Best Practices in Scientific Publishing
Michal Petr & Monika Sieberová
Masaryk University, Research Office
Centre for Scientometric Support
March 9, 2018
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Outline
Best practices in scientific publishing – Michal Petr
Predatory publishers and journals – Monika Sieberová
Self-marketing – Monika Sieberová
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A few thoughts as an Introduction
Scholarly publication – a phenomenon
Research integrity – individual and institutional
Ethical conduct – a requirement
Reasons for unethical/pragmatic behaviour
- “Publish or perish” game
- Research evaluation – unwanted researchers intentions
- Promotion and career boost
- Scientific glory (?)
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Examples of scientific misconduct in
publications
Falsification of data.
Piracy and plagiarism.
Authorship issues (gifting authorship, omitting authors, …).
Pragmatic publishing strategies primarily not used to spread scientific
knowledge but to artificially reinforce personal interests.
Citation manipulation.
Accepting poor quality peer review procedures (reduces the credibility of the
scientific publishing system).
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Best Practices in Scientific Publishing
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Resources
Academic and Professional Employee Code of Ethics
Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). How to handle authorship disputes: a guide for new researchers. 2003.
Available at: http://publicationethics.org/files/2003pdf12.pdf.
- 12000 members
International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Defining the Role of Authors and Contributors. Available at:
http://icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html.
Scott-Lichter, D and the Editorial Policy Committee, Council of Science Editors. CSE’s White Paper on Promoting
Integrity in Scientific Journal Publications, 2012 Update. 3rd Revised Edition. Wheat Ridge, CO: 2012. Available at:
http://www.councilscienceeditors.org/wp-content/uploads/entire_whitepaper.pdf
International Committee of Medical Journal Editors. Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to
Biomedical Journals: Ethical Considerations in the Conduct and Reporting of Research: Authorship and
Contributorship. Available at: http://www.icmje.org/icmje-recommendations.pdf.
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Best practices in publishing – basic
principles
Issued in guidelines by all high-quality publishers.
https://www.elsevier.com/authors/journal-authors/policies-and-ethics.
Authors should
- publish research results in a clear and honest manner, avoid data manipulation or
falsification;
- avoid plagiarism;
- be responsible for the published text;
- ensure that authorship of all authors reflects the extent of an individual's contribution to the
published work.
Maximum transparency in scientific publishing
- internal review process or consulted with external experts (e.g. via ResearchGate)
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Authorship
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Authorship criteria – Who is an author?
ICMJE (medicine):
Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or
interpretation of data for the work; AND
Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
Final approval of the version to be published; AND
Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to
the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
NIH:
significant contribution to the conceptualization, design, execution, and/or interpretation of the
research study, as well as on the drafting or substantively reviewing or revising the research
article, and a willingness to assure responsibility for the study.
COPE
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Authorship – Who is not an author?
Those who do not meet all four criteria 
Persons who have not contributed significantly to the scientific content of a
work should be acknowledged, i.e. not included in the list of authors.
People who secure
- funding, routine technical assistance (not requiring highly specialized
expertise, data processing using routine software), administration;
- data collection not requiring scientific expertise;
- routine work tasks or minor assistance which does not have a significant
impact on the scientific content of the publication (i.e. contributorship).
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Authorship concepts – Acknowledgments
Do not exclude persons who contributed to the study, but who weren´t qualified for
authorship
people providing advice, research space (lab), obtaining financial support, technical works,
administrative support, professional writers, proofreading…
Put their names in Acknowledgment section and specify their contribution („Clinical
Investigators“, „scientific advisors“, „collected data“, …)
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Group authorship
OR
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Group authorship
Contributors don´t lose the
authors credit,
but it is impossible to search
them via database search.
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Authorship concepts – claiming
contributions
Authors are expected to designate their role within the group (e.g., principal investigator,
coinvestigator, statistician, contributing author)
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Authorship abuses
Guest, gift or honorary authorship (leads to artificially increased publication performance)
- based on an expectation that a particular name will improve the chances the study will be
published;
- abuse of position of authority (senior scientist, department head, supervisor, etc.);
- reciprocally gifted in exchange.
Ghost authorship, omitted authors
- participate in the research, writing of a manuscript but are not named or listed;
- employees of pharmaceutical companies, industrial partners, professional copywriters;
- students.
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Authorship abuses –
a case of Emily Welkins
Fictitious researcher, false affiliation
A good joke of Wadim Strielkowski?
Maybe…
But also
Money obtained from the state budget
Individual financial rewards
Authorship abuse
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Authorship – Order of authors
Reflects local customs and habits typical for particular field.
Should be a joint decision of the co-authors. Ideally, make these decisions prior to write up the
manuscript.
Common expectations and frequent practices in most fields:
- The order of authors should reflect the general extent of their contribution to the text of the
publication.
- The author who contributed most to achieving the published results should be listed first
(rarely last).
- The corresponding author is usually listed either first or last.
- Senior team member who contributed expertise and guidance is usually listed last.
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Authorship – Affiliations
Provides consistent linkage of the author(s) and the institution
Affiliations must reflect the actual contributions of institutions to achieved research
results
Always provide a full affiliation (unit, faculty, institution, address):
YES
Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Masaryk University, Kotlarska 2, Brno.
NO
Department of Pathological Physiology, Brno, Czech Republic. (how to identify the Faculty of Medicine?)
Use correct and standardized unit names and addresses (full and truncated):
Department of Archaeology and Museology, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Arna Nováka 1, Brno.
Dept Archaeol & Museol, Fac Arts, Masaryk Univ, Brno.
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Authorship – Affiliations
Shared affiliations must be listed as separate addresses
YES
John Smith1, 2
1institution 1
2institution 2
NO
John Smith1
1Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and Faculty of Science of
Masaryk University, Brno
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Unethical or undesirable publication
strategies
Increasing the number of publications
- Overproduction of relatively brief texts of relatively low quality (easy publishing)
- „salami slicing“ – purposeful division of a single article into several articles
Increasing the number of responses (citation manipulation)
- self-citations;
- citations demanded by superiors to their works;
- citation circles (both on the side of the journal and author)
- in a peer review proces: citations requested by reviewers or editors to their articles
- editors write editorials in which articles from their own journal are cited.
- …
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Publication strategies – wanted and
unwanted
Performance-Based Research Funding System in the CR until 2016
Boost in # publications
WoS coverage
Pragmatic strategies
Easy publishing incl. local and
predatory journals
Indicator-based thinking
Changes in publication patterns
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Change of collective behaviour
Australian researchers presumably changed their publication behaviour in
the early 1990s in response to a new national funding model, partly based on
productivity measures undifferentiated by any measure of ‘quality’. …
publication output increased considerably, with the highest relative
increases in lower-impact journals. For a consecutive number of years, this
behaviour seemingly led to a general drop in overall citation impact. …The
experience from Australia has been perceived as a warning of what would
likely happen if funding were linked to publication activity.
Jesper W. Schneider, Kaare Aagaard, Carter W. Bloch; What happens when national research funding is
linked to differentiated publication counts? A comparison of the Australian and Norwegian
publication-based funding models, Research Evaluation, 2016, 25(3), 244–256,
https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvv036.
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'We are transforming our university
into a place where talent once again
feels valued and nurtured’
Ghent University is deliberately choosing to step out of the
rat race between individuals, departments and universities.
We no longer wish to participate in the ranking of people.
http://bit.ly/ugent-statement
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Best Practices
Who is an „author“? Make a prior decision.
Affiliate your institution correctly.
Responsible and comprehensive information about publications.
NO! plagiarism!
NO! artificially increase the number of responses to yourselve's work
NO! predatory journals and conferences!
Best Practices in Scientific Publishing
(Muni recommendation)
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Predatory journals
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Predatory journals
What is a „predatory journal“
How to recognize them
Predatory conferences / monographs’ publishers
Recommendation for authors
Useful links
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What is a „predatory journal“
„Online journals which actively solicit manuscripts and charge
publications fees without providing robust peer review and editorial
services with the main goal of making a profit.“
Jeffrey Beall (librarian, University of Colorado)
• the list of predatory journals / publishers / hijacked journals
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How to recognize them – salient features of
potential predatory journals (1)
• E-mail spam – invitations to publish in a journal, to participate at various questionable
conferences, invitations to questionable or fictitious boards of editors.
• The journal's scope of interest includes unrelated subjects alongside legitimate topics.
• The journal doesn’t have an editorial board or the individual members cannot be verified on
their home institution. Bringing well-known scientist into editorial board without their
awareness.
• Website contains spelling and grammar errors.
• Hijacking journals / conferences.
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How to recognize them - salient features of
potential predatory journals (2)
• Advertising a Journal Impact Factor / ISSN but doesn’t have one.
• Misleading metrics - The Index Copernicus, Global Impact Factor, General Impact Factor, Eurasian
Scientific Journal Index
• False identifiers of scientific papers (SOI, UOI)
• Non-existing or merely fictitious peer review process; insufficiently described peer review process;
Rapid publication is promoted, and promised (2 day or a week).
• There is no article retraction policy.
• The APC (article processing charge) is very low (e.g., <$150)
• Contact email address is non-professional and non-journal/publisher affiliated (e.g., @gmail.com, or
@yahoo.com), no official post address (usually only P.O.BOX).
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How they find you
• Trawl conference proceedings
• Monitor thesis submissions in institutional
repositories
• Monitor other open access publications
• Often target research students and early career researcher
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Predatory conferences / monographs
• Not only journals but also conferences and monographs’ publishers can be
predatory
• Similar signs as journals (editorial boards, non-transparent information,
spam, etc.)
• Predatory conferences – e.g. WASET / World Academy of Science,
Engineering and Technology), https://www.waset.org or „seaside“
conferences
• Predatory monographs publisher (e.g. Lambert Academic Publishing)
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PREDATORY
JOURNAL
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Experimental & Clinical Cardiology (sold in 2013)
̶ a once well-respected journal, now is publishing anything that comes with a payment of $1,200
Oncotarget (on JCR 2016 with assigned IF)
̶ Questionable journal
̶ Removed from MEDLINE
̶ Publishing retracted articles, high percentage of self-citations
̶ Even listed as "Rising Star from Essential Science Indicators“ by Clarivate Analytics in 2016
Tumor Biology (retracted from JCR in 2017)
- Low quality peer review
- High percentage of self-citations
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Corrupted journals
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Recommendation for authors
• Use your common sense and when selecting your publication media, benefit from the experience of your
colleagues, scholarly communities, and – if something seems suspicious, be most cautious (RED FLAGS)
• Read carefully the information about the peer review procedure
• Use open channels, optimally journals indexed in WoS and SCOPUS or registered in ERIHplus, check DOAJ
(Directory of Open Access Journals).
• Do not respond to any unsolicited e-mails inviting you to publish (in particular review-type articles) in their journal (of
which you have not heard and know nothing about).
• If you have any doubts about a certain publisher/journal, always try to search (for example on the Internet) whether
the journal does not display any of the signs of predatory publishers/journals, as listed above.
• If possible, avoid publishing in journals (publisher’s houses) included in the Beall’s list as predatory journals. There is
definitely always an alternative…
• In case of any queries, contact your librarian or Research Support Office.
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Useful links
http://thinkchecksubmit.org/
http://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/librarian_pubs/40/ - Journal Evaluation Tool
http://beallslist.weebly.com/
http://doaj.org
http://www.cabells.com/ Cabell (paid service) – the journal white & black list
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Researcher visibility
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Researchers visibility
To make your research and teaching activities known
To increase the chance of publications getting cited
To increase the chance of funding
To increase the chance of new contacts for research cooperation
To correct attribution, names and affiliations
To make sure that a much as possible is counted in research assessment
To serve society better
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Identifiers
• Reseacher ID
• ORCID
• SCOPUS ID
Social networks
• ResearchGate
• Academia.edu
• Other such as
Mendeley
• etc…
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Names are messy
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Problem …
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̶ Affiliation changes and errors, missing affiliation
̶ Common mistakes
Challenge for database providers – they know about this issues.
Source: W. Glänzel, 2015
Identifiers used
specifically by the
database
• SCOPUS ID
Personal
identifiers
ResearcherID, ORCID
• Author´s responsibility
… and the solution
Common goal: be identified in a simple, unambiguous and persistent way
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Possibilities of scientific (self)presentation
Author’s identifiers– ORCID, ResearcherID
Social networks
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Persistent digital identifiers of the author
Easy access to (complete) results of your work
Linking the scientist with his/her work across the databases and employment
conditions
Unique identification in the jungle of the same names
Easily track basic bibliometric metrics
Universal identifier (so far) does not exist - the attempt to link existing ones
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ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor
ID)
orcid.org
Profile with persistent digital identifier (includes employer, grants, publications, etc.)
Connection between databases, publications and other identifiers by your ORCID
(ResearcherID, Scopus ID, ANDS, CrossRef, Metadata Search, Europe PubMed Central)
Integration in manuscript and grant submission, supports automated linkages between you
and your professional activities ensuring that your work is recognized
It is required by some publishers and grant providers (Wellcome Trust), newly by GACR
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Persistent digital identifiers of the author
www.researcherid.com
• profile developed by Clarivate (Thomson Reuters)
• feedback to Web of Science for grouping author name
variants or corrections to affiliations
• basic bibliometric functions
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ResearcherID.com
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Possibilities of scientific (self)presentation
Author’s identifiers– ORCID, ResearcherID
Social networks
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Research Gate and Academia.edu
Researchgate.com and Academia.edu
̶ Researcher community organized around selected topics
̶ Sharing full texts (indexed by Google Scholar), open access principles
̶ Social functions (following researchers, comments to paper drafts, questions around topics)
̶ Job offers
̶ Source for alternative metrics (# downloads, # views, …)
̶ You see the content without logging in
̶ Google Scholar, LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Skype, ...
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Google Scholar
scholar.google.cz
Bibliographical tool for scholarly publications.
Specific search heuristics for scholarly publications
Problem: metadata control
Advantage: Besides papers, it includes books, reports and other.
By creating an account you specify, which publications in Google search are yours.
Basic citation metrics
Useful tool: Publish or Perish v.6
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Your personal self-marketing
Do you have ORCID?
Do you have a profile on Google Scholar Citations?
Do you use reference management software as Mendeley, End-Note, Zotero, Citavi,
etc.?
Do you use professional social networks as ResearchGate, Cite U Like, Academia.edu,
etc.?
Edit your publications on-line.
Use the repositories to save drafts and full texts.
Write "press releases" about your new research, article, grant.
Ad a link to your recent article in the email signature.
Share information about your research online: : Twitter, Mendeley, Facebook, LinkedIn,
blogs, websites, etc.
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Thank you for your
attention!
scientometrics.muni.cz
Michal Petr
Monika Sieberová
Research Office
Masarykova univerzita
Žerotínovo náměstí 9, 601 77 Brno
petr@rect.muni.cz
sieberova@rect.muni.cz