Publication ethics: science at its best and always informative

Abstract

Academic publishing is a scholarly achievement and a medium of making explicit, both credit and responsibility, for the intellectual contents of published articles [1]. The benefit of gaining valuable clinical information on patients from disseminating the findings in printed and electronic formats, indeed on an international level, as well as the positive influences of biomedical publishing on career promotion, advancement of medical knowledge, institutional prestige, and grantors sponsorship are all well recognized. Responsibility for the published work that is inseparable from those merits is, however, not widely accepted. Medicine is a profession based on trust, integrity, philanthropy, and altruism. This societal expectation of the profession is associated with an evolving public awareness of the core values of scientific inquiry such as critical analysis, evidence-based inference, hypothesis validation, inherent statistical bias, conscientious motives, and research autonomy. Members of the medical profession and the public, hence, generally agree that a culture of “zero tolerance” should permeate for academic dishonesty, particularly publication misconduct. Increasing examples of this misconduct have, nevertheless, been observed over the past decade, indicating that modern medicine’s key doctrines of scrutiny, trustworthiness, and accountability are being undermined by unethical practices and attitudes [2]. There is now a growing concern among the research community about this behavior and progressive appreciation of the need to urgently address publication misconduct including two consecutive editorials from this journal [3, 4]. The World Association of Medical Editors and the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors have also recently issued important policy statements on good publication practice [1, 5]. There are various types of publication misconduct, but only the most commonly encountered problems and the appropriate preventive measures are presented in Table 1. The basic standards of publication ethics will be discussed in more details: