Sponsor’s viewpoint


Tackling the rising tide of research misconduct


Martin Szomszor discusses the role librarians and information professionals play in maintaining the value and long-term sustainability of scientific literature


An institution’s success is heavily reliant on the quality of its research outputs. Attracting, developing and retaining researchers who produce a high standard of knowledge underpins opportunities to enhance impact and engagement. These include increasing student applications, alumni support and the recruitment of first-rate faculty. Research outputs can also pose a threat


to institutional excellence if they are found to be unreliable or subject to manipulation. Catastrophic malpractice – or the manifestation of many small infringements – can derail an entire avenue of research and undermine aspects of open science. High- profile cases of scientific misconduct can erode an institution’s reputation overnight and sever relationships with major stakeholders. In our latest report, ‘Research Integrity:


Understanding our shared responsibility for a sustainable scholarly ecosystem’, we expose the increasing number of tactics used to undermine research integrity. We discuss the collective, proactive effort needed to address this, especially regarding researcher evaluation and education, and what that might look like in our increasingly open environment.


New forms of manipulation are emerging Drawing on Web of Science data, we show the traditional focus on fabrication, falsification and plagiarism (FFP) is no longer enough to define research misconduct. Excessive self-citation, complex plagiarism,


and ‘fake’ peer review are all forms of manipulation and misrepresentation in recent years. It involves a new spectrum of behaviour,


“High-profile cases of... scientific misconduct can erode a reputation overnight”


which can range from minor incursions, like a superfluous reference to a researcher’s earlier work, through to large-scale fabrication of clinical trial results. Such misconduct can appear along several points of the research and publication cycle, carried out by a number of different agents, including researchers, peer reviewers and journal editors.


Why now and to what effect? Research malpractice can have huge ramifications on science. If a researcher, reviewer or editor seeks to undermine the system or exploit the process, it can cause irreversible damage to public perceptions and trust in the research system. It can also raise doubts about the research it was built on, threaten legitimate scholarship, and have policy implications. This new range of activity has arisen


from several long-established issues. Research evaluation instruments and incentive mechanisms, stiff competition for research funding and the digital revolution in publication have all led to the rise of self- dealing and misrepresentation. The problem has also been exacerbated by a common acceptance of minor cases of malpractice (where the advantage gained may appear small) and a lack of standard definitions and protocols around research misconduct.


Collaboration and openness for change Open research has a clear role in helping to fix the failures in research integrity. Its focus on transparency and early sharing of datasets – which has accelerated throughout the pandemic – is key to improving reproducibility and strengthening our ability to identify malpractice across all stages of research. Open research is not enough to tackle the


problem of misconduct alone, however. Collaboration among everyone with a stake


in the research process is fiercely needed to ensure positive change. In our report, we map out the responsibilities of all stakeholders; librarians and information professionals are


invaluable to the task of countering fraudulent and questionable research conduct.


Practical steps for librarians and information professionals For too long, there has been an inappropriate use of metrics to value researchers and their work. This has led to questionable practices, where researchers misrepresent their work to garner kudos in their field and institution. Open Science opens the door for establishing new ways of evaluating and rewarding researchers. It’s up to institutions, with publishers and funders, to measure, evaluate and support a sustainable, responsible model of performance and output. For librarians and information professionals,


responsible metrics not only involves calling for and valuing a diverse range of research outputs, but educating your faculty about how they can demonstrate a more complete profile of their contributions. Our researcher profiles at Web of Science, for example, are multidimensional, in that they show a researcher’s papers, citations metrics, peer review history and editorial contributions. These can be used to help researchers verify their outputs, given that a core feature in many of the subversive behaviours identified in our report is misrepresenting identity. Educating researchers about the


appropriate use of references is another practical step librarians and information professionals can take. There are a range of reference management tools available, including EndNote and Zotero, which go beyond the task of organising references. These tools make use of indexing services to help researchers avoid building on retracted research, uncover unusual self-citation rates, and learn information about journal quality. Discover more about research integrity


and steps to tackle it in ‘Research Integrity: Understanding our shared responsibility for a sustainable scholarly ecosystem’. l


Martin Szomszor is director of the Institute of Scientific Information at Clarivate Analytics


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