Published misconduct

1. RESEARCH AND
PUBLICATION
ETHICS
RPE-05
PUBLICATION MISCONDUCT
Dr. M. U. Raja
University Librarian
Integral University

2. Agenda
Group Discussion
 Subject Specific Ethical Issues
 FFP
 Authorship
 Conflict of Interest
 Complaints and Appeals
 Examples

3. What is publication misconduct?
There are many ways where publication misconduct happens:
 Copyright infringement: presenting another person’s original work of authorship – their
expression of ideas – as if it were his or her own, without proper acknowledgment or
attribution.
 Plagiarism: presenting another person’s ideas or materials as if they were his or her own,
or without proper acknowledgment.
 Data fabrication/falsification: either making up results or altering results of experiments.

4. What is publication misconduct?
Continued…
 Misconduct within the publication process (for example authors submitting
manuscripts under fraudulent names or with fraudulent affiliations or reviewer
misconduct during the peer review process).
 Inappropriate attribution of authorship, which may lead to disputes (including
individuals who have not contributed to an article or excluding authors who
have contributed, lack of acknowledgment of guest or ghost authorship).

5. Plagiarism & copyright infringement
Authors should satisfy the publisher for
 That article or chapter or any other work they are submitting for publication is their
own original and they hold the copyright.
 And they have all necessary permission to use copyrighted work.
 Authors should submit a plagiarism report.
 Copying data or figures also falls under plagiarism but harder to detect.

6. Duplicate publications
Publisher(s) will ask for
 That author is submitting the work for first publication in the journal, that it is not
being considered for publication elsewhere, and has not already been published
elsewhere in the same or different languages.
 If the material has been previously published it is not generally accepted for
publication.
 However, there are certain circumstances where previously published material can
be considered for publication. In this case, Articles using previously published data,
images, or results should clearly identify and give full reference to the original
publication.

7. Data fabrication and falsification
 Data fabrication or falsification is harder to detect than plagiarism and is often
brought to light by the author’s colleagues who suspect that the reported results
are made up.
Authorship disputes
 All journals must also include an authorship policy within their submission
guidelines.
 Sometimes disputes around who should be included or excluded as authors can
arise either during the submission process or after publication.

8. Authorship Dispute can be managed by following
 If your journal uses ScholarOne Manuscripts, the system can be set up so that all
listed authors are copied in on correspondence.
 Require authors to supply statements outlining their specific contribution (e.g. X
designed the study, Y collected data, X and Y wrote the paper and gave final
approval for publication).
 Ask authors to supply ORCID IDs to remove ambiguity around their identity.
 Use SAGE’s Authorship Change Request Form (ask your Publishing Editor or Peer
Review Associate) to document any amendments to the author list.

9. Case of Authorship Dispute
In one month COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) received 11 manuscripts (9 case
reports, 1 original study, and 1 letter) written by authors from a European Union country.
The manuscripts were submitted by the same corresponding author (author A) who was
also the first author in all of the 11 manuscripts. Another author was the second author
(author B) in 10 of the manuscripts. There were two other authors (authors C and D) in two
of the manuscripts.
Four of these manuscripts (manuscripts 1, 5, 6, and 8) were rejected after the editorial
review because they were not found to be original. One has been sent to reviewers and 6
are with associate editors for initial review. One of the associate editors has advised that
the manuscript they had been reviewing (manuscript 10) has a similarity index of 97% The
editor-in-chief checked the manuscript and found that the author had completely copied it
from a previously published article although it was stated in the cover letter that the
material had not been previously published or submitted elsewhere for publication. The
author only changed the author’s names and added their own and the second author's
names (A and B). There were no common authors, and the plagiarised article was published
6 years ago by authors from an Asian country.
https://publicationethics.org/case/seven-plagiarized-manuscripts-one-month-same-corresponding-author

10.  In line with the COPE flowchart on suspected plagiarism in a submitted paper the corresponding author
was asked for an explanation. The response stated that there had been a mistake and that the author
wished to withdraw the manuscript. The editor in chief replied to say that the editorial board was not
satisfied with the explanation, and that they wanted to consult with COPE.
 The editor in chief also checked the other submissions, including the rejected ones. Three of the
rejected manuscripts (1, 5 and 8) and another manuscript under review (2) had verbatim texts,
comprising 50–94% of the related manuscript. The other two manuscripts (6 and 9) were duplicated
from previously published articles containing more than 50% verbatim text where author A is a
common author. Therefore, manuscripts 1, 2, 5, 8 and 10 are plagiarized manuscripts, and manuscripts
6 and 9 are self-plagiarized manuscripts.
 The editor in chief has halted the review process of the 11 manuscripts until the matter has been
resolved. They feel that they cannot trust the corresponding author anymore and wish to reject all
their manuscripts, including the remaining 4 manuscripts (3, 4, 7 and 11), which do not contain
verbatim text. Additionally, they intend to contact the author and coauthors’ institutions and proposed
not accepting further submissions from author A for at least 5 years.

11.  In recent years a number of journal publishers, including SAGE, have been affected by
attempts to defraud and circumvent the peer review system, specifically by abusing
the preferred or recommended reviewer functionality. Whilst such instances relate to a
very small proportion of the scholarly research system, the potential impact on a
journal’s reputation is significant.
 If your journal still uses recommended reviewers, please be alert to potential abuse
Peer review misconduct

14. Citation Manipulation
 Attempts to manipulate Journal Impact Factors by deliberately increasing the number
of self-citations are unethical.
 Some level of self-citation is to be expected but editors or reviewers should under no
circumstances ask authors to cite their journal in their submitted paper unless it is
relevant to the work being considered and will be useful to the journal’s readers.
 Please be aware that Thomson Reuters measures levels of self-citations and will
exclude journals from their databases if they consider these levels to be excessive.
 In the same way, citation ‘stacking’ by ‘citation cartels’ (i.e. a group of editors or board
members agreeing to add citations to each other’s journals) is unacceptable and
should not be tolerated.
Guidelines from SAGE publication is acknowledged

15. Now it is time for group discussion
 Discuss intellectual property frankly