Accountability in Research-Policies and Quality Assurance最新文献

Background: Knowledge on Open Science Practices (OSP) has been promoted through responsible conduct of research training and the development of open science infrastructure to combat Irresponsible Research Behavior (IRB). Yet, there is limited evidence for the efficacy of OSP in minimizing IRB.

Methods: We asked N=778 participants to fill in questionnaires that contain OSP and ethical reasoning vignettes, and report self-admission rates of IRB and personality traits.

Results: We found that against our initial prediction, even though OSP was negatively correlated with IRB, this correlation was very weak, and upon controlling for individual differences factors, OSP neither predicted IRB nor was this relationship moderated by ethical reasoning. On the other hand, individual differences factors, namely dark personality triad, and conscientiousness and openness, contributed more to IRB than OSP knowledge.

Conclusions: Our findings suggest that OSP knowledge needs to be complemented by the development of ethical virtues to encounter IRBs more effectively.

This letter focuses on the importance of incorporating implicit bias into research integrity education, and the significant impact it can have on creating an equitable research environment.

The publish or perish concept requires academics to ensure that they take part in research and publish the research results in academic journals. The emergency of predatory publishers has led to negativity in the scholarly publishing process. Some researchers are unaware that some publishers are unethical. A study was conducted to determine the extent of predatory publishing in Zimbabwe among academics. A survey was carried out using a multi-method approach at a public university in Zimbabwe. Articles published between 2012 and 2022 were retrieved using the Harzing publish or perish software. In total, 977 articles were retrieved, and after data cleaning using Open Refine, 357 records were analyzed using the journal evaluation rubric and scoring sheet to note the extent of predatory publishing among the various schools. The articles were then classified into 3 sections i.e., predatory, not predatory, and borderline. The findings revealed that predatory publishing is prevalent in the social sciences. The authors recommend the importance of training to create awareness about the dangers of predatory publishing and how to avoid them to improve the scholarly output of the institution, which is key to university ranking.

Yamada and Teixeira da Silva voiced valid concerns with the inadequacies of an online machine learning-based tool to detect predatory journals, and stressed on the urgent need for an automated, open, online-based semi-quantitative system that measures "predatoriness". We agree that the said machine learning-based tool lacks accuracy in its demarcation and identification of journals outside those already found within existing black and white lists, and that its use could have undesirable impact on the community. We note further that the key characteristic of journals being predatory, namely a lack of stringent peer review, would normally not have the visibility necessary for training and informing machine learning-based online tools. This, together with the gray zone of inadequate scholarly practice and the plurality in authors' perception of predatoriness, makes it desirable for any machine-based, quantitative assessment to be complemented or moderated by a community-based, qualitative assessment that would do more justice to both journals and authors.

Epistemic responsibilities (ERs) of universities concern equipping and empowering its researchers, educators and students to attain, produce, exchange and disseminate knowledge. ERs can potentially guide universities in improving education, research and in service to society. Building on earlier philosophical work, we applied empirical methods to identify core ERs of universities and their constituting elements. We used a three-round Delphi survey, alternating between closed questions to gain consensus, and open questions to let panelists motivate their answers. 46 panelists participated in our study. We reached consensus on six ERs: 1) to foster research integrity, 2) to stimulate the development of intellectual virtues, 3) to address the big questions of life, 4) to cultivate the diversity of the disciplinary fields, 5) to serve and engage with society at large, and 6) to cultivate and safeguard academic freedom. Together the six ERs contain 27 elements. Consensus rates ranged from 73%-100% for both the ERs and their elements. Participants' detailed responses led to substantial improvements in the accompanying descriptions of the ERs. Our findings can inform the debate about the roles and responsibilities of universities, and inform researchers and policy makers to emphasize epistemic tasks of universities.

We propose a type of DOI-based manuscript, the author expression of concern (AEOC), allowing authors to formally publish their concerns about legitimate procedural problems associated with editors, reviewers, journals or publishers. Managed by a neutral third-party arbitrator or moderator, AEOCs would be limited in size and subjected to fair but strict screening of presented evidence. When an AEOC is approved for publication by an arbitrator, the criticized party would also need to formally respond within a reasonable period, as a "letter to the author(s)", which is also screened by the same arbitrator. Expanding the range of publishing options for authors, as AEOCs, would allow them to voice their legitimate concerns related to a journal's procedures in a formalized format. Although implementation might be challenging at first, it could demonstrate the fairness of editorial policies and democratize the publication process by taking authors' legitimate expressions of discontent related to procedure, and their rights of expression into account, elevating them to a formal article status, allowing for a more balanced two-way system of accountability and openness. Author empowerment that matches editorial and publisher empowerment is essential for a journal to truly claim to be fair, just and accountable.

The use of lists of questionable journals as a means to ensure research quality and integrity is the subject of an ongoing debate due to their ambiguous criteria. To assess the reasonableness of these lists from a typological perspective, we examined how effectively they reflect differences in bibliometric attributes among distinct groups and whether these differences are consistent. Using the Early Warning Journal Lists from the National Science Library of the Chinese Academy of Sciences as a case study, we categorized listed journals by warning levels and publication years. Our findings indicate potential inconsistencies in the criteria used for assigning warning levels, as we observed varying degrees of differences (or their absence) among groups across different key academic indicators. Notably, when it comes to citation metrics like journal impact factor and journal citation indicator, it appears that these criteria may not have been considered for grouping, although this lack of clarity from the creators is apparent. This underscores the importance of conducting more scientific and thorough evaluations of lists of questionable journals, along with a greater emphasis on sharing precise standards and data. Our study also provides recommendations for future iterations of such lists by different institutions.

The present study explores the major reasons for committing plagiarism, as reported in published literature. One hundred sixty-six peer-reviewed articles, which were retrieved from the Scopus database, were carefully examined to find out the research studies conducted to explore the most common reasons for academic cheating among students and researchers in different disciplines in higher education. An analysis of collected literature reveals that 19 studies were conducted to identify the perceived reasons of committing plagiarism. Four studies with similar constructs of perceived reasons of committing plagiarism, namely busy schedule, overload of homework and laziness, easy accessibility of electronic resources, poor knowledge in research writing and correct citation and lack of serious penalty, were conducted. The pooled mean and standard deviation of the four studies reveal that easy accessibility of electronic resources (Mean = 3.6, SD = 0.81), unawareness of instructions (Mean = 3.0, SD = 0.89), and busy schedule, overload of homework and laziness (Mean = 2.89, SD = 1.0) are important perceived reasons for committing plagiarism. The study findings could help create an effective intervention and a robust anti-plagiarism policy for academic institutions, administrators, and policymakers in detecting academic dishonesty while emphasizing the value of integrity in academic pursuit.