What is this about? (Is About)
From The Embassy of Good Science
A short summary providing some details about the theme/resource (max. 75 words)
- ⧼SA Foundation Data Type⧽: Text
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Before submitting an article to a journal, all authors must approve the manuscript and give their consent for submission and publication.'"`UNIQ--ref-00000000-QINU`"' Disregarding this principle can lead to some legal issues and in some cases to retraction of the article.
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Participant’s consent for publication of case reports is different from consent to participate in research.'"`UNIQ--ref-00000000-QINU`"' Since relationship between a researcher and a research participant is confidential, publishing case history in a journal can lead to participant’s identification. This is why researchers should not publish or share identifiable data from the research without participant’s consent.'"`UNIQ--ref-00000001-QINU`"''"`UNIQ--ref-00000002-QINU`"' +
The project High Integration of Research Monographs in the European Open Science (HIRMEOS) aims to disseminate open access research monographs in the field of social sciences and humanities (SSH). This Open access Publication in the European Research Area for Social Sciences and Humanities (OPERAS) project tackles the main obstacles to the full integration of monographs into the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).'"`UNIQ--ref-00000000-QINU`"'
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As a part of the Open Science movement, this cross-publisher initiative aims to promote open and unrestricted availability of scholarly publications’ abstracts. This particularly refers to journal articles and book chapters. Wider availability of abstracts could result in increasing discoverability and attracting readers to the full text.'"`UNIQ--ref-00000000-QINU`"' +
This collaboration between scholarly publishers, researchers, and other concerned parties aims to promote availability of scholarly citation data. Making these data open to everyone in a machine-readable format and without the need to go to the source would maximise their use and provide benefits for all stakeholders in research, especially independent researchers.'"`UNIQ--ref-00000000-QINU`"'
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Open access publishing allows research outputs, such as academic journal articles, to be distributed online without barriers. This is in contrast to traditional non-open access publishing, where access has to be acquired through subscriptions, site licenses or pay-per-view charges. Although developments in the open access movement suggest its popularity is rising, there is little information about the impact on publishing. +
The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) aims to strengthen ethical practices in the culture of publishing. Together with the [https://doaj.org/ Directory of Open Access Journals] (DOAJ), the [https://oaspa.org/ Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association] (OASPA), and the [http://www.wame.org/ World Association of Medical Editors] (WAME), they have published the “Principles of Transparency and Best Practise in Scholarly Publishing”.
They also have published a list of “Core Practices”, which consolidates the [https://publicationethics.org/resources/code-conduct Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Editors] and [https://publicationethics.org/system/files/Code_of_conduct_for_publishers_Mar11.pdf Code of Conduct for Journal Publishers] +
Retraction is the process of withdrawal from publication of those articles that display seriously flawed or erroneous data. Retraction aims to correct the scholarly literature and alert readers of an article’s serious mistakes. '"`UNIQ--ref-00000000-QINU`"' The flawed data can be the result of honest error or from research misconduct. When unnoticed, retracted papers are still seen as valid and decrease the trustworthiness of science that follows.
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Standards of authorship regulate the allocation of credit when researchers collaborate on publications. +
Peer reviews have become a crucial step in the academic dissemination of information. Not only does it serve as a means of quality control, it also legitimizes research through a process of verification and validation. Meant to provide constructive feedback to the authors, the process of peer review involves a thorough evaluation of the research methodology and findings by experts or colleagues in the field (“peers”).
The main strength of the peer reviews lie in the fact that they are capable of preventing the dissemination of flawed or manipulated information. Thus, publication in a peer-reviewed journals has become a pre-requisite for scientific credibility. However, it is not without drawbacks: not only is the review process is subject to biases and errors, but it could also potentially be misused by editors and reviewers to exclude novel information that refutes current standards. <sup>1</sup> Further, peer-reviews are also time-consuming, with the average time for accepted papers being 17 weeks. <sup>2</sup> In the case of research that is life-saving and of immediate impact, such delays could prove harmful. To circumvent this problem, many journals allow the publication of “pre-prints”, which are non-reviewed manuscripts which are disseminated online, hosted mostly on “pre-print servers” such as MedArxiv, arXiv and bioRxiv. <sup>3</sup> Pre-prints can be peer-reviewed and published formally at a later stage. Besides saving time, disseminating research in this manner also encourages feedback from a broader audience, improves the visibility of early stage researchers and help in manuscript revision prior to publication. <sup>4</sup> +
HARKing i.e. Hypothesizing After the Results are Known or post hoc testing, as it is more widely known, is not unfamiliar to many researchers. In scientific methodology or statistics class in grad school, many of us have been told that such practice was flawed, but few of us has ever heard the rationale behind it. HARKing is considered to be a detrimental research practice.'"`UNIQ--ref-00000000-QINU`"' This thematic page will try to address the logic behind HARKing and hopefully shed some light on its nature and validity.
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Duplicate publication is a form of redundant publication where the same article is published more than once, without acknowledging the first publication.
Secondary publication is an acceptable type of publication – the publication of the same article for different audiences – for example, in a different journal or in a different language. +
When researchers distort the results or modify conclusions of their study due to pressure of commercial or not-for-profit funders of the study, they engage in questionable research practice. This is called funding or sponsorship bias, but it is also known as “funding effect.” +
Hypothesizing after the results are known ('''HARKing''') refers to the practice of presenting unexpected findings as a priori hypotheses or failing to report empirically unsupported hypotheses that were derived a priori and guided the research. In other words, research reports suffer from HARKing if they include one or more post hoc hypotheses (that is, hypotheses developed after the results of the data analysis are known) that are misrepresented as a priori (that is, as developed prior to the data analysis) or if they exclude one or more a priori hypotheses that were empirically disconfirmed. Consequently, HARKed reports misrepresent the ratio of empirically confirmed and disconfirmed a priori hypotheses by elevating exploratory findings to a priori expectations and suppressing a priori expectations unsupported by the data at hand. Thus, HARKing misportrays the research process by falsely describing hypothesis generating exploratory research as hypothesis testing confirmatory research or by failing to report hypotheses that could not be corroborated and therefore deceives readers.
This theme page describes the practice of HARKing and its detrimental consequences on research in some more depth, briefly explains how initiatives such as preregistration aim to reduce HARKing and differentiates pure HARKing from transparent forms of HARKing that are not necessarily detrimental to the research endeavor. +
Researchers may handle data in a number of ways that can influence the results to become misleading. +
The media plays a significant role in presenting research findings to the public. However, since the results and conclusions of scientific studies are not always easy to understand, errors in their reporting can easily arise. The inaccurate representation of scientific results has been referred to as “scienceploitation” '"`UNIQ--ref-00000000-QINU`"'.
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Inferring from P-values is considered to be a conventional scientific procedure '"`UNIQ--ref-00000000-QINU`"'. However, this statistical method is frequently misused, resulting in the publication of false positive results '"`UNIQ--ref-00000001-QINU`"', which is one of the reasons why the American Statistical Association (ASA) released a policy statement on P-values. There is an ongoing discussion in the scientific community regarding the statement.
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Every research has its flaws and limitations, a failure to report these however is a questionable research practice. Insufficiently reported study flaws and limitations are considered one of the most common questionable research practices or examples of ‘sloppy science’. Since these ‘sloppy’ practices are much more frequent, they are arguably more detrimental to science than research misconduct (falsification, fabrication, and plagiarism) '"`UNIQ--ref-00000000-QINU`"'.
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Non-reporting of negative findings is a phenomenon that happens in science, when there is a bigger chance of publishing when you have a positive research result (a statistically significant finding of effect). '"`UNIQ--ref-00000000-QINU`"' One of the consequences of this phenomenon is publication bias. '"`UNIQ--ref-00000001-QINU`"'
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Outcome reporting bias refers to selective/distorted reporting of results, and/or biased interpretation of available information. This may involve overlooking some results or using specific statistical methods to achieve a desirable and often pre-determined outcome. +
