Ethics

Good practices

How to survive the poison of predatory journals

Scientists look for ways to mitigate the damage of publishing in fraudulent journals

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Good practices

Recognizing diversity in research

Cell Press has adopted an innovative policy to encourage diversity and inclusion in scientific research

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Good practices

The “special issue” scam

Fraudsters deceive editors of scientific journals and infiltrate the article review process for special issues

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Good practices

Frustrated ambitions

A group of researchers from the Netherlands has been working on a large multidisciplinary survey on scientific integrity at Dutch universities and research institutions

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Good practices

1951 paper on homosexuality retracted

The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease has announced the retraction of a scientific article published almost 70 years ago.

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Good practices

Artificial intelligence in peer review

Software identifies potential conflicts of interest between the authors of an article and the researchers reviewing it

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Good practices

A retraction with explicit criticism

The Brain Research Bulletin announced the retraction of a 2017 article on the effect of the hormone erythropoietin in rats and it decided to clearly explain why

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Good practices

UNICAMP issues new research integrity policy

University creates commission to produce educational material and assess complaints

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Good practices

Article proves resilient after retraction

In 2005, the scientific journal Chest, from the American College of Chest Physicians, published an article by surgeon Wataru Matsuyama of Kagoshima University, Japan, sharing the results of a clinical trial that suggested omega-3 polyunsaturated fats had a positive effect on patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. As the result of an investigation into Matsuyama’s... View Article

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Good practices

COVID-19 miracle remedies

A preprint describing a potential treatment for the novel coronavirus caught the attention of Dutch biologist Elizabeth Bik, who runs a blog on scientific integrity

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Good practices

Evidence gathered to improve scientific integrity

A European project is analyzing initiatives implemented by universities and research institutions to identify the most successful approaches

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Good practices

Fraud in conference proceedings

IOP Publishing, based in the United Kingdom, has retracted 25 physics and materials sciences/engineering conference proceedings papers

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Good practices

The Lancet acknowledges weaknesses in its review process

The scientific journal has announced plans to change its article-review process in order to prevent the publication of papers based on interpretations of large data sets that cannot be audited

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Good practices

Punishment for paper mills

Chinese government proposes sanctions for companies selling scientific papers on demand, which are most often fraudulent

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Good practices

The most common types of misconduct

A professor of criminology at the University of Arizonainterviewed 613 researchers and asked them which types of scientific misconduct they believe occur most frequently in academia

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Good practices

Punishment for administrative misconduct

A mathematician at the Georgia Tech sentenced to two months of house arrest for misrepresenting information in research reports submitted to the NSF in relation to a US$240,000 grant.

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Good practices

The threat of predatory journals in the midst of a pandemic

Despite being rare, articles on COVID-19 published in fraudulent journals serve as a warning

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Good practices

Appointment canceled after scandal

The Veneto Institute of Molecular Medicine in Padua, Italy, revoked geneticist Pier Paolo Pandolfi’s appointment as scientific director after members of its scientific advisory board resigned en masse in protest

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Good practices

The limits of text recycling

A group of researchers is analyzing the extent to which an author can reuse excerpts of their own academic work in new papers without being accused of plagiarism

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Good practices

Harvard puts anthropologist on leave amid allegations of sexual harassment

Gary Urton has been put on paid leave while the institution investigates allegations of sexual harassment filed by former students

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Good practices

Based on unreliable information

How a suspicious big-data company was able to provide data for COVID-19 articles published in two major scientific journals

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Good practices

University to pay US$3.7 million to settle allegations of fraud

Rice University has agreed to pay US$3.7 million to the United States government to settle a lawsuit that accused its directors of violating rules on the use of funding from the National Science Foundation

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Good practices

Publishers team up to identify altered images

Major publishers of scientific journals worldwide have created a working group to create new standards and promote technologies capable of detecting manipulated or duplicate images in papers

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Good practices

Fast error correction

Scientific papers on the novel coronavirus retracted due to misunderstandings and methodological flaws, most committed in good faith

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Good practices

Mysterious and fraudulent authorship

The scientific journal Future Generation Computer Systems recently announced the retraction of a 2018 article

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Good practices

A keen eye for detecting manipulation

In an effort to improve the quality of the scientific articles it publishes, the Journal of Clinical Investigation began requiring that all authors provide the raw data produced by their experiments

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Good practices

The cost of ignoring sexual harassment

American university accused of protecting professor who harassed students agrees to pay US$9.4 million in damages

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Good practices

Error leads to retraction of controversial article

The journal Scientific Reports announced the retraction of a 2019 article claiming that fluctuations in the Sun's magnetic field play a role in climate change on Earth

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Good practices

Young academics are more afraid of reporting misconduct

A group of scientific integrity experts from the Netherlands and Norway interviewed 1,100 researchers from eight European universities

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Good practices

The spread of plagiarism

Russian Academy of Sciences uncovers widespread misconduct, leading to the retraction of 869 articles

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