July 1, 2008

Publish or perish, but at what cost?

J Clin Invest. 2008 July 1; 118(7): 2368. doi: 10.1172/JCI36371.

Ushma S. Neill, Executive Editor
The academic scientific enterprise rewards those with the longest CVs and the most publications. Under pressure to generate voluminous output, scientists often fall prey to double publishing, self plagiarism, and submitting the “minimal publishable unit.” Are these ethical gray areas, or true transgressions?
I’ve taken to the editorial page in the past to discuss what is and is not allowed in the JCI vis-à-vis manipulation of images. Here, I want to discuss a grayer area of potential violations — those that concern ethics in writing. Specifically, is publishing the same set of data twice acceptable (clearly not), is using the same text in several articles plagiarism (perhaps), and is publishing newly obtained data after the fact acceptable (maybe)?  >>>


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