Search results

Whistle-blowing, which has become an integral part of the post-publication peer-review movement, is being fortified by social media. Anonymous commenting on blogs as well as Tweets about suspicions of academic misconduct can spread quickly on social media sites like Twitter. The purpose of this paper is to examine two cases to expand the discussion about how complex post-publication peer review is and to contextualize the use of social media within this movement.

This paper examines a Twitter-based exchange between an established pseudonymous blogger and science critic, Neuroskeptic, and Elizabeth Wager, the former COPE Chair, within a wider discussion of the use of social media in post-publication peer review. The paper also discusses false claims made on Twitter by another science watchdog, Leonid Schneider. The policies of 15 publishers related to anonymous or pseudonymous whistle-blowing are examined.

Four issues in the Neuroskeptic–Wager case were debated: the solicitation by Wager to publish in RIPR; the use of commercial software by Neuroskeptic to make anonymous reports to journals; the links between “publication ethics” leaders and whistle-blowers or pseudonymous identities; the issues of transparency and possible hidden conflicts of interest. Only one publisher (Wiley) out of 15 scientific publishers examined claimed in its official ethical guidelines that anonymous reports should be investigated in the same way as named reports, while three publishers (Inderscience, PLOS and Springer Nature) referred to the COPE guidelines.

No such Twitter-based case has yet been examined in detail in the publishing ethics literature.

Thousands of preprints related to Covid-19 have effused into the academic literature. Even though these are not peer-reviewed documents and have not been vetted by medical or other experts, several have been cited, while others have been widely promoted by the media. While many preprints eventually find their way into the published literature, usually through integrated publishing streams, there is a small body of preprints that have been opaquely withdrawn/retracted, without suitable reasons, leaving only a vestigial or skeletal record online. Others have, quite literally, vanished. This paper aims to examine some of those cases.

For peer-reviewed literature, a retracted academic paper is usually water-marked with “RETRACTED” across each page of the document, as recommended by ethical bodies such as the Committee on Publication Ethics, which represents thousands of journals and publishers. Curiously, even though pro-preprint groups claim that preprints are an integral part of the publication process and a scholarly instrument, there are no strict, detailed or established ethical guidelines for preprints on most preprint servers. This paper identifies select withdrawn/retracted preprints and emphasizes that the opaque removal of preprints from the scholarly record may constitute unscholarly, possibly even predatory or unethical, behavior.

Strict ethical guidelines are urgently needed for preprints, and preprint authors, in the case of misconduct, should face the same procedure and consequences as standard peer-reviewed academic literature.

Journals and publishers that have silently retracted or withdrawn preprints should reinstate them, as for regular retracted literature, except for highly exceptional cases.

Authorship is the ultimate status of intellectual recognition in academic publishing. Although fairly robust guidelines have already been in place for a considerable amount of time regarding authorship criteria and credit, such as those by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors or Contributor Roles Taxonomy, the lack of reliable verification techniques hamper their accuracy, thereby reducing the validity of authorship claims in such statements. This paper aims to focus on the authorship status and responsibilities of co-first authors and co-corresponding authors.

To appreciate authorship responsibilities in this subset of authors, the broader academic authorship literature, as well as position statements, rules and guidelines, were consulted.

Academic publishing that relies on metrics is a global multi-billion-dollar business, so strict measures to assess and confirm authorship, which can be intellectually or financially “profitable” among academics that game such metrics, are needed. The current assessment is that there are inconsistent rules for equally credited authors such as co-first authors, co-corresponding authors and co-supervisors. In shared and collaborative authorship, there are also shared authorship-related responsibilities, but these are infrequently discussed, or tend to only be dealt with broadly.

Within the wider, and important, discussion about authorship, which is one of the most central issues in academic publishing, there has been a limited focus on equally credited authors such as co-first authors, co-corresponding authors and co-supervisors. This paper expands and fortifies that discussion.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the creation of safe academic (education and research) environments that offer proper protections to adult academics and staff, so that academia and society at large may benefit from the fruits of safe workplaces. Not all academic environments are entirely safe, and there are recorded cases of victims of harassment and sexual abuse.

Given that co-workers in a laboratory, or research subjects in a research project, may be victims of harassment or sexual abuse, and that the same individuals may then become co-authors or anonymized research subjects, respectively, in academic papers, there is a need to appreciate what structural protection exists for such victims at the post-publication level. What should academia do with the literature of legally recognized sex offenders who have published in peer-reviewed and indexed academic journals?

Currently, there is no specific guidance by ethics organizations (e.g., Committee on Publication Ethics and International Committee of Medical Journal Editors) to deal with this issue, so protective mechanisms for adult victims, as well as punitive measures against perpetrators at the post-publication stage, are needed.

There may be career-altering repercussions – personal, professional and reputational – for co-authors of legally recognized sex offenders in papers published in peer-reviewed and indexed journals. There may also be life-altering outcomes to victims of sexual abuse who are the study subjects of such papers. Thus, a robust form of post-publication protection (and justice) based on unbiased and independent ethical and legal investigations, coordinated by editors, publishers and research institutes, needs to be established.

The purpose of this paper is to assess what the challenges to open peer review (OPR) are, relative to traditional peer review (TPR).

By examining select issues within peer review, more broadly, and challenges within TPR, the effectiveness of OPR is questioned.

Although OPR brings an aspect of transparency, by partially eliminating biases, fear of reprisals and of professional blow-back, either by authors who may be criticized or by competitors, limits the expansion of this peer review model, or its adoption as an industry-wide standard.

Open Science 2.0 boasts of greater openness and transparency and OPR is touted as one tool to achieve this. However, that potential is limited. This limitation needs to be recognized.

The issue of “predatory” publishing and the scholarly value of journals that claim to operate within an academic framework, namely, by using peer review and editorial quality control, but do not, while attempting to extract open access (OA) or other publication-related fees, is an extremely important topic that affects academics around the globe. Until 2017, global academia relied on two now-defunct Jeffrey Beall “predatory” OA publishing blacklists to select their choice of publishing venue. This paper aims to explore how media has played a role in spinning public impressions about this issue.

The authors focus on a 2017 New York Times article by Gina Kolata, on a selected number of peer reviewed published papers on the topic of “predatory” publications and on an editorial by the Editor-in-Chief of REM, a SciELO- and Scopus-indexed OA journal.

The Kolata article offers biased, inaccurate and potentially misleading information about the state of “predatory” publishing: it relies heavily on the assumption that the now-defunct Beall blacklists were accurate when in fact they are not; it relies on a paper published in a non-predatory (i.e., non-Beall-listed) non-OA journal that claimed incorrectly the existence of financial rewards by faculty members of a Canadian business school from “predatory” publications; it praised a sting operation that used methods of deception and falsification to achieve its conclusions. The authors show how misleading information by the New York Times was transposed downstream via the REM editorial.

Education of academics.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the status of the open access (OA) movement on the African continent, and if there is any financial or moral exploitation by dominant “foreign” world powers. OA provided the African intellectual community with a tool to prove its academic prowess and an opportunity to display cultural and intellectual independence. OA publishing is prone to abuse, and some in Africa have sought to exploit the OA boom to profit from non-academic activity rather than use this tool to glorify Africa’s image and diversity on the global intellectual stage. These issues are explored in detail in the paper.

The authors broadly assessed literature that is related to the growth and challenges associated with OA, including the rise of OA mega journals, in Africa.

African OA journals and publishers have to compete with established non-African OA entities. Some are considered “predatory”, but this Jeffrey Beall-based classification may be erroneous. Publishing values that African OA publishers and journals aspire to should not equal those published by non-African publishing entities. Africa should seek solutions to the challenges on that continent via Africa-based OA platforms. The budding African OA movement is applauded, but it must be held as accountable as any other OA journal or publisher.

African scholars need to reassess the “published in Africa” OA image.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the relative opacity of the “About” page at PubPeer, which is a whistleblower website, primarily of the academic literature. The site refers to itself as an online journal club. It is important to assess whether the PubPeer site, organization or leadership display opacity because PubPeer attempts to hold the authors who have published errors in their literature to the high standards of transparency.

The paper examined the statements of the “About” page at PubPeer to assess the aspects of opacity. The “About” page is the face and image of an organization to the public.

In 2015, The PubPeer Foundation was created as a charitable organization to receive funding in the USA, and at the end of 2016, the PubPeer Foundation received funding (US$ 412,000) from a philanthropic organization, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. Several of these details were not indicated in the older version of the “About” page at PubPeer. Other aspects of that page are opaque.

To fully assess the opacity of PubPeer, continual monitoring is needed. The examination of the “About” page gives a limited perspective.

Academics are under intense scrutiny by a vigilant anonymous and pseudonymous community at PubPeer. Any opacity by PubPeer, as was documented here, reduces trust in its objectives and operations. Reduced trust is at the heart of the replication crisis.

This paper represents the first published critical assessment of PubPeer. Science watchdogs, which watch various science-related organizations, also need to be watched.

In 2017, one study (Derek Pyne; Journal of Scholarly Publishing; DOI: 10.3138/jsp.48.3.137; University of Toronto Press) in the “predatory” publishing literature attracted global media attention. Now, over three years, according to adjusted Google Scholar data, with 53 citations (34 in Clarivate Analytics' Web of Science), that paper became that author's most cited paper, accounting for one-third of his Google Scholar citations.

In this paper, the authors conducted a bibliometric analysis of the authors who cited that paper.

We found that out of the 39 English peer-reviewed journal papers, 11 papers (28%) critically assessed Pyne's findings, some of which even refuted those findings. The 2019 citations of the Pyne (2017) paper caused a 43% increase in the Journal of Scholarly Publishing 2019 Journal Impact Factor, which was 0.956, and a 7.7% increase in the 2019 CiteScore.

The authors are of the opinion that scholars and numerous media that cited the Pyne (2017) paper were unaware of its flawed findings.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an estimate of the costs of premature mortality caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Using COVID-19 pandemic-derived mortality data for November 9, 2020 (globally 1,303,215 deaths) and applying a country-based value of statistical life (VSL), the worldwide cost of premature mortality was assessed. The cost was assessed based on income groups until November 9, 2020 and projected into the future until March 1, 2021 using three scenarios from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).

The global cost of premature mortality is currently estimated at Int$5.9 trillion. For the high-income group, the current estimated cost is Int$ $4.4 trillion or $3,700 per person. Using IHME projections until March 1, 2021, global premature mortality costs will increase to Int$13.7 trillion and reach Int$22.1 trillion if policies are relaxed, while the cost with 95% universal masks is Int$10.9 trillion. The richest nations will bear the largest burden of these costs, reaching $15,500 per person by March 1, 2021 if policies are relaxed.

The cost of human lives lost due to the pandemic is unprecedented. Preparedness in the future is the best policy to avoid many premature deaths and severe recessions in order to combat pandemics.