Promoting research integrity

Dr Manasvi M Kamat

Under new guidelines published by India’s University Grants Commission (UGC), all universities will now be required to offer a 30-hour training course on research and publication integrity to PhD students before they begin their studies. The course will include modules on scientific misconduct, plagiarism, research ethics and metrics, as well as hands-on sessions on how to identify predatory journals. 

Lack of research integrity involves the issues of plagiarism, and publication in fake or predatory journals. Plagiarism is the ‘wrongful appropriation’ and ‘stealing’ of another author’s ‘language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions’ and the representation of them as one’s own original work. Plagiarism is considered academic dishonesty and a breach of publication ethics, so are publications in bogus and predatory journals. Further it is reported that 33 percent among the withdrawn 1,000 papers are because of plagiarism.

Predatory journals are mostly ‘open access journals’ with questionable marketing and peer-review practices whereby publishing is funded by academics paying a fee rather than by charging readers subscription fees. Some of them may be fake or ‘hijacked journals’, essentially counterfeit websites for already-existing, mostly print-only genuine journals and make money when unsuspecting academics pay a fee to publish in them.

Predatory and fake journals provide space for money promising quick publication often within a day. They lack proper checks on quality and publish issues quite frequently. The quality of research is such journals is generally worse and such papers consistently fail cite appropriately, and to report key information necessary for readers to assess, reproduce and build on the findings.

It is believed that the number of articles in so-called predatory journals has risen almost eightfold in the past four years, according to an in-depth study of Murky Publishers that wave through scientific papers with little or no checks on their credibility. Indian academics accounted for more than a third of authors, while another quarter came from elsewhere in Asia and the remainder from America and Europe suggesting, the issue of predatory journals is not limited in developing economies alone.

In a paper published in the journal BMC Medicine, researchers from the Hanken School of Economics in Finland have mapped the dramatic rise of papers in predatory journals. It was noted that academics in China, India and other developing nations are more at risk of their researchers falsifying or fabricating data, according to a new study. The paper found the risk of data falsification or fabrication was ‘significantly higher’ in China, India, Argentina and other developing countries, compared with countries such as the United States, Germany and Australia.

According to a recent Nature report there are high instances of gross research misconduct in India, where the corresponding authors of papers published in cash-seeking, pay-to-publish journals in so-called predatory journals were most likely to come from India (27 percent), followed by the US (15 per cent), Nigeria (5 per cent), Iran and Japan (both 4 percent). Elsiever puts the figure of publication in predatory and fake journals coming from India at 35 percent, a proportion far in excess of its overall share of the world’s scholarly output of 4.4 percent in 2016.

New analysis has found that the bulk of India’s submissions to so-called ‘pseudo-journals’ come from either small private institutions or government colleges. 

The study, published on preprint service bioRxiv and authored by researchers at leading universities like the Stanford, Leiden, the University of Washington and Johns Hopkins tested four hypotheses commonly associated with data fabrication and thus violating publication ethics. The authors looked at 346 papers containing ‘problematic image duplications’ from a sample of more than 8,100 published in the journal Plos One. It is found by the study that four reasons compelling authors to look for shorter and unethical routes to publication include; pressures to publish, researchers being unrestrained by forms of social control such as peer scrutiny, working in countries lacking scientific misconduct policies, and researchers being male.

The mad rush for publication, mostly speedy publication in India started in 2009 after the UGC introduced the system of the Academic Performance Indicators (API) of College and University teachers. Though the aim of API was to make the process of recruitments and promotions objective and performance-based, the mandated publications for earning ‘points’ led many to ‘pay’ the predatory journals for getting their dubious works published. Publication charges ranged from Rs. 1000 to Rs. 2500 per author for a consideration circumventing ethics and on a promise of immediate publication without any editorial reviews or desk screening. The API-system pressurised academicians to increase their publications to meet the demands of the API. Instead of working towards obtaining the score, there was willingness to cheat followed by a ‘reward’ of timely promotion.

A few years ago, the UGC had sought a list of journals from various universities and institutes to be included in a master list of ‘approved’ journals. It was a perfect case where inefficacy breaded inefficacy. Since the journals were recommended by the faculty who published in those journals to get their publications ‘recognised’, many fake and predatory journals (around 88 percent as per the Pune University) found place in the list. There was no cross-checking of the credentials of those journals indicating our failure to regulate the malpractice. The list was later revised on two occasions to discard the journals with questionable credibility.

The UGC has now come up with a more effective method of controlling unethical publication by drawing up of a clear and definitive list referred as ‘UGC-Care List’ of Journals and recommending authors to stick to these approved journals to get credit for their publications. The UGC has also taken up the issue of plagiarism seriously and formulate a policy by quantify crime and specifying penalties for defaulters.

It has to be acknowledged that the first step towards academic integrity was taken by Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU) by setting up a Centre for Publication Ethics a compulsory course for all university students pursuing a doctorate. The UGC following the above model has now been made compulsory as a pre-registration module course for PhD, termed as ‘Research and Publication Ethics’ (RPE) with two credits.

Many universities in the UK, Europe and the US require PhD students to undertake research integrity training. The basic aim is to spread awareness about research integrity, make scholars aware of predatory journals, and also raise consciousness about the practice of plagiarism, which they should wholly avoid. The current action of UGC is thus a right step in right direction.