Plagiarsm, duplication, authorship, and COPE

1. Publication ethics
Roger Watson
Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Advanced Nursing
Editor, Nursing Open

2. Ethical Issues in Publication
1. Duplicate Publication
2. Authorship and Order
3. Scientific Misconduct (including plagiarism)
4. Conflict of interest

3. Why do ethical issues arise?
Journals exist to enhance the scientific database
…and enhance seniority and income
…and pharmaceutical company profits
…and publishers’ profits
(Courtesy of Harvey Marcovitch, COPE)

4. Duplicators and plagiarisers
62,312 Medline citations (sample)
•0.04% with no shared author but content highly
similar = plagiarism
•1.35% with shared authors and highly similar
content = duplication
Therefore, possibly 3500 plagiarised and 117,500
duplicate papers
(Mounir Errami et al 2008)

5. Duplicate Publication
Not republishing the same findings
Not submitting the same manuscript to two
or more journals at once
Not dividing one research project into many
little papers (“salami slicing”)

6. Duplication..
If in doubt...always seek editorial advice

7. Authorship
• Who can be an author?
• Authorship order
• Issues and problems with authorship

8. Authorship
International Committee of Medical Journal
Editors (ICMJE) at http://www.icmje.org/ states
authorship is based on:
1) substantial contributions to the conception
and design of a paper, or acquisition of data or
analysis and interpretation of data, and,
2) drafting the article or revising it critically for
important intellectual content and final approval
of the version to be published.

9. Best Practices for Authorship
• Discuss the order of authorship at
beginning
• Revisit decisions on authorship during
project – especially if responsibilities
changes
• Disclose if any writing done by
professional writers
• Document everything in writing
• All authors take responsibility for
content

10. Plagiarism
Plagiarism ranges from the
unreferenced use of others’ published
and unpublished ideas, including
research grant applications to
submission under “new” authorship of
a complete paper, sometimes in a
different language.
It may occur at any stage of planning,
research, writing, or publication: it
applies to print and electronic
versions.

11. JCN & JAN – ‘ithenticate’ policy
• 15% similarity allowed
• 16-30% - authors invited to revise
• 31-50% - paper rejected
• Over 50% - paper rejected and author asked for an
explanation.

12. What is Fraud?
Fabrication: Invention of data or
cases
Falsification: Wilful distortion of data
– Ignoring outliers
– Not admitting that some data are
missing.
– Post hoc analyses that are not admitted
– Not including data on side effects in a
clinical trial

13. What is Conflict of Interest?
• Conflict of interest
– a set of conditions in which professional
judgement concerning a primary interest
(such as the validity of a research study)
tends to be unduly influenced by a
secondary interest (such as financial gain).
– ....or may give that impression

14. Conflicts of Interest
• They have been described as those
which, when revealed later, ‘would
make a reasonable reader feel misled or
deceived’.
• They may be personal, commercial,
political, academic or financial.
• “Financial” interests may include
employment, research funding, stock or
share ownership, payment for lectures
or travel, consultancies and company
support for staff.

15. Other Conflicts of Interest
• Strong personal beliefs – in papers related
to emotionally charged areas such as stem
cells, abortion, or evolution
• Other scientific conflicts of interest
– Studies so closely related to your own that you
are in competition with the authors
– Labs/groups with ongoing real or apparent
competitions in a general area of research

16. Committee on Publication
Ethics (COPE)
• Founded in 1997 as a response to growing anxiety
about the integrity of authors submitting studies to
medical journals.
• Founded by British Medical Journal & Lancet editors

17. THANK YOU
Email: r.watson@hull.ac.uk
@rwatson1955