20150530 Edanz Waseda

Jeffrey Robens, PhD

Trevor Lane, PhD

Session 1 – Being an ethical researcher and author

Waseda University

30 May 2015

Seminar series

May 30 Ethics

June 29 Writing effective grants

September Increasing your publication success

October Increasing your publication success

November Guidance for early career researchers

December Presenting social science research

January Presenting science/technology research

Conflicts of interest

Section 1


What is it?

Conflicts of interest (COI)

Financial or personal relationships that may bias your research


Being objective is essential in scientific research

Why is this wrong?

• Your readers trust that you analyzed your results in an objective and fair manner

• Being biased in your analysis deceives your readers and violates their trust

Conflicts of interest Personal COIs

You are researching a new drug, and your spouse works for the drug company

Biased for personal reasons

You are writing a review on animal research, and you are an active member of PETA*

*People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

Conflicts of interest Financial COIs

You are researching a new material, and…

• an author works for the company making the material

• the company funded your study

• an author owns stock in the company

Biased for financial reasons


Company is funding your research

Avoiding conflicts of interest

What should you do?

• State the company’s role in the study design • State the company’s role in data analysis • State the company’s role in manuscript writing • Should be disclosed in the cover letter

Some journals will ask you to include a statement such as: “I had full access to all of the data in this study and I take complete responsibility

for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis”*

*http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/ author-responsibilities--conflicts-of-interest.html


An author works at the company

Avoiding conflicts of interest

What should you do?

• Ensure study design not unfairly manipulated

• Ensure author is blinded during data analysis

• Restrict role of the author in manuscript writing

• Should be addressed BEFORE study begins!

Conflicts of interest Disclosing COIs

Should be disclosed to university ethics committee before obtaining approval

Should be disclosed to journal editors while submitting manuscript

Journal editors may or may not publish these COIs along with your article

Conflicts of interest Example COI form


Does disclosing COIs lead to rejection?

No! It makes the journal editor aware of the COIs and confident that you were not biased in your study

Not declaring a COI during submission may lead to the rejection or retraction of your paper

Please see accompanying workbook

Activity 1: Conflicts of interest

1. An author on your manuscript owns stock in company that competes with the one that funded your study. You should you do?

A. Nothing. As this author is not directly related to the company that funded the study, there is no conflict of interest.

B. Remove the author from the manuscript to remove a perceived conflict of interest. He can be thanked in the acknowledgement section instead.

C. State a potential conflict of interest in the cover letter to the journal editor and the measures that were taken to ensure that was no bias in the study.

D. Contact that company that funded the study and state that one of the authors has a potential conflict of interest as well as the measures that will be taken to ensure there will be no bias.








This is an indirect financial conflict of interest







This is ghost authorship (unethical)







Should disclose to the journal editor







Should disclose to your study sponsor

2. When submitting a manuscript to a journal, all authors declared they had no conflicts of interest. However, after publication, you found out that one of the authors had a brother that worked for the company that made the device you tested. What should you do?

1. Clarify with violating author why they didn’t disclose COI.

2. Discuss among all co-authors and agree to contact journal.

3. Explain to journal editor about the issue and ask to update the published article (corrigendum).


Multiple submission

Section 2

Coverage and Staffing Plan

Multiple submission

Submitting to more than one journal at a time

What is it?

Shorten the publication process

Why would authors do this?


Multiple submission Sequential submissions

Author Editor Reviewer 1 wk

4 wks 2 wks

Total ~2 months

3 journals = over 6 months!


Multiple submission Multiple submissions

Author Editor2 Reviewer2

3 journals = ~2 months

Editor1 Reviewer1

Editor3 Reviewer3


Multiple submission Multiple submissions

Author Editor2 Reviewer2

3 journals = ~2 months

Editor1 Reviewer1

Editor3 Reviewer3


Multiple submission Why is it unethical?

Wastes time

• After accepted from one, have to withdraw submission from the others

• Wastes journal editor’s time and resources

• Damages your reputation with the publisher


Multiple submission Why is it unethical?

Duplicate publication

• More than one journal publishes the paper • It will be noticed in the field • One or both may be retracted • Wastes time and damages your reputation

with both the publisher and your peers


Multiple submission

You can only submit to another journal if:

You have been rejected by the first journal You have formally withdrawn the submission

When can you submit to another journal?


Multiple submission

Can you publish a Japanese paper in English?

You previously published in the Japanese

Now you want to translate and publish in English

Sometimes


Multiple submission

Can you publish a Japanese paper in English?

What do you need to do?

1. Obtain permission from the first publisher

2. Tell journal editor of English journal: – You already obtained permission to re-publish – Why necessary to publish in English

3. Cite the original publication

Note: many journal editors will not be interested in publishing non-original articles


Multiple submission Salami publishing

By André Karwath [CC BY-SA 2.5], via Wikimedia Commons

Don’t slice your research to increase your

publication output!

One study

4 publications

Why unethical? Readers will not have access to all the relevant information to

critically evaluate the study


Multiple submission Salami publishing

One study

4 publications

Same sample population Same controls Experiments concurrent Dependent results

Distinct populations Different controls Experiments sequential Independent results

One larger paper will have more impact in the field and more citations!


Activity 2: Multiple submissions

1. It has been 6 months since you submitted your manuscript to the journal. You have written the journal editor, but have not received a reply after 2 weeks. It is obvious that the journal editor is not interested, so you decide to submit to a different journal instead. Is this considered multiple submission?

Yes!

You can only submit to a different journal after you formally withdraw your submission from the first journal.


2. You have just submitted your abstract to a conference, but now you want to also submit your manuscript to a journal. What should you do?

A. Withdraw your abstract from the conference first, and then submit to the journal.

B. First attend the conference and then submit to the journal—it is okay after the conference is over.

C. Freely submit to both—the conference is not the same as a journal, right?

D. Contact the conference to determine if there is any copyright violation if you also submit the paper to a journal.








• For many fields, this is acceptable • It may not be for others; e.g., computer

science, engineering, etc.







General guide: if the conference publishes a conference proceedings, you usually cannot

publish again in a journal


Bonus: If you present at a conference and then publish in a journal, do you need to tell the journal editor upon submission?


Sometimes!

• Check the author guidelines carefully

• If necessary, state in your cover letter

Break

Any questions?

Follow us on Twitter

@edanzediting

Like us on Facebook

facebook.com/EdanzEditing

Download and further reading edanzediting.co.jp/waseda_150530

Transparent reporting

Section 3

Transparent reporting Transparent reporting

Transparency: It needs to be very clear how your study was conducted

UK Parliamentary Office of Science & Technology

Transparent reporting Participant transparency

How you managed your participants

• How participants were enrolled

• Inclusion and exclusion criteria

• Randomization of participants

Transparent reporting Data transparency

How you managed your data

• Unclear data (blue vs. blue-ish) • Uninterpretable data (site contamination) • Missing data

– Why missing? E.g., outliers or lost to evaluation? – Imputed methods (e.g., last observation carried

forward, multiple imputation methods, sensitivity analyses)


How you analyzed your data (levels of measurement)

• Continuous (e.g., nitrogen levels in soil)

• Nominal categories (unranked: e.g., normal vs. abnormal nitrogen levels)

• Ordinal categories (ranked; e.g., low, normal, and high nitrogen levels)


How you categorized continuous data

• Continuous: height of your participants in cm

• Subjective ranking: short <150 cm, normal 151–175 cm, tall >176 cm

• Logical ranking: short <1 SD of the mean, normal ±1 SD of the mean, tall >1 SD of the mean


Need to justify why and how continuous data was categorized

Freq

ue

ncy

Small Medium Large

Categorizing continuous data

Nitrogen levels (g m–2)

No significant difference



Freq

ue

ncy

Small Medium Large



Significant difference! ?



Freq

ue

ncy

Small

Mean

Large

SD SD

Medium




Other ways to justify categorization


Previous studies/international guidelines

• Ensure categorization is up-to-date

• Widely accepted in the field

• Appropriate for your data


Treatment of participants

Informed consent

Participants need to be informed of the:

• Study objectives • Potential benefits or risks involved • Confidentiality

This is usually written informed consent

Templates: http://www.who.int/rpc/research_ethics/informed_consent/en/

Transparent reporting Informed consent form

Transparent reporting Sharing negative results

Why?

Aren’t negative results bad results?

No!


Bad results are obtained by:

• Inappropriate study design

• Out-of-date methodologies

• Invalidated techniques

Good results can be both positive and negative, and are always useful


Negative results are useful?

Yes!

• Allows complete evaluation of your study

• Prevents others from repeating those experiments

• Allows others to modify those experiments

• Prevents funding agencies from wasting money

Data repositories


Activity 3: Transparent reporting

1. When categorizing your continuous data, you decided to use the most widely used classification system published in 2008. However, a more recent one was published in your target journal last month (2015). When you reanalyzed your data under this new system, your findings were no longer significant. What should you do?

A. Because the 2015 classification system has not been validated by other research groups yet, it is acceptable to not use it.

B. You should not use the 2015 classification system as it is not validated, but you should also change target journals as well to avoid any potential problems with the journal editor.

C. You should wait to analyze/publish your findings until your field has validated the 2015 classification system.

D. It is acceptable to use the 2008 classification system. However, you should also mention in your Discussion that when you tried the 2015 classification system, your analysis did not yield significant results.








• This is an opportunity for you to add value to the field

• You will stimulate discussion, and your paper will likely be more widely read







Journal editors like to publish papers that build on each other







Never wait to publish your data!







• Always present/discuss negative results • Explain in your cover letter as well

2. When analysing your results, you determine 2 samples out of 50 are outliers (> 3 standard deviations from the mean). Including these samples interferes with what should be a clear trend line in your graph. Can you remove these samples from the analysis?

Yes!

But you still need to present those results

Explain your exclusion criteria in your Methods


Plagiarism

Section 4

Customer Service Plagiarism

Auer & Griffiths. Front Psych. 2015; 6: 1–7.

While writing…

What’s a good way to describe

self-efficacy?


Auer & Griffiths. Front Psych. 2015; 6: 1–7.

Is this acceptable?


Makes readers think others’ words or ideas are your own

Copying published text

Stating ideas of someone else without citing the source


What if you were the original author?

Can you now copy and paste text you published in a new manuscript?

No!


Copying text into your manuscript that you have written and published before

Self-plagiarism

Violates copyright

Makes readers think you are presenting something new


Is plagiarism common?

Nature conducted a survey across 9 scientific publishers and found that 6–23% of submitted papers were rejected because of plagiarism!

Butler D. Nature. 2010; 466: 167.


Expressing published ideas using different words

Paraphrasing

Tips on paraphrasing:

• Write the text first in Japanese, and then later translate back into English

• Verbally explain ideas to a colleague • Cite published methods • Consider text location

– Introduction vs. Discussion

Customer Service Plagiarism Good paraphrasing

24. Li et al. PLoS ONE. 2013; 8: e68372.

“The magnitude of the change in carbon storage depends on how physical, chemical, or biological processes are altered over time under different land uses.”

The size of the carbon storage change depends on how physical, chemical, or biological processes are changed over time under different land uses.24

Customer Service Plagiarism Good paraphrasing

24. Li et al. PLoS ONE. 2013; 8: e68372.

“The magnitude of the change in carbon storage depends on how physical, chemical, or biological processes are altered over time under different land uses.”

The size of the carbon storage change depends on how physical, chemical, or biological processes are changed over time under different land uses.24

Temporal changes in biological, chemical, or physical processes under different land uses can influence the size of the carbon storage change.24


Which is more appropriate for an Introduction and for a Discussion?

Paraphrasing

“Drug A significantly reduced tumor volume by 39.7% after a 6-month treatment in lung cancer patients.”

1. Drug A has been shown to significantly reduce tumor size in patients with lung cancer.24

2. Previously, Drug A was shown to reduce lung cancer tumors by almost 40% after 6 months.24

Introduction

Discussion


What if you want to directly quote someone?

Direct quotes

Humanities • Often acceptable • Include text in quotation marks • Use bibliographic footnote and page number

Sciences • Usually not acceptable

Customer Service Plagiarism Proper citations

You should usually cite primary research articles

• Cite review articles only in the Introduction regarding general topics (for further reading)

• Cite primary articles regarding specific information/results

If you read about an interesting study in a review article:

• Do not cite that review article • Read the original study (additional information?) • Read the entire paper, not just the abstract!


Activity 4: Plagiarism

1. Please choose which sentence below is the best paraphrase for this sentence:

“After application of the oil-based cream, we observed a 78% reduction in rashes caused by plants, but no reduction in those caused by animals.”


A B C



A. Oil-based creams have been found to be effective in reducing rashes caused by plants, but not by animals (Robens et al., 2013).

Useful paraphrase for Introduction


B. Although Robens et al (2013) found a 78% decrease in plant-induced rashes, they were unable to detect any decrease in rashes caused by animals.



Useful paraphrase for Discussion


C. Rashes caused by plants are easier to treat than rashes caused by animals (Robens et al., 2013).

Not accurate




Students who preferred team sports rather than video games had higher entrance exam scores.

2. You would like to use the following text in your manuscript. Properly paraphrase this sentence to avoid plagiarism.

“We found that students who preferred team sports, such as football and basketball, scored 6.9% higher on entrance exams than students who preferred video games.”

Useful paraphrase for Introduction


Thank you!

Any questions?

Follow us on Twitter

@edanzediting

Like us on Facebook

facebook.com/EdanzEditing

Download and further reading edanzediting.co.jp/waseda_150530

Jeffrey Robens: [email protected] Trevor Lane: [email protected]

Education

20150530 Edanz Waseda