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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