Accountability in Research-Policies and Quality Assurance最新文献

Background: We consider a research model for manuscript evaluation using a two-stage process. In the first stage, the current submission reminds reviewers of previous reviewing experiences, and then, reviewers aggregate these past review experiences into a kind of norm for assessing the scientific contribution and clarity of writing required for a manuscript. In the second stage, the reviewer's norms are imposed on the manuscript under review, and the reviewer's attention is drawn to discrepancies between the norm retrieved from previous similar peer review experiences and the reality for this submission.Methods: Five research hypotheses were integrated into this research model. In our study, we tested these five research hypotheses for statistical differences among reviewers by gender, experience, and academic rank using an online survey. There were 573 respondents.Results: We did not find significant differences among reviewers in their basic behavioral patterns. The only exception was that the low-rank reviewers agreed with the first hypothesis "H1: Selective norm" to a greater extent than the high-rank reviewers.Conclusions: The interaction between a reviewer's past review experiences and the actual scientific contribution and writing clarity of the manuscript under review can explain the lack of consistency among different reviews for the same manuscript.

Retraction, as a post-publication quality control measure increasingly adopted by mainstream journals, has been observed in a few potential predatory journals (PPJs), but the extent and handling of retractions by PPJs in general remain unclear. This study investigated retraction practices among the 1,511 standalone PPJs on the updated Beall's List. Data from the Retraction Watch Database revealed that only 46 of the PPJs, including 18 indexed by the Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection, had retracted a total of 645 publications as of 2022. The retraction handling performance of these PPJs was evaluated in terms of publicity of retraction policies, availability of retraction documents, visibility of retractions, and informativeness of retraction notices. Overall, the retracting PPJs performed poorly against these criteria and showed a trend of inadequate documentation of retraction policies and documents over time. A positive correlation was found between WoS inclusion and retraction handling performance of the PPJs except for the publicity of retraction policies. These findings suggest that retraction handling performance could serve as an additional important criterion of journal editorial practices and highlight the desirability of evaluating journal legitimacy in terms of post-publication quality control through retraction.

Retractions issued for misconduct offer a unique window into how questionable research is rhetorically constructed and made to appear credible. This study investigates how engaging with retracted articles can serve as a pedagogical tool for reviewer training, with particular attention to the rhetorical mechanisms through which unreliability is performed. Twenty STEM doctoral researchers analyzed self-selected retracted papers using guided critical-reading questions to identify problematic rhetorical features. Across the analyses, five recurring issues emerged: intertextual falsification, methodological opacity, rhetorical inconsistency, rhetorical overstatement, and terminological distortion. The findings indicate that this approach has the potential to raise doctoral students' rhetorical sensitivity by enabling them to detect subtle markers of unreliability and to adopt a more evaluative rhetorical stance toward scholarly texts. Retracted articles thus can provide an authentic pedagogical resource for developing reviewer rhetorical sensitivity within doctoral education.

Background: Nutrition research funded by commercial entities may be subject to bias. To date, no study has examined the prevalence of commercial funding in clinical trials of dietary supplements for weight loss.

Objective: To estimate the prevalence of commercial funding of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of dietary supplement interventions for weight loss.

Methods: We conducted a rapid review of English-language RCTs published between 1 January 2023, testing dietary supplements for weight loss. Funding sources were extracted from full texts and categorized as industry, nonprofit, trade association, academic, government, or other. Commercial funders, trade associations, and nonprofits were further reviewed for ties to supplement sales.

Results: Of 74 articles reviewed, 59% (n = 44) reported commercial funding, involving 64 unique funders and 118 instances of commercial involvement. More than half of funders sold dietary supplements or had affiliated companies that did, though some affiliations could not be verified due to limited transparency. No nonprofit funders had ties to supplement sales.

Conclusions: The majority of RCTs evaluating dietary supplements for weight loss reported commercial funding. Further research is needed to assess whether such funding influences study findings.

Background: Initiatives in responsible conduct of research (RCR) have often been ineffective, since they are based on several problematic assumptions. These include that (1) integrity issues in biomedical research serve as paradigm cases for those in research in general, (2) the primary cause of research misconduct is individual researchers' behavior, (3) educational interventions alone can prevent research misconduct, and (4) RCR can be addressed at the level of institutions. However, the research ecosystem comprises various partners, including funding agencies, research institutions, professional societies, and accreditation bodies.

Methods: This study employs a review of literature and critical reflection to analyze how partners comprising the research ecosystem shape research environments, making policy recommendations on that basis.

Results: Research misconduct should be understood as resulting from misaligned incentives throughout the research ecosystem. Just as institutional cultures shape individuals, the policies of partners comprising the research ecosystem shape institutional cultures. An ecosystems approach to RCR consists in understanding how partners comprising the research ecosystem depend on each other, using these relations to ensure each holds the others accountable to promote the production of valid and reliable research.

Conclusion: Viewing RCR through an ecosystems lens highlights the need for coordinated accountability among research partners.

Background: Many peer review attributes are widely criticized and poorly investigated, particularly in the context of proposals' peer review. This study aims to explore stakeholders' perspectives on the role of (un)blinding and the implications of open peer review for biomedical proposals' peer review.

Methods: We conducted a generic descriptive qualitative study within a constructivist paradigm, using semi-structured interviews. Twenty-three participants were selected through purposive and snowball sampling from funding agencies in Belgium and Qatar. Transcribed interviews were analyzed according to the 6-step thematic framework analysis. During the interviews, participants were asked to rate 7 quantitative statements to supplement the qualitative data.

Results: Codes with shared characteristics were grouped into categories, and ultimately three themes were generated: (1) the importance of increased transparency in fund allocation procedures while maintaining blinded reviewers' identities, (2) open peer review as a feasible approach for enhancing transparency and accountability in proposals' peer review, and (3) a growing critical stance toward traditional peer review systems.

Conclusion: While there remains a strong preference for double-blinded review within the context of our study, its limitations have become evident-particularly given current funding challenges. These shortcomings highlight the need for greater openness in peer review and increased transparency in fund allocation processes.

Weather and climate research is an area of science in which private companies, government agencies, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have substantial interests at stake, but little is known about how academic journals address these interests. The primary aim of this study was to help address this question by analyzing the content of funding disclosure polices of journals that publish research on weather and climate. We reviewed and analyzed policies from 100 journals that focus on weather and climate research and found that most of them have comprehensive policies for disclosing conflicts of interest (COIs) and funding sources. 98% of the journals require disclosure of COIs; 91.8% require funding disclosure; 87.9% require disclosure of non-financial COIs; 86.9% define COIs, 80.8% provide examples of COIs, and 65.7% policies that apply to reviewers and editors, and 55.6% have enforcement mechanisms for violations of COI policies. Several of the policies were positively associated with a higher journal impact factor. Although most journals that publish research on weather and climate research have comprehensive COI and funding disclosure policies, additional research is needed to determine the extent to authors, reviewers, and editors understand and follow these policies.

The Contributor Role Taxonomy (CRediT) was released in 2014 with the aim of improving the attribution of credit and responsibilities in scholarly publications. Besides encouraging researchers to use CRediT for specification of contributions in publications, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Intramural Research Program (IRP) has been using CRediT as a tool to investigate and resolve authorship disputes pre- and post-publication. In this article, we share the policies and procedures used at the NIH IRP for resolving authorship disputes, with the hope that other administrators and institutions might find value in our approach and provide feedback where necessary. The NIH IRP employs CRediT to offer a more objective and structured approach to understanding how a supervisor, complainant, or other parties involved in a dispute view the overall contributions in a project. This approach provides both the research group and the mediator or investigator with a common vocabulary to describe contributions and minimizes the likelihood of misunderstanding. Developing robust and transparent institutional mechanisms to address and resolve disputes, including guidance on how to address conflicts on authorship and authorship order, might contribute to a more productive and healthier research environment.