Jukka-Pekka Suomela2014

Ethics and quality in research and publishing

Conducting studies (ethical consideration)

Finnish Advisory Board on Research Integrity, http://www.tenk.fi/enResponsible conduct of research and

procedures for handling allegations of misconduct in Finland, 2012 (applied from 1.3.2013)

University of Turku, Ethics Committee, http://www.utu.fi/en/research/ethicality/Pages/ethics-committee.aspx

non-medical research

The Hospital District of Southwest Finland, Ethics Committee, http://www.vsshp.fi/fi/tutkijoille/eettinen-toimikunta/Sivut/default.aspx

medical research (incl. clinical nutrition studies)

Conducting studies (ethical consideration)

World Medical Association’s Helsinki Declaration

National Committee on Medical Research Ethics, http://www.tukija.fi/en

Conducting studies (ethical consideration)

Research misconductsResearch misconducts include

plagiarism, fabrication and falsification

Plagiarism is a growing problem in English-language journals, especially among non-native English speaking scientists, also growing problem among graduate students

Example: Plagiarism (fairUTU):http://www.utu.fi/fi/yksikko/yliopistopalvelut/opi

ntohallinto/ohjauksen-ja-koulutuksen-tukipalvelut/ok/fairutu/Sivut/Guidelines-for-Misconduct-and-Fraud-at-the-UTU-.aspx

Publishing biasthe tendency of researchers, editors,

and companies to handle the reporting of experimental results that are positive (i.e. showing a significant finding) differently from results that are negative (i.e. supporting the null hypothesis) or inconclusive, leading to a misleading bias in the overall published literature

A problem!

Publishing practice (ethical consideration)

Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidelines publicationethics.org/resources/guidelinespublicationethics.org/international-standards-

editors-and-authors

Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals www.icmje.org

CONSORT 2010 Statement

Publishing practice (ethical consideration)

Each journal has its own guidelinesFor example British Journal of Nutrition,

http://assets.cambridge.org/BJN/BJN_ifc.pdf

European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, http://mts-ejcn.nature.com/cgi-bin/main.plex?form_type=display_auth_instructions

Publishing practice (ethical consideration)

Quality of scientific articlesCommonly evaluated by measuring

the amount of citations it has received (citation index).

Also the objectivity of the text and the references used are important

Citations also used for evaluating journals, individual researchers, research groups, research institutes and universities, subject areas and countries.

Quality of scientific articlesCitation index

First citation database in 1960: Science Citation Index (SCI) by Institute for Scientific Information (ISI)

In more specifics, the number of citations indicate the response of the scientific community

Correlate quite well with the results from peer-reviews – considered an appropriate indicator of quality

Databases with citation informationWeb of Science (WoS) (Thomson Reuters, former

SCI by ISI)Scopus (Elsevier)Google Scholar (also non-scientific)

Quality of scientific articles

New: Altmetrics e.g. visibility and impact of the article in web and social media - fast

Quality of a journalEvaluated by qualitative and

quantitative methodsExpert surveys, publication forum, peer

reviews (subjective assessment methods)Circulation and usage statistics,

acceptance and rejection rates, indexing services covering the journal

Journal impact factor (IF)Do not tell about a specific article or the

level of research produced by a specific researcher

Quality of a journalThe characteristics of a quality

journal are:high standards for acceptance of

manuscriptsA broadly representative editorial boarda critical refereeing systempromptness of publicationcoverage by major abstracting and indexing

serviceshigh confidence level of scientists in the

contentshigh frequency of citation by other journals

Quality of a journalJournal impact factor

Is the number of citations received in that year/papers published in that journal during the two preceding years

the oldest and an extensively used index for measuring the quality of a journal

Based on an assumption that those articles that are often cited contain significant knowledge for their discipline

Found in Journal Citation Reports (JCR,Thomson Reuters) Includes the journals in WoSOnly the high quality journals are included (according

to Thomson Reuter Criteria) Journal list can be sorted according to the impact

factor, cited half life, article influence etc2007 onwards JCR also publishes Five year Impact

Factors for journals

Quality of a journalWeaknesses of Journal impact factor

Quality of journal with the citation not considered

Citation practices differ between the research fields, direct comparison only within discipline

Focused on English language journalsInclusion of self-citationsReview articles get more citationsMisused to draw conclusions about the

performance of an individual researcher or a research group

Quality of a journalNew factors for measuring the impact

Take into account the quality of the journal citing the article

Based on the PageRank algorithmAnalyze the articles and the network that the

citations form, and in this way analyze the relative value of the citation

More complicated than journal IFUnder development, significance to be seen

Eigenfactor, Article influence, H index, SCImago Journal Rank Indicator (SJR), Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP)

Quality of a journalH index (Hirsch index)

Can be calculated from publication list when the number of citations is available for the articles. Available in international citation databases (WoS, Scopus).

productivity of a journal over a long time periodjournals that publish review articles are not over-

valued (compare to journal IF)not calculated for one specific fixed time period like

the IF: also comparison of journals that differ from each other in terms of how fast the journals start getting citations

Quality of a journalH index (Hirsch index)

Publish or Perish (A citation analysis software program) calculates the H-index of journals using citation data from Google ScholarAlso evaluation of the journals not found in

Thomson Reuters' WoS database (without IF score)

fairer evaluation to journals that are cited mainly in sources outside the WoS, like in books or in journals that are not included in the WoS.

Subject guides, Oulu University library, http://libguides.oulu.fi/subjectguides

Altmetrics – article level metrics, http://www.tut.fi/en/library/research-support-services/evaluating-publication-activities/bibliometrics/altmetrics/index.htm

References