Passive vs. Active voice Carolyn Brown Taller especializado de inglés científico para publicaciones académicas D.F., México de junio de 2013 ETHICAL ISSUES IN ACADEMIC PUBLISHING Background and Basics in Academic Researching and Publishing

Copyright ▫ Legal basis for ethical issues is international copyright ▫ Publisher will send a form explaining who holds copyright to your article — author or publisher ▫ Journal publishers used to ask authors to assign copyright to the publisher, but this is changing ▫ More and more publishers are taking a license rather than full copyright ▫ Author should ensure he/she knows the rights of the publisher and the rights of the author ▫ Sign any form the journal publisher sends and return immediately

Copyright, continued ▫ All tables and figures are included in copyright transfer, except tables or figures reproduced from previously published materials ▫ For monographs and reports, the copyright may be held by the author (check with publisher)

Permission to reproduce tables and figures ▫ Tables and figures previously published can be republished only with the permission of the previous copyright holder (author or publisher) ▫ Most publishers have a permissions department and grant permission without charge; some charge other publishers ▫ Reproduced tables and figures must carry a statement in the figure caption or as a footnote indicating the source and that it was reproduced with permission of the copyright holder — wording is often provided by the copyright holder

Authorship

▫ Criteria for authorship ▫ Some journals want to know contribution of authors in the cover letter or separate form or document ▫ Some journals now publishing authors’ contributions ▫ Author order — principal author usually first or last ▫ “Group” authorship becoming more common ▫ All authors should know they are authors and approve final manuscript for submission ▫ One “corresponding” author handles discussions and editing with the publisher ▫ People who helped but do not qualify as authors should be thanked in acknowledgements ▫ Authorship disputes ― who should be included? In what order?

Duplicate publication ▫ Research should not be submitted to more than one journal at a time ▫ Publishing in more than one place causes confusion about copyright and date of appearance ▫ Duplicate publication also called “redundant publication” and “self-plagiarism” ▫ Done to make it appear that the author has had more publications than he/she has ▫ Poster presentations at meetings, abstracts published in proceedings, and preliminary results are not considered prior publication; they should be mentioned in the cover letter when submitting research for publication

Prior publication - Also, research will not be published if it has been published elsewhere first (“prior publication”) -But is it prior publication to post your paper on a university Web site or an international physics or genomics site?

Salami science (or social science!) ▫ “Salami science” is when one study is cut up into several different articles to submit to different journals — considered unethical ▫ Editor will be angry that some of the results are published in another journal ▫ Reader has to go to several journals to get all of the results ▫ Mention any previous publications of study results in cover letter

Plagiarism ▫ Using another researcher’s data, article (without citation), table or figure or equation, or even wording ▫ Today publishers use software to check a new article against a database of published articles. Even similar paragraphs are identified ▫ “Patchwork”: using wording from published papers. Although patchwork is not as serious as taking ideas or data, it is considered plagiarism

Falsification of data ▫ Data falsified for several reasons: to make an experiment appear to have significant results when it didn’t ▫ To enrol patients in treatment perceived to be better (ignoring randomization procedure) ▫ To get the paper out to the journal (no time to go back and check the data)

Follow-up of ethical problems ▫ What happens when ethical problems are uncovered? ▫ Reported by peer reviewers (before publication), readers (after publication), colleagues or co- authors, angry authors or publishers of the plagiarized publication ▫ Editors investigate the facts ▫ Report to institution of offending author, which sanctions the author ▫ Author often blacklisted from the journal and possibly from other journals

Follow-up of ethical problems, continued ▫ Publisher decides whether to publish a follow-up to the original publication ▫ Common to publish, first, an “expression of concern” to indicate that a problem has been brought to light ▫ Once the ethical infraction is confirmed, the original article is retracted

Photos of people ▫ Is the person recognizable? (Medical imaging, body parts, person pictured for scale OK) ▫ Black bar across eyes insufficient to make person unrecognizable — would the person’s friends or family recognize him/her? ▫ If so, person must give written permission to be pictured in a journal, book, or report ▫ Next of kin can give permission for a person who is deceased or legally incompetent ▫ Legal parent or guardian can give permission for a minor (child under 18)

Ethical treatment of people and animals ▫ All studies involving people or animals must be approved by an ethical review board of the institution where the research is carried out, and this should be indicated in the paper ▫ Papers should indicate that a well-known protocol for treatment of human subjects or animals has been followed ▫ Ethical review board approval and protocol should be indicated in the manuscript and the cover letter

Conflict of interest or “competing interests” ▫ Authors in New England Journal of Medicine received money from manufacturers of calcium-channel blockers, which they recommended over another class of drugs ▫ Many publishers now asking authors to reveal conflicts of interest or “competing interests”, including sources of funding, honoraria, free meals, contracts, speaking engagements, etc. ▫ Some publishers are publishing this information ▫ View that these practices are so widespread that it is better to be transparent about them than to try to ban them ▫ Mention sources of funding and support in cover letter and in acknowledgements