181202P - ETHICS OF PUBLISHING RESEARCH

Presentation at a Course on Bioethics Alfaisal University, Riyadh held on 2 December 2018 by Professor Omar Hasan Kasule Sr. MB ChB (MUK). MPH (Harvard), DrPH (Harvard) Chairman of the Ethics Committee King Fahad Medical City.

INTRODUCTION TO RESEARCH MALPRACTICE: PREVALENCE AND ATTITUDES 

• Seeds of research malpractice are in the research proposal

• Research malpractice is common[1]

• Violation of ethics reason for retractions[2]

• Research malpractice reflects wrong attitudes 

• Short course can change attitude to fraud[3]

• Researchers recognize fraud but do not blow the whistle[4,5]

• Poor attitude to plagiarism in Iran[6] 

INTRODUCTION TO RESEARCH MAL-PRACTICE: CAUSES

• Research grants are an avenue for academic promotion and professional growth[7]

• Competitive nature of scientific grants may motivate misbehavior

• Career and reputation from publishing can motivate misconduct[8]

• Funding expectations are associated with research misbehavior: public vs private[9]

• Research wrongdoing in Nigeria due to knowledge gaps in ethics and the pressure to publish[10]

PROTOCOL: INVESTIGATORS AND AUTHORSHIP

• Principal investigator / co-investigators or sub-investigator must be mentioned.

• All names mentioned must have a substantial recorded contributions.

• The issue of the senior author/boss/friend/colleague?: scratch my back and I scratch yours.

• All names mentioned must have agreed to be part of the study.

• Doubtful cases: students, research assistants, laboratory technicians?

PROTOCOL: ORIGINALITY 

• Thorough literature review to make sure this investigation is original. 

• Check clearinghouses such as Cochrane and www.clinicaltrials.org.

• Cite and acknowledge all information used in the proposal.

• Why is repeat research is already done? Local experience / training/scientific validation.

• Writing proposals from boilerplates. 

PROTOCOL: PLAGIARISM: DEFINITION 

• Create or copy? Is it possible to create from nothing?[11]

• Plagiarism is a complex phenomenon that may be related to memory lapses and not always deliberate deception[12,13,14]

• Un-intended plagiarism: ideas gained in discussions or from the classroom? 

• What if it is your original idea but someone already thought of it?

• Self-plagiarism [15]? 

PROTOCOL: PLAGIARISM: DETECTION AND AVOIDANCE

• Plagiarism detection services[16]

• If in doubt run plagiarism software.

• Plagiarism detection can be quick[17] or can be sophisticated[18]. Even Google can help.

• If you are a research administrator should you write proposals? 

PROTOCOL: PROTECTING YOUR IDEAS FROM PLAGIARISTS 

• Discuss your research with colleagues / students OR be secretive.

• Departmental review / research committees?

• Carefully document your new ideas and create evidence they are yours. 

PROTOCOL: CONFIDENTIALITY AND PRIVACY

• Measures of protecting personal data must be described.

• Access to personal research data: papers and computers must be on a need-to-know basis.

• Use of anonymized data. 

PROTOCOL: INFORMED CONSENT 

• Description of information to be given to subjects

• Description of the process of informed consent

• Attach documents to be used 

PROTOCOL: DISCLOSURE

• Disclose all that you want to do in objectives and methods. 

• Do not add secret ideas later for fear they may not be approved if presented upfront.

• If you get additional ideas submit an amendment. 

PROTOCOL: FINANCIAL INTEGRITY / COI

• Mention other sources of funding.

• Conflict of interest regarding the expected sponsor.

• Paying someone to write part or all the proposal. 

PROTOCOL: REGULATORY AFFAIRS

• IRB requirements 

• SFDA requirements

• GCP requirements

• Others e.g. NIH  

PUBLICATION: INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS FOR AUTHORS[19] 

• The research being reported should have been conducted in an ethical and responsible manner and should comply with all relevant legislation. 

• Researchers should present their results clearly, honestly, and without fabrication, falsification, or inappropriate data manipulation. 

• Researchers should strive to describe their methods clearly and unambiguously so that their findings can be confirmed by others. 

PUBLICATION: INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS FOR AUTHORS, Con’t.

• Researchers should adhere to publication requirements that submitted work is original, is not plagiarized, and has not been published elsewhere. 

• Authors should take collective responsibility for submitted and published work. 

• The authorship of research publications should accurately reflect individuals’ contributions to the work and its reporting. 

• Funding sources and relevant conflicts of interest should be disclosed. 

PUBLICATION BIAS (Wikipedia)

• Bias to reporting positive findings

• Bias to significant results

• Investigator refusing to submit results for publication }Solution is registration of the study

• Selective reporting

PUBLICATION PROBLEMS (http://publicationethics.org)

• Author mistakes e.g. unauthorized use of questionnaires

• Authorship e.g. omitted author, ghost author, gift authorship, data monitors as authors

• Lack of consent for publication e.g. publication of family pedigree

• Copyright breaches e.g. unauthorized use of a questionnaire

• Data manipulation/fabrication/falsification 

PUBLICATION PROBLEMS, Con’t. - 1 (http://publicationethics.org)

• Dispute over data ownership. 

• Image manipulation. 

• Impact factors: manipulation of IF by quoting one another unnecessarily. 

• Lack of ethical review/approval.

• Multiple submissions: When a manuscript (or substantial sections from a manuscript) is submitted to a journal when it is already under consideration by another journal. 

PUBLICATION PROBLEMS, Con’t. - 2 (http://publicationethics.org)

• Overlapping publications: 2 or more publications based on analysis of the same data set

• Failure to respect participant confidentiality

• Lack of participant consent

• Plagiarism (When somebody presents the work of others (data, words, or theories) as if they were his/her own and without proper acknowledgment) 

PUBLICATION PROBLEMS, Con’t. - 3 (http://publicationethics.org)

• Failure of protection of subjects (human) or animal subjects.

• Redundant publication: publication of the same material or same 

• data in more than one journal without cross-referencing.

• Selective reporting: When unfavorable or inconvenient end-points (e.g. Outcomes that fail to reach statistical significance or do not favor a particular product or hypothesis) are deliberately omitted from publications reporting research. 

PUBLICATION PROBLEMS, Con’t. - 4 (http://publicationethics.org)

• Self-plagiarism

• Undeclared COI

• Undeclared financial support for publication

• Unethical research or treatments 

REFERENCE:

1. DuBois JM, Anderson EE, Chibnall J.Assessing the need for a research ethics remediation program.Clin Transl Sci. 2013 Jun;6(3):209-13. 
2. Resnik DB, Dinse GE. Scientific retractions and corrections related to misconduct findings.Author information.J Med Ethics. 2013 Jan;39(1):46-50.
3. Vuckovic-Dekic L, Gavrilovic D, Kezic I, Bogdanovic G, Brkic S. Science ethics education part II: changes in attitude toward scientific fraud among medical researchers after a short course in science ethics.J BUON. 2012 Apr-Jun;17(2):391-5. 
4. Vuckovic-Dekic L, Gavrilovic D, Kezic I, Bogdanovic G, Brkic S. Science ethics education part II: changes in attitude toward scientific fraud among medical researchers after a short course in science ethics.J BUON. 2012 Apr-Jun;17(2):391-5. 
5. Vuckovic-Dekic L, Gavrilovic D, Kezic I, Bogdanovic G, Brkic S. Science ethics education part I. Perception and attitude toward scientific fraud among medical researchers.J BUON. 2011 Oct- Dec;16(4):771-7. 
6. Ghajarzadeh M, Norouzi-Javidan A, Hassanpour K, Aramesh K, Emami-Razavi SH. Attitude toward plagiarism among Iranian medical faculty members.Acta Med Iran. 2012 Nov;50(11):778-81. 
7. Crockett SD, Dellon ES, Bright SD, Shaheen NJ.A 25-year analysis of the American College of Gastroenterology researchgrant program: factors associated with publication and advancement in academics.Am J Gastroenterol. 2009 May;104(5):1097-105. 
8. Krishnan V.Etiquette in scientific publishing.Am J OrthodDentofacialOrthop. 2013 Oct;144(4):577-82. 
9. Martinson BC, Crain AL, Anderson MS, De Vries R.Institutions' expectations for researchers' self-funding, federal grant holding, and private industry involvement: manifold drivers of self-interest and researcher behavior. Acad Med. 2009 Nov;84(11):1491-9. 
10. Adeleye OA, Adebamowo CA.Factors associated with research wrongdoing in Nigeria.J Empir Res Hum Res Ethics. 2012 Dec;7(5):15-24. 
11. López P R[Create or copy... Which is the difference?].Rev Med Chil. 2009 Jan;137(1):121-6. 
12. Perfect TJ, Defeldre AC, Elliman R, Dehon H. No evidence of age-related increases in unconscious plagiarism during free recall. Memory. 2011 Jul;19(5):514-28.
13. Kennedy D.Sherlock Holmes and the case of the plagiarised paper. Nurse Educ Today. 2011 Jul;31(5):525-30. 
14. Sugimori E, Kitagami S. Plagiarism as an illusional sense of authorship: the effect of predictability on source attribution of thought. Author information. Acta Psychol (Amst). 2013 May;143(1):35-9. 
15. Andreescu L. Self-plagiarism in academic publishing: the anatomy of a misnomer. Sci Eng Ethics. 2013 Sep;19(3):775-97. 
16. Garner HR. Combating unethical publications with plagiarism detection services. Urol Oncol. 2011 Jan-Feb;29(1):95-9. 
17. Bischoff WR, Abrego PC. Rapid assessment of assignments using plagiarism detection software. Nurse Educ. 2011 Nov- Dec;36(6):236-7.
18. Chow TW, Rahman MK. Multilayer SOM with tree-structured data for efficient document retrieval and plagiarism detection.IEEE Trans Neural Netw. 2009 Sep;20(9):1385-402.
19. A position statement developed at the 2nd World Conference on Research Integrity, Singapore, July 22-24, 2010.