Author Misconduct: Not Just the Editors' Responsibility
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Author Misconduct: Not Just the Editors' Responsibility
What is this about?
Researchers everywhere are under increasing pressure to publish in high quality journals. The amount of space available in a journal such as Medical Education has not kept pace with the rise in submissions. Against a background of fierce competition, authors sometimes cut corners. This may lead to misconduct[1].
- ↑ Brice, Julie, and John Bligh. "Author misconduct: not just the editors' responsibility." Medical education 39.1 (2005): 83-89.
Why is this important?
This paper aims to explore the most common types of publication misconduct seen in the Medical Education editorial office, and to consider the reasons for this and the implications for researchers in the field.
For whom is this important?
What are the best practices?
The cases reveal practices to avoid:
- Plagiarism
- Undeserved authorship
- Duplicate submission
- Unprofessional conduct
- Lack of ethical approval
- Redundant or duplicate publication
Other experienced misconduct to avoid were:
- "‘salami‐slicing’– dividing up a piece of research as thinly as possible to get the maximum number of papers out of it; this naturally involves a great deal of repeated information, especially in the ‘methods’ section;"
- "cutting and pasting whole sections from 1 manuscript to another – another unfortunate temptation of the electronic age;"[1]
- "publishing a paper in a small national journal, then having it translated into English and submitting it to a larger journal without revealing its previous publication;"
- "publishing a paper in a minor journal or in some other format such as an e‐journal and then submitting it to a larger journal without revealing its previous publication, and"
- "attempting to have a paper published in 2 journals simultaneously; some authors even go so far as to give identical papers different titles and list the authors in a different order in an attempt to disguise this type of misconduct." [2]
