A COPE Study (2019): Exploring Publication Ethics Issues in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences

COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) is a non-statutory body which aims to provide practical publication ethics guidance for journal editors working in all research disciplines. COPE was first conceived by an editor of a specialist medical journal at the BMJ Publishing Group but has since grown to become a fully multidisciplinary organisation. As a result of perceptions within COPE that some members not in Science Technology and Medicine (STM) disciplines might not consider COPE to be as relevant, in early 2019 COPE, with the support of Routledge (part of the Taylor & Francis Group), commissioned primary research to better understand the publication ethics landscape for editors working on journals within the arts, humanities, and social sciences. The research used a two-stage methodology: first exploring the issues qualitatively via two online focus groups with a diverse group of journal editors from the arts, humanities, and social sciences, before creating and disseminating an online survey. The survey received 656 admissible returned forms. - 64% of journal editors encountered issues addressing language and writing quality barriers, which they are balancing against remaining inclusive in their publication decisions. - 58% reported detecting plagiarism as the most serious issue they dealt with, followed by fraudulent submissions and data/image fabrication. - Recognising and dealing with bias in peer reviewer comments was an issue encountered by 55% of journal editors. - Journal editors felt least confident in dealing with data and/or image fabrication issues and fraudulent submissions. CONTENTS / Executive summary / Background to the research / The research / The results / Awareness and relevance of COPE to arts, humanities, and social sciences journal editors / Key suggestions for future directions / Conclusions / Appendices / COPE TIMELINE / FEEDBACK AND Acknowledgement

Why should ethics approval be required prior to publication of health promotion research?

Issue Addressed: Most academic journals that publish studies involving human participants require evidence that the research has been approved by a human research ethics committee (HREC). Yet journals continue to receive submissions from authors who have failed to obtain such approval. In this paper, we provide an ethical justification of why journals should not, in general, publish articles with no ethics approval, with particular attention to the health promotion context. Methods: Using theoretical bioethical reasoning and drawing on a case study; we first rebut some potential criticisms of the need for research ethics approval. We then outline four positive claims to justify a presumption that research should, in most instances, be published only if it has been undertaken with HREC approval. Results: We present four justifications for requiring ethics approval prior to publication: (i) that HREC approval adds legitimacy to the research; (ii) that the process of obtaining HREC approval can improve the quality of an intervention being investigated; (iii) that obtaining HREC approval can help mitigate harm; and (iv) that obtaining HREC approval demonstrates respect for persons. Conclusion: This paper provides a systematic and comprehensive assessment of why research ethics approval should generally be obtained prior to publishing in the health promotion context. So what? Journals such as the HPJA have recently begun to require research ethics approval for publishing research. Health promotion researchers will be interested in learning the ethical justification for this change. Keywords Publication ethics, research, health promotion, ethics approva

Reporting of ethical approval and informed consent in clinical research published in leading nursing journals : a retrospective observational study

Background: Ethical considerations play a prominent role in the protection of human subjects in clinical research. To date the disclosure of ethical protection in clinical research published in the international nursing journals has not been explored. Our research objective was to investigate the reporting of ethical approval and informed consent in clinical research published in leading international nursing journals. Methods: This is a retrospective observational study. All clinical research published in the five leading international nursing journals from the SCI Journal Citation Reports between 2015 and 2017 were retrieved to evaluate for evidence of ethical review. Results: A total of 2041 citations have been identified from the contents of all the five leading nursing journals that were published between 2015 and 2017. Out of these, 1284 clinical studies have been included and text relating to ethical review has been extracted. From these, most of prospective clinical studies (87.5%) discussed informed consent. Only half of those (52.9%) reported that written informed consent had been obtained; few (3.6%) reported oral consent, and few (6.8%) used other methods such as online consent or completion and return of data collection (such as surveys) to denote assent. Notably, 36.2% of those did not describe the method used to obtain informed consent and merely described that “consent was obtained from participants or participants agreed to join in the research”. Furthermore, whilst most of clinical studies (93.7%) mentioned ethical approval; 92.5% of those stated the name of ethical committee and interestingly, only 37.1% of those mentioned the ethical approval reference. The rates of reporting ethical approval were different between different study type, country, and whether financial support was received (all P<0.05). Conclusion: The reporting of ethics in leading international nursing journals demonstrates progress, but improvement of the transparency and the standard of ethical reporting in nursing clinical research is required

A COPE Study (2019): Exploring Publication Ethics Issues in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences

COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) is a non-statutory body which aims to provide practical publication ethics guidance for journal editors working in all research disciplines. COPE was first conceived by an editor of a specialist medical journal at the BMJ Publishing Group but has since grown to become a fully multidisciplinary organisation. As a result of perceptions within COPE that some members not in Science Technology and Medicine (STM) disciplines might not consider COPE to be as relevant, in early 2019 COPE, with the support of Routledge (part of the Taylor & Francis Group), commissioned primary research to better understand the publication ethics landscape for editors working on journals within the arts, humanities, and social sciences. The research used a two-stage methodology: first exploring the issues qualitatively via two online focus groups with a diverse group of journal editors from the arts, humanities, and social sciences, before creating and disseminating an online survey. The survey received 656 admissible returned forms. - 64% of journal editors encountered issues addressing language and writing quality barriers, which they are balancing against remaining inclusive in their publication decisions. - 58% reported detecting plagiarism as the most serious issue they dealt with, followed by fraudulent submissions and data/image fabrication. - Recognising and dealing with bias in peer reviewer comments was an issue encountered by 55% of journal editors. - Journal editors felt least confident in dealing with data and/or image fabrication issues and fraudulent submissions. CONTENTS / Executive summary / Background to the research / The research / The results / Awareness and relevance of COPE to arts, humanities, and social sciences journal editors / Key suggestions for future directions / Conclusions / Appendices / COPE TIMELINE / FEEDBACK AND Acknowledgement

Paper Mills Research Report [English]

Executive summary The subject of paper mills is currently being widely discussed by many stakeholders across the research publishing landscape. This report aims to give an overview of this topic, to explain how paper mills work, why they work and what we can collectively do about it. We have also undertaken a study of data submitted from a variety of investigations by leading publishers to get a sense of the scale of the problem. This paper concludes that the submission of suspected fake research papers, also often associated with fake authorship, is growing and threatens to overwhelm the editorial processes of a significant number of journals. Interviews with a range of stakeholders including publishers, research investigators and Retraction Watch show a deep level of concern and a realization that all stakeholders need to work together across the scholarly communication process to find long term solutions. This paper therefore is a call to action to those working in this area to work together to tackle the problem along the whole publication process. Contents Executive summary with key recommendations What is a paper mill? How do they work? What motivates authors to use them? History Where are we now? The scale of the problem Areas of concern and recommended actions Conclusions References Additional reading Acknowledgement

Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) - Guidelines on Good Publication Practice

COPE was founded in 1997 to address breaches of research and publication ethics. A voluntary body providing a discussion forum and advice for scientific editors, it aims to find practical ways of dealing with the issues, and to develop good practice