Journal Self-Citation VI: Forced Journal Self-Citation – Common, Appropriate, Ethical?

Forced journal self-citation, as defined in this paper, has serious implications for the IS field. We introduce a statistical perspective on how common the practice is, discuss whether it is appropriate or not, and evaluate its ethicality. We find that journal self-citations do influence journal impact factors, a measure of journal quality and a tool for many schools in their promotion and tenure process. We suggest that forced self-citations are not considered appropriate by community standards nor are they ethical in terms of the greatest good. We therefore propose that impact factors be disseminated both with and without self-citations to make the practice of forced self-citation more transparent to the IS community. An example of the proposal is shown

Academic misconduct, misrepresentation and gaming: a reassessment

The motivation for this Special Issue is increasing concern not only with academic misconduct but also with less easily defined forms of misrepresentation and gaming. In an era of intense emphasis on measuring academic performance, there has been a proliferation of scandals, questionable behaviors and devious stratagems involving not just individuals but also organizations, including universities, editors and reviewers, journal publishers, and conference organizers. This introduction first reviews the literature on the prevalence of academic misconduct, misrepresentation and gaming (MMG). The core of the article is organized around a life-cycle model of the production and dissemination of research results. We synthesize the findings in the MMG literature at the level of the investigator or research team, emphasizing that misbehavior extends well beyond fabrication and falsification to include behaviors designed to exaggerate or to mislead readers as to the significance of research findings. MMG is next explored in the post-research review, publication, and post-publication realms. Moving from the individual researcher to the organizational level, we examine how MMG can be engaged in by either journals or organizations employing or funding the researchers. The changing institutional environment including the growth of research assessment exercises, increased quantitative output measurement and greater pressure to publish may all encourage MMG. In the final section, we summarize the main conclusions and offer suggestions both on how we might best address the problems and on topics for future research

Towards a taxonomy of research misconduct: the case of business school research

This paper examines the growing pressures and incentives encouraging research misconduct, along with the consequences, as illustrated by the case of business school research. Drawing on a review of the literature on different theoretical approaches to analysing organizational misconduct, we develop a formal taxonomy distinguishing appropriate conduct from blatantly inappropriate misconduct but with a specific focus on the ‘grey’ areas between these extremes in the form of questionable and inappropriate behaviour. We identify various sources of research misbehaviour and different categories of those affected. The aim is to provide a clearer understanding of what research behaviour is deemed appropriate or not, which stakeholders it affects, and the pressures and incentives likely to exacerbate such misconduct. We conclude with a discussion of how the taxonomy can help shape future good research practice (thereby setting a better example to students), and offer some propositions for future researc

Dilemas éticos na publicação científica: dificuldades e soluções para editores

Editors of scientific journals need to be conversant with the mechanisms by which scientific misconduct is amplified by publication practices. This paper provides definitions, ways to document the extent of the problem, and examples of editorial attempts to counter fraud. Fabrication, falsification, duplication, ghost authorship, gift authorship, lack of ethics approval, non-disclosure, 'salami' publication, conflicts of interest, auto-citation, duplicate submission, duplicate publications, and plagiarism are common problems. Editorial misconduct includes failure to observe due process, undue delay in reaching decisions and communicating these to authors, inappropriate review procedures, and confounding a journal's content with its advertising or promotional potential. Editors also can be admonished by their peers for failure to investigate suspected misconduct, failure to retract when indicated, and failure to abide voluntarily by the six main sources of relevant international guidelines on research, its reporting and editorial practice. Editors are in a good position to promulgate reasonable standards of practice, and can start by using consensus guidelines on publication ethics to state explicitly how their journals function. Reviewers, editors, authors and readers all then have a better chance to understand, and abide by, the rules of publishing.Editores de revistas científicas precisam estar atentos aos mecanismos de disseminação de condutas inadequadas no processo de publicação. Este artigo fornece definições, formas de documentar a extensão do problema e exemplos de iniciativas para conter fraudes editorias. Fabricação, falsificação, duplicação, autoria-fantasma, autoria concedida, falta de ética na aprovação de manuscritos, não-divulgação desses fatos, publicação "salami", conflitos de interesse, autocitação, submissão e publicação duplicadas, e plágio são problemas comuns. A conduta editorial inadequada inclui: falha em seguir o processo devido, atraso nas decisões e comunicação com os autores, falhas na revisão, e confundir o conteúdo de um periódico com seu potencial promocional e de propaganda. Os editores podem ser advertidos por seus pares por não investigar comportamento científico suspeito, por não se retratar quando indicado ou não obedecer as seis principais fontes internacionais de orientação em pesquisa, publicação e política editorial. Os editores estão em posição privilegiada para promover práticas adequadas, adotando orientações éticas e claras sobre os procedimentos adotados nos periódicos. Assim, revisores, editores, autores e leitores terão condições de compreender e seguir as normas de publicação

WiMIR: An Informetric Study on Women Authors in ISMIR

Poster session 3: paper no. PS3-29Organized by New York University and Columbia UniversityThe Music Information Retrieval (MIR) community is becoming increasingly aware of a gender imbalance evident in ISMIR participation and publication. This paper reports upon a comprehensive informetric study of the publication, authorship and citation characteristics of female researchers in the context of the ISMIR conferences. All 1,610 papers in the ISMIR proceedings written by 1,910 unique authors from 2000 to 2015 were collected and analyzed. Only 14.1% of all papers were led by female researchers. Temporal analysis shows that the percentage of lead female authors has not improved over the years, but more papers have appeared with female coauthors in very recent years. Topics and citation numbers are also analyzed and compared between female and male authors to identify research emphasis and to measure impact. The results show that the most prolific authors of both genders published similar numbers of ISMIR papers and the citation counts of lead authors in both genders had no significant difference. We also analyzed the collaboration patterns to discover whether gender is related to the number of collaborators. Implications of these findings are discussed and suggestions are proposed on how to continue encouraging and supporting female participation in the MIR field.published_or_final_versio

Disclosure rules and declared essential patents

Many standard setting organizations (SSOs) require participants to disclose patents that might be infringed by implementing a proposed standard, and commit to license their “essential” patents on terms that are fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND). Data from SSO intellectual property disclosures have been used in academic studies to provide a window into the standard setting process, and in legal proceedings to assess the relative contribution of different parties to a standard. We describe the disclosure process, discuss the link between SSO rules and patent-holder incentives, and analyze disclosure practices using a novel dataset constructed from the disclosure archives of thirteen major SSOs. Our empirical results suggest that subtle differences in SSO policies influence which patents are disclosed, the terms of licensing commitments, and ultimately long-run citation and litigation rates for the underlying patents. Thus, while policy debates sometimes characterize SSOs as a relatively homogeneous set of institutions, our results point in the opposite direction – towards the importance of recognizing heterogeneity in SSO policies and practices

Hip-Hop librarianship for scholarly communication: An approach to introducing topics

Hip-Hop music, business, distribution, and culture exhibit highly-comparable trends in the scholarly communication and publication industry. This article discusses Hip-Hop artists and research authors as content creators, each operating within marketplaces still adjusting to digital, online connectivity. These discussions are intended for classroom use, where students may access their existing knowledge framework of popular media and apply it to a new understanding of the scholarly communication environment. Research instructors and librarians may discover new perspectives to familiar issues through conversations with students engaging with this material in a novel way

A review of multiple hypothesis testing in relation to the use of lateral cephalometric variables as the outcome measure in orthodontic research

Jie Shi analyzes the sixth-century epitaph of Prince Shedi Huiluo as both a funerary text and a burial object in order to show that the means of achieving posthumous immortality radically changed during the Six Dynasties. Whereas the Han-dynasty vision of an immortal afterlife counted mainly on the imperishability of the tomb itself, Shedi’s epitaph predicted that the tomb housing it would eventually be ruined. This new, pessimistic vision of tombs was shaped by the experience people had in the Six Dynasties of encountering numerous ruined tombs in their daily life. To secure an afterlife for the deceased, they adopted a new strategy, which relied on words: they inscribed epitaphs on stone, concealed them in the tombs, and expected that after the tombs fell into ruin the epitaphs would resurface to be read by future audiences