author (Geoffrey Chamberlain) on the ‘ectopic pregnancy’
paper had to resign from a number of senior positions.
 Ghost Authorship: Actual author’s name not included
 Anonymous Authorship: Publishing with pseudonym
 Surrogate authorship: Publishing someone else’s work in one’s own
name
 Gift Authorship: Adding the name of the spouse/ friend as author
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Salami Slicing
 Publishing the same data in different forms in different journals
 Effect of Indian gooseberry on hyperglycemia in type-2
DM
 Biomedical journal
 Effect of Amalaki in Madhumeha with special reference
to Prakriti
 Ayurveda journal
 Interferes in meta analyses as the same cases will be
duplicated
 Ethical only if the data is too huge and each paper addresses
substantially different questions
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 Editors’ Responsibilities
 Journal Owners’ Responsibilities
 Publisher’s Responsibilities
 Reviewers’ Responsibilities
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Further Reading:
 https://publicationethics.org/
 https://pubpeer.com/
 https://retractionwatch.com/
 http://www.icmje.org/
 http://www.wame.org/

Publication Ethics: Overview

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