Ethics of scientific publication

Abstract

Published scientific research breeds the development of clinical management guidelines and pathways. Currently, scholarly proficiency is assessed using numerous primitive metrics for incentives that can kindle publication of hoax or flawed research content. Such flawed data can lead to wastage of resources, time, and most importantly harm to the society. Authors, editors, and peer reviewers need to be genuine in conducting, analyzing, and publication of scientific research. Institutions need to be aware and utilize advanced metrics to assess the scientific reputation of researchers. This short review discusses in brief the common authorship and editorial ethical issues encountered in scientific publication and the newer metrics available for the assessment of scholarly excellence. Editors and peer reviewers need to be acquainted with the common ethical issues and follow consensus international guidelines on publication ethics to tackle them appropriately.

Authorship: An academic currency?

“…The current call for publications being used to ladder up or down an individual's rank/ promotion needs to be addressed. 11,12 "Authorship is not a trade, it is an inspiration; authorship does not keep an office, its habitation is all out under the sky and everywhere the winds are blowing and the sun is shining and the creatures of God are free." -Mark Twain…”

Hebb and Cattell: The Genesis of the Theory of Fluid and Crystallized Intelligence

“…According to Cattell, this could be accomplished by scientifically distinguishing and segregating the population by race, and then implementing eugenics programs that would increase the general intelligence of the population (Cattell, 1933). These ideas were first developed in the 1930's (Cattell, 1933, 1937, 1938), but remained consistent over his academic career (Cattell, 1950, 1972, 1987). In fact, it is these extreme socio-religious beliefs and their relationship to his scientific contributions that lead to the postponement of the presentation of the American Psychological Foundation Gold Medal Award for Life Achievement in Psychological Science to Cattell in 1997.…”

Untitled

“…In the current climate and the accepted system of peer review, authorship is here to stay. Problems with the order of authorship, duplicate submissions and publications, redundant publication, plagiarism, falsification, and fabrication of data, have been described [9] . These are arguably more damaging on a societal basis than honorary authorship and each of these topics can be the subject of separate editorials.…”