Meeting Notes: Academic Publishing Activities and the Responsible Conduct of Research — December 5, 2016

Academic Publishing and the Responsible Conduct of Research Presentation

Responsible Conduct of Research Curriculum

OSU Research Data Policy

OSU Research Misconduct Policy

Responsible Conduct of Research Training for FAES

Academic Publishing and Academic Conduct of Research

Jen Yucel, Ph.D.:

Overview of the Office of Research:

There are over 500 people that belong to the Office of Research.

Key people/offices to make note: Office of Sponsored Programs: Christine Hamble, Interim Director.

Office of Responsible Research Practices for Human and Animal Protocols.

University Laboratory Animal Resources

Research Compliance Director – Jen Yucel

 

OSU Libraries Resources:

Two main places where you may interact with the library:

Subject Librarians: experts who can help in a particular area. This can be helpful for interdisciplinary research. (library.osu.edu/find/librarians)

There are subject librarians who work with the faculty in Wooster.

 

The Research Commons a physical space and a set of services and partnerships. It is located on the 3rd floor at the 18th Avenue Library in Columbus. It also includes an interface with IRB, a data management librarian, geographic information services, and more.

If you have a research related question, you can go to the Research Commons website for that information or if you don’t know where to start or who you go to.

Some workshops are live-streamed for folks on other campuses. If you’re interested in having a workshop or attending, please let us know if you need it streamed.

Melanie Schlosser, MLS:

Predatory Publishing

This is an area of concern and help is also often needed for graduate students.

Access Models for Publishing:

Subscription Journals: Content is behind a pay wall, but tends to be free for the author to publish. It’s been done this way for a while.

However, with the Internet, things are different now.

Open Access (OA) Journals: Content is freely available online, sometimes funded through author fees.

Hybrid Open Access Journals: publication itself is behind a pay wall unless the author pays an Open Access fee.

TIP: I would strongly discourage people to not pay for hybrid open access! It borders on unethical double dipping from the publisher.

There are good and bad journals in ALL of these categories.

The Problem with Lists:

White lists (“good” journals) vs. black lists (“bad” or predatory journals) / any lists… Don’t rely on these too heavily. Criteria for making it on the list might not be clear; people may have their own agendas for creating the lists, etc.

Advance Fee Scams:

Predatory publishing talks about two different things: First, an advance fee scam. It looks like a journal, calls itself a journal, but really is not. It takes your money.

Recognize these by:

  • Little or no published scholarship
  • Lack of a named editor or editorial board — or contact these people to make sure
  • Promises full peer review with fast turnaround
  • Journal website doesn’t make sense (in the about section, etc.)
  • They may reach out to you offering to publish your work

Search Google and ask around!

Good journals vs. bad journals:

The other thing people talk about with predatory publishing is low quality journals. It’s not very cut and dry.

Pay attention to these things:

  • Will it improve your work? For example, attentive editors who will polish your work and present it in a professional way. Look at what has been published. Is it polished, copy edited, etc.?
  • Will it help your research find an audience?
  • Will it add to your reputation as a scholar? This can look different based on where you’re at in your career. Have a sense of what you want to get out of publishing your work.

Risk: look at journal scope / subject matter.
Tip: what journals did you cite? — have at least one citation for a journal you’re looking to publish in.

Finally, ask for advice!

  • Faculty in your department
  • Colleagues at other institutions
  • Librarians
  • The editor of the journal (ask them, “Would you be interested in an article on…?”)

A little more about fees:

Predatory journals will ask you to submit, accept your work quickly and then send you a bill. It may or may not be listed on their website, but once you are sent a bill it can be tricky to get out of.

Author charges are not uncommon … Figure out ahead of time if there are fees.

In terms of invoicing, we’ve had faculty continue to get invoiced. If this happens, please contact Jen’s office or OSU Legal Affairs to help you.

We are also seeing this behavior in international conferences that are bogus. People get promised that they will be a keynote, etc.

Scams around being on editorial boards. It is hard to get out of so if you are approached about being on a board, do your homework! Talk to people in your field and make sure it is reputable. We have a hard time repairing that damage.

Resources:

Directory of Open Access Journals: doaj.org — reputable place to start

Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association: oaspa.org

 

Jen Yucel: Research Misconduct and Plagiarism

Research misconduct is narrowly defined:

It doesn’t have to be published to be a problem! Even if it’s written in a notebook, any time you are creating data that is not valid it could be research misconduct.

Fabrication: the making up of data or results and recording or reporting them. Ex: fake Excel data

Falsification: manipulating research materials, equipment or processes, or changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented. Ex: image manipulation

Plagiarism: appropriation of the ideas, processes, results or work of another person without giving appropriate credit. Ex: taking something off the web without credit

Not Considered Plagiarism:

Self-plagiarism (using something from your past text… But it’s something that is a gray area).

Information generated with former collaborators — handled as an authorship or credit dispute.

How much copying is too much? How many different ways can you describe something?

Plagiarism:

OSU licenses the software program iThenticate for use by any OSU faculty, staff or student.

It highlights text in your document that matches other published material to allow you to determine if text is appropriately cited.

There are many watchdog websites, as well as mainstream media who are involved in the scrutiny of research.

Many journals and funding sponsors are actively screening submissions for plagiarized text. This includes grants!

The rise of “academic warfare” and specific targeting of individuals to target competitors.

Question: If a Postdoc or grad student is guilty of plagiarism in a manuscript etc., how does that effect their faculty member?

Answer: The person responsible is the person who did the plagiarism. iThenticate isn’t there to punish wrong doers, it is to help people have high integrity. As a faculty member, tell your Postdocs and grad students to run it through iThenticate as a policy before anything gets to you.

If you have a process like that, use it as a training and teaching tool. Some cultures cite differently, so it’s a good way to teach how to do this. If you have a repeat offender, you can bring it to my office to talk about it. If a grad student publishes plagiarized text in their thesis there can be a serious consequence.

Question: How serious is it as a faculty member?

Answer: It depends. If it’s in a grant proposal and brought to our attention we have to let them know and they could bar you from submitting.

Federally-funded research can debar you if the plagiarism is on federal money.

If it’s a case where they just made a mistake in citation… We try to determine the intent. There are details that change every case.

Question: What percentage on iThenticate is considered plagiarism?

Answer: It requires you to look at what is matching. There’s no defined threshold. It doesn’t matter what percentages it is… Is it big sections of text or a few sentences, etc.? That’s why you need to look at it.

Plagiarism is all about attribution.

If you are using the same methods that you have published before, just make sure to cite your previous paper. It’s not okay when you give the appearance that this is brand new work of yours. Be transparent about where the work came from.

Responsible Conduct of Research Training (RCR):

 

The university has a research data policy that you should look at.

What is a research record? All of the various forms that research takes that embodies the results from scholarly inquiry.

Data Sharing:

NIH and other federal sponsors expect data generated be shared with the public.

Many sponsors require that you file a data management plan with your grant proposal. We use the online DMP tool with agency specific formats.

Data Ownership:

As new faculty, take a look at the university research data policy. It helps answer a lot of questions about data ownership.

Just because someone leaves doesn’t mean their data gets nullified. The Office of Research tries to stay out of publication issues, like author etc., but we will work on authorship disputes.

Expectations for Authorship:

 

Many societies and associations have published guidelines regarding the assignment of authorship or acknowledgment on manuscripts. It can be very discipline specific.

If you don’t believe someone should have authorship on the journal, raise that with the senior author and start a conversation.

Science is about what your peers say about you, so it can be tense to enforce a strong reading of these guidelines. The journal should enforce whether or not that person can be an author.

The University doesn’t really have any say on who should be an author.

Have the conversation with the journal because the journal can ask the person, what was this person’s contribution?

 

Conflict of Interest:

Conflicts can be real or perceived, and both are important. It doesn’t necessarily mean someone is acting unethically, but it needs to be disclosed.

Typically, people think of Conflict of Interest as financial interests… It can also include personal relationships, professional relationships, academic and corporate rivalries, philosophical or intellectual differences.

Your immediate family’s are also your potential conflicts.