Discussion documents

There are a number of legitimate and valuable tools for gaining information and evidence for scientific advance and improving health care. These include research, evaluation, audit, and others. There is a real danger that UK “researchers” using tools other than “research”, duly following guidance in UK research regulation stating a lack of need for ethical review, find that journal editors will not consider their manuscript for publication because editors dispute the definition of what needs or does not need ethical review.

Hervé Maisonneuve, Université de Lyon, France, suggested “a standard retraction form” as the topic for discussion at this Forum.

Background

Retractions are often used as a proxy for publication quality. Retractions have been studied with cohorts of various sizes over differing time periods.

Background

一般的研究伦理学和出版伦理学的历史最初主要以生物医学科学为基础。由于对动物护理、人类参与者保护和研究完整性问题的关注贯穿于20世纪后半叶，一些社会科学和人文社会成员担心，他们特定学科的文化不同，“一刀切”的模式不足以进行评估研究伦理学与出版伦理学。

The tragic suicide of Yoshiki Sasai, one of the authors of the retracted STAP stem-cell paper (discussed in the Letter from the Chair in the August 2014 edition of COPE Digest), highlights the fact that, above all, the communication of research is about people and about trust. Some researchers are seemingly able to bounce back from a finding of serious research misconduct. For example, Hwang Woo-suk was last year granted a patent related to stemcells. However, for other researchers in such a situation it is the end of their careers.

Research higher degree theses have traditionally been seen as part of the scholarly communications chain, and have been made available by university libraries in print and, latterly, online via institutional repositories.

Two trends have recently come together within scholarly publication; open review, and the desire to give credit to reviewers. At the convergence are organizations like Publons and Academic Karma who wish to openly acknowledge the work of peer-reviewers by recording, not only the amount, but also, in some circumstances, the content of individuals’ peer-review activity. Academics may view services like this as a way to regain control over their reviews and so may be keen to sign-up and provide their data.

Introduction

Competing interests (also known as conflicts of interests (COIs)) are ubiquitous. One definition is as follows “A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple interests, financial interest, or otherwise, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation of the individual or organization. The presence of a conflict of interest is independent of the occurrence of impropriety.”[1]