Ethically governing artificial intelligence in the field of scientific research and innovation

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a double-edged sword for scientific research. While, on one hand, the incredible potential of AI and the different techniques and technologies for using it make it a product coveted by all scientific research centres and organisations and science funding agencies. On the other, the highly negative impacts that its irresponsible and self-interested use is causing, or could cause, make it a controversial tool, attracting strong criticism from those involved in the different sectors of research. This study aims to delve into the current and virtual uses of AI in scientific research and innovation in order to provide guidelines for developing and implementing a governance system to promote ethical and responsible research and innovation in the field of AI

Network Visualization of a Retracted Article: Repeated Proliferation of Error through Citation Networks

Retraction is used as an optimum tool to uphold and safe-guide the integrity of scholarly literature. However, knowingly or unknowingly the authors build the work on these false claims by citing the retracted articles. Such dependencies on retracted articles may become implicit and indirect causing profound and long-lasting threat to the credibility of the literature. Consequently, it is important to detect and analyze such threats. The article aims to demonstrate dependency of citing articles on retracted article with reference to the rest of the literature. A case study of highly cited (as reported by retraction watch) retracted article ”Spontaneous human adult stem cell transformation” published in Cancer Research in 2005 by Rubio, D as lead author is visualized in terms of bibliographic coupling of citing journals and network and density visualizations of co-citations of authors. The study concludes that there is high-order citation dependency of scientific literature on retracted article

Citations and retractions. Why are retracted articles cited?

In 2006 Jon Sudbø was exposed for commiting research fraud. An investigation of all of Sudbø's scientific articels followed. The result was that a majority of them had to be retracted. Ten years after the scandal people are still citing Sudbø. This paper explore the nature of citations with Sudbø as case, in the goal of understanding why retracted articles are cited

Addressing the Continued Circulation of Retracted Research as a Design Problem

In this article, we discuss the continued circulation and use of retracted science as a complex problem: Multiple stakeholders throughout the publishing ecosystem hold competing perceptions of this problem and its possible solutions. We describe how we used a participatory design process model to co-develop recommendations for addressing this problem with stakeholders in the Alfred P. Sloan-funded project, Reducing the Inadvertent Spread of Retracted Science (RISRS). After introducing the four core RISRS recommendations, we discuss how the issue of retraction-related stigma gives rise to recommendation #4, Educate stakeholders about retraction and pre- and post-publication stewardship of the scholarly record. This recommendation is important for training publishing professionals and realizing this recommendation will require further collaborative design work across scholarly communications. We highlight ongoing stakeholder work which is now re-starting the design cycle. We conclude with a discussion of ongoing activities facilitating uptake and refinement of RISRS research and the implementation agenda

Why does Retraction Watch continue to offer support to Jeffrey Beall, and legitimize his post-mortem “predatory” lists?

Retraction Watch is a science watchdog that may give the impression of being both an anti-bad science and an anti-science blog. This blog has tried to legitimize its ethical stance by naming its parent organization The Center for Science Integrity Inc. (CSI), and by appointing a former Chair of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Elizabeth Wager, to the CSI board of directors. Jeffrey Beall, another science watchdog, often appears in public alongside Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky, the CSI secretary and president, respectively, and participates in events with Wager. Beall became academically redundant on January 15, 2017. This is because his blog, which hosted a faulty, controversial and misleading list (and thus potentially libelous) of “predatory” open access journals and publishers, suddenly went blank. Beall offered no apology or explanation to the public, but was offered intellectual asylum and protection by the University of Colorado, Denver, where he works as a librarian. After a grace period of almost two months, members of the global academic community have now largely lost respect for Beall because of his silence, which may be equated with irresponsibility and/or cowardice. Despite this near extinct academic status, Retraction Watch continues to laud Beall, refer to his now-defunct site and lists as valid, as many as 25 times, and even rely on the Beall blog and lists to support several of their journalistic claims. In the world of science publishing, the legitimization of a “fact” using a defunct or false (i.e., non-factual) source, is equivalent to publishing misconduct, and feeds into the “false facts” and “alternative truths” epidemic in journalism that Retraction Watch is now impregnating into science publishing. Why then is Retraction Watch allowed to operate under an ethically superior platform, while expecting scientists and academics to respect basic rules of citing valid references, but while practicing suspect or unethical citation practices? This attitude undermines the ethical publishing foundation of the CSI, the CSI directors, and Retraction Watch as a reliable “journalistic” source of information, undermining trust and respect in this blog, while emphasizing its biased nature