Principles of Research Integrity

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How do you agree on authorship with fellow researchers?

Prof. Mark Israel (Australasian Human Research Ethics Consultancy Services) has kindly given permission for this hypothetical case study to be reproduced. You have been invited to join a multinational, multidisciplinary U21 collaborative team looking at the impact of Free Trade Agreements on the working practices of lawyers. While the project is being established, the team start to allocate responsibility for possible research outputs. Various suggestions are made about who should be authors. You hear the following comments: * In my discipline, the whole research team

Should students offer co-authorship to their supervisors?

Prof. Mark Israel (Australasian Human Research Ethics Consultancy Services) has kindly given permission for this hypothetical case study to be reproduced. Wing Hong is a PhD student. Following a suggestion from his supervisor, Maggy, he writes an article for publication. Maggy provides extensive comments. The article is accepted subject to revision and, again, Maggy provides comments and hands over a draft of an article she is writing. Wing Hong uses material from this article and offers Maggy co-authorship. Should she accept? Wing Hong's second supervisor,

Interviewing vulnerable people – a University of Sheffield case study

The following is an extract from an article by Professor Jerry Wellington of the University of Sheffield in February 2014 (with emphasis added): Interviewing Vulnerable People in a Funded Evaluation This scenario is designed to present two ethical dilemmas which can occur during fieldwork: can researchers always produce the 'hard data' required by funding bodies? And can interviewers draw a line between a research interview and a counselling session? I was asked to be part of a research team to evaluate a National project aimed

Useful resource: Association for Research Ethics (AfRE) ‘Case of the Month’

The Association for Research Ethics (AfRE) publishes a 'Case of the Month' on its website (http://arec.org.uk/policy-and-guidance/ask-the-chair/). This may be a useful resource for legal researchers seeking guidance on the ethical issues to take into account.  

Conflict of interest and suppression of legitimate results by a sponsor – a COPE case study

One case study from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) website (http://publicationethics.org/case/attempt-supress-legitimate-scientific-results): The journal is operated by institute A, and the editor is an employee of institute A. A manuscript was submitted late in 2014 by authors from institute B, a similar type of organisation in the same country. The manuscript was reviewed by two referees who both recommended publication following minor revision. One of the reviewers noted that the abstract contained a vague statement related to the effectiveness of a treatment for a major

Leak of a confidential draft by a peer reviewer – a COPE case study

The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) has shared a case study on its website regarding the leak of a confidential draft by a peer reviewer (http://publicationethics.org/case/online-posting-confidential-draft-peer-reviewer): Shortly before publication, I received an email from the authors of a systematic review telling me that a version of the paper as first submitted to the journal for peer review had appeared on the website of a campaign group based in the USA. It was clear that the version of the document posted on the website was the

‘Want a favourable peer review? Buy one.’

The following is an extract from an article ('Want a favorable peer review? Buy one') by Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus which appeared on the STAT News website (21 April 2016): The EditPub site (which seemed on Thursday to be no longer up and running), is almost entirely in Chinese, but its homepage bills it as a “service center for scientific research.” Its existence came to light earlier this month after the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology retracted a 2015 article by a group from

Legitimate authorship – a survey of educational researchers in Hong Kong

Professor Bruce Macfarlane conducted research into the perceptions among educational researchers in Hong Kong of the ethics of multiple authorship (namely what constitutes legitimate authorship). In October/November 2014, a link to an online questionnaire was sent by e-mail to academic staff with professorial and research track positions in Schools or Faculties of Education in Hong Kong. 108 responses were collected, representing a response rate of 36.1% of the 299 education academics employed in Schools or Faculties of Education in Hong Kong. Case studies in the

What constitutes authorship – a COPE case study

One case study from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) website (http://publicationethics.org/case/what-constitutes-authorship):   Author X submitted a paper to another journal, and included author Y, a student in the same institute, as a courtesy. Author Y had drawn two figures for the paper and discussed some of the observations (all made by author X) with author X but the paper did not deal with the thesis research of author Y. After the original paper was returned, requiring extensive revisions, author X revised the paper and

References on Authorship

The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) has published a Discussion Document titled 'What constitutes authorship?' drawing upon a variety of sources: http://publicationethics.org/files/Authorship_DiscussionDocument.pdf The COPE Discussion Document recognises that authorship in the legal discipline is: still very much a product of the writing process, and usually by a single individual. Any other form of contribution such as generation of ideas, commenting on a draft, or technical assistance is listed in the Acknowledgments. Traditions in the humanities also differ from some disciplines in the social and natural