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)?  >>>

Repairing research integrity : COMMENTARY: NATURE

A survey suggests that many research misconduct incidents in the United States go unreported to the Office of Research Integrity. Sandra L. Titus, James A. Wells and Lawrence J. Rhoades say it’s time to change that.>>>

Scientific misconduct: Tip of the iceberg?

Editor's Summary

A survey of US researchers suggests that scientific misconduct is greatly under-reported. The Office of Research Integrity was told of only 201 instances of likely misconduct relating to work funded by the Department of Health and Human Services in three years. Yet extrapolation from the survey predicts that over 2,300 observations of potential misconduct are made yearly. Sandra Titus, James Wells and Lawrence Rhoades argue that science can and should clean up its act, and recommend six strategies to that end.