Editor’s note: We recently published a guest post on universities’ responsibility for investigating misconduct allegations related to work by staff and students conducted and/or published while they were at other institutions. The article prompted a vigorous discussion in the comment thread. Below is a letter to the editor from Itamar Ashkenazi and Howard Browman, both members of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Council.
Simon Kolstoe questions whether it is a university’s responsibility to act when concerns are raised about possible publication misconduct by their staff or students in situations where the misconduct relates to work conducted at other organizations.
We contend that it is their responsibility, regardless of where the work was conducted. That is because research and scholarly activity, while supported by universities, is conducted by people. It is the people who engaged in the misconduct who must be held accountable. That cannot happen without the participation of the institutions with which they had (and have) a formal relationship (as students, employees, contractors, etc.).
In the guest post, Kolstoe calls for journal editors to take responsibility for investigating claims of misconduct. This is in stark contrast to current publication standards, which call on research organizations to investigate potential publication misconduct. The organizations where the work was done are best placed to investigate because they are most likely to have access to the raw data, authorizations, manpower, facilities, etc.
Even if the scholarly work was conducted elsewhere, the organizations with which the authors are affiliated (e.g., employer-employee relationship, educational relationship, academic relationship, membership in academic societies) can facilitate investigator cooperation with the investigating institution. Journal editors have limited scope or authority to do that.
While current guidelines advocate that research organizations should investigate and even adjudicate possible publication misconduct, it may be that our assumption that research organizations are best placed to investigate such misconduct on their own is wrong. As the guest post suggests, universities need the support of editors and publishers who can provide content expertise and experience in publication ethics.
The answer to Kolstoe’s query lies within his post: “The responsibility for correcting the literature is shared.”
Importantly, this responsibility includes taking a position against individuals who violate the profession’s norms, and invoking consequences, even if their actions occurred at another institution.
The post concludes, “If journals in particular want to make large profits by representing and controlling the research literature, they also need to take responsibility to stop situations like this from occurring in the first place.”
Once again, we contend that responsibility for the situation that we are in extends also to universities; they cannot ignore their own role within the academic ecosystem which incentivizes authors to compromise standards in order to publish.
Itamar Ashkenazi is a general surgeon at the Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa, Israel, an associate editor at two journals and a member of the COPE Council. Howard I. Browman is principal research scientist with the Institute of Marine Research in Bergen, Norway, editor-in-chief of ICES Journal of Marine Science, a member of the COPE Council and Trustee Board and a member of the editorial policy committee of the Council of Science Editors (CSE). The views and opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of COPE, CSE, their journals, publishers or their employers.
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I thank Itamar and Howard for their response to my post. I suspect one of the problems, and source of disagreement (if indeed there is one), is based on over generalisations. If we start to consider examples perhaps we may find more agreement as to how the responsibility is shared:
1) An institution is presented with clear evidence (perhaps a retraction) of misconduct in relation to a paper published by a CURRENT member of staff or student published prior to arriving at the institution – I agree an investigation by the institution leading to potential disciplinary action should occur given they are the current employer/educator.
2) Allegations are made of potential misconduct relating to a paper published prior to the staff/student arriving at the institution, and this is disputed by the member of staff/student. This should be the responsibility of the journal to investigate for the reasons given in my original article (based on subject matter expertise held by the journal/editor and power to retract). If subsequently the journal does find reason to retract, this example reverts to example 1.
3) Misconduct is identified AFTER a member of staff/student has left an institution, and any involved paper was not published while the staff/student was at that particular institution. Here, as was the case in the example that triggered this discussion, it is very difficult to know what reasonable action the institution can take beyond passing on the information to other parties (such as journals to investigate if a retraction has not yet occured). Revoking degrees and/or supportive references is fraught with legal complications especially if the questionable work did not relate to the work/assessments conducted while at the institution, albeit an investigation should be held to determine this is indeed the case.
Institutions such as universities lend credibility to their researchers. They thus have a responsibility to ensure this credibility is not misused.
If an allegation of misconduct is made against a researcher, regardless of who else is investigating, the researcher’s current institution must investigate and let them go if the institution can no longer trust the researcher, just like a venue must retract a paper if the paper can no longer be trusted.
Unfortunately, the suggestions outlined here are not legally possible in the UK (and probably other GDPR jurisdictions). An employer is not permitted to disclose any personal data held about anyone, employee or student, current or former, except under tightly controlled legal circumstances. A request for confidential personal data from another university, or from a journal editor, or from a research institution or society, would be bound to be rejected.
(Disclaimer: I am a trustee of a learned society which is also a publisher. I don’t speak for them, and I am not a lawyer.)
I hear comments like this fairly frequently, but data protection is not an excuse to not take action. Considering European/UK GDPR legislation there are six lawful basis for processing identifiable data. Just because someone does not consent to data being shared does not mean it cannot be shared. Information about research misconduct CAN often be shared by other relevant parties normally on the basis of contractual obligations (managing research as defined in people’s employment contracts), or legitimate interests (it is the legitimate interest of a journal and a university to publish accurate research). Also there is seldom a requirement to share all aspects of an investigation – just the outcome and perhaps a list of papers that may be problematic. There seems to be a lot of misplaced fear within institutions relating to data protection which I think is half the problem when appropriate action on research misconduct is not taken.
I’m not having it. How can one institution investigate what went down somewhere else? Holden Thorp’s (EIC for Science) essay on this is spot on: journals are responsible for the publications, not the authors. If there are data discrepancies, altered figures, what have you, retract the article as unreliable. Deciding which author was responsible, honest mistake or malfeasance, that’s on the institution. Journals don’t need to wait for that. If the old institution can’t or won’t, that is a problem for the new institution. Still, word gets around, and a researcher who got away is still damaged goods at the new institution. Who wants to partner with Dr. Dodgy on this new grant application? No one maybe?
https://doi.org/10.1126/science.ade3742
“journals are responsible for the publications, not the authors [of the publications(?)]”
I’m sorry, but— what? Authors are of course responsible for what they publish.
Okay, so after reading the editorial you linked, I guess you probably meant to say, “journals are responsible for [the retraction of] publications, not authors.” Still, that was pretty unclear.