The number of articles published in open access journals has increased dramatically in recent years. Simultaneously, the quality of publications in these journals has been called into question. Few studies have explored the retraction rate from OAJs. The purpose of the current study was to determine the reasons for retractions of articles from OAJs in biomedical research. The Medline database was searched through PubMed to identify retracted publications in OAJs. The journals were identified by the Directory of Open Access Journals. (...) Data were extracted from each retracted article, including the time from publication to retraction, causes, journal impact factor, and country of origin. Trends in the characteristics related to retraction were determined. Data from 621 retracted studies were included in the analysis. The number and rate of retractions have increased since 2010. The most common reasons for retraction are errors, plagiarism, duplicate publication, fraud/suspected fraud and invalid peer review. The number of retracted articles from OAJs has been steadily increasing. Misconduct was the primary reason for retraction. The majority of retracted articles were from journals with low impact factors and authored by researchers from China, India, Iran, and the USA. (shrink)

Practices related to research misconduct seem to have been multiplied in recent years. Many cases of scientific fraud have been exposed publicly, and journals and academic institutions have deployed different measures worldwide in this regard. However, the influence of specific social and cultural environments on scientific fraud may vary from society to society. This article analyzes how scientists in Japan deal with accusations of scientific fraud. For such a purpose, a series of scientific fraud cases that took place in Japan (...) has been reconstructed through diverse sources. Thus, by analyzing those cases, the social basis of scientific fraud and the most relevant aspects of Japanese cultural values and traditions, as well as the concept of honour which is deeply involved in the way Japanese scientists react when they are accused of and publicly exposed in scientific fraud situations is examined. (shrink)

Empirical studies have revealed a disturbing prevalence of research misconduct in a wide variety of disciplines, although not, to date, in the areas of ethics and philosophy. This study aims to provide empirical evidence on perceptions of how serious a problem research misconduct is in these two disciplines in Spain, particularly regarding the effects that the model used to evaluate academics’ research performance may have on their ethical behaviour. The methodological triangulation applied in the study combines a questionnaire, a debate (...) at the annual meeting of scientific association, and in-depth interviews. Of the 541 questionnaires sent out, 201 responses were obtained, with a significant difference in the participation of researchers in philosophy and in ethics ; 26 researchers took part in the debate and 14 interviews were conducted. The questionnaire results reveal that 91.5% of the respondents considered research misconduct to be on the rise; 63.2% considered at least three of the fraudulent practices referred to in the study to be commonplace, and 84.1% identified two or more such practices. The researchers perceived a high prevalence of duplicate publication and self-plagiarism, use of personal influence and citation manipulation, in contrast to a low perceived incidence of data falsification or fabrication. The debate and the interviews corroborated these data. Researchers associated the spread of these misconducts with the research evaluation model applied in Spain. (shrink)

BackgroundPlagiarism is considered as serious research misconduct, together with data fabrication and falsification. However, little is known about biomedical researchers’ views on plagiarism. Moreover, it has been argued – based on limited empirical evidence – that perceptions of plagiarism depend on cultural and other determinants. The authors explored, by means of an online survey among 46 reputable universities in Europe and China, how plagiarism is perceived by biomedical researchers in both regions.MethodsWe collected work e-mail addresses of biomedical researchers identified through (...) the websites of 13 reputable universities in Europe and 33 reputable universities in China and invited them to participate in an online anonymous survey. Our questionnaire was designed to assess respondents’ views about plagiarism by asking whether they considered specific practices as plagiarism. We analyzed if respondents in China and Europe responded differently, using logistic regression analysis with adjustments for demographic and other relevant factors.ResultsThe authors obtained valid responses from 204 researchers based in China (response rate 2.1%) and 826 researchers based in Europe (response rate 5.6%). Copying text from someone else’s publication without crediting the source, using idea(s) from someone else’s publication without crediting the source and republishing one’s own work in another language without crediting the source were considered as plagiarism by 98, 67 and 64%, respectively. About one-third of the respondents reported to have been unsure whether they had been plagiarizing.Overall, the pattern of responses was similar among respondents based in Europe and China. Nevertheless, for some items significant differences did occur in disadvantage of Chinese respondents.ConclusionsFindings indicate that nearly all biomedical researchers understand (and disapprove of) the most obvious forms of plagiarism, but uncertainties and doubts were apparent for many aspects. And the minority of researchers who did not recognize some types of plagiarism as plagiarism was larger among China-based respondents than among Europe-based respondents. The authors conclude that biomedical researchers need clearer working definitions of plagiarism in order to deal with grey zones. (shrink)

An activity called Purple Dragons and Yellow Toadstools, originally reported in 1987 as a training activity for jurors, was adapted as a priming exercise for a unit on teaching research ethics with undergraduate students. In this activity, learners develop skills for building negotiated consensus. The procedure involves individuals’ ranking 10–15 moral transgressions and/or legal violations followed by a small group discussion in order to arrive at an agreed-upon ranking by the team. The framework has proved to be quite flexible, adaptable (...) to different subject areas and with different populations of students. (shrink)