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The week at Retraction Watch featured an image so nice, it was used eight times, a co-author who forgot he’d used a figure elsewhere, and the 19th retraction for a researcher who tried to sue a PubPeer commenter. Here’s what was happening elsewhere:
- “Fighting plagiarism is one of the major functions of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) but the commission’s own Executive Director has allegedly stole over 80 percent of his co-authored research paper from another publication.” (Waseem Abbasi, The News International)
- A minority opinion? Reproducible research: Chris Drummond contends “that the consequences are somewhat overstated.” (J Exp & Theor Art Intell)
- “In the long run,” says Dorothy Bishop of errors, “scientists will not be judged on whether or not they make mistakes, but on how they respond when those mistakes are detected.” (PeerJ)
- “Are the Editors responsible for our obsession with the impact factor?” Juan Carlos Argüelles and Raquel Argüelles-Prieto ask in mBio. Current editor Arturo Casadevall and former editor Ferric Fang (a member of our non-profit’s board of directors) offer their counterpoint.
- Academics are protesting a Czech professor’s promotion to dean, alleging she has published in “junk journals.” (Jack Grove, Times Higher Education)
- “Although authorship disputes probably affect the article content the least of any type of publication ethics case, they can be among the hardest for journals to resolve.” (Matt Hodgkinson, Hindawi Opinion)
- Officials at the City University of New York are looking into why some of their faculty published in predatory journals. (Carl Campanile and Bruce Golding, The New York Post)
- “Considering the importance of providing both the scientific community and the public with accurate information to support policy decisions and future research, erroneous conclusions reported in the literature should be corrected.” (Australia and New Zealand Journal of Public Health)
- “Simply contributing data to a study or serving as a representative of a research consortium does not alone fulfill criteria for authorship…Authorship must not be bestowed in an honorary fashion.” (JAMA)
- Should all science journalists be covering retractions? Olivier Dessibourg, president of the Swiss Association for Science Journalism, interviews our Ivan Oransky. (Swissnex)
- “We can all agree that unpublished science is not going to have much of a chance of influencing the course of scientific thought, but is the act of publication really enough?” asks Craig Jones. (The Grumpy Geophysicist)
- Even a blogger known for skepticism can almost be caught by a publishing scam. Just ask Andrew Gelman.
- “[I]n many cases, the compliance office…at the company first hears of an allegation because it’s been flagged on PubPeer.com,” says attorney Mark Barnes of law firm Ropes & Gray.
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