Publication and Dissemination of Research Results

Abstract

This chapter is focused on the integrity of writing and publishing research. Dealing with authorship is an important topic, but we also address other issues that are important during manuscript writing, preparing the article for publication and publishing it, understanding the process of publication and availability of the article during the process and, later on, in communication with the scientific community and the public. We also give advice on how to correct published articles and how to avoid negative publication practices.

What This Chapter Is About

This chapter is focused on the integrity of writing and publishing research. Dealing with authorship is an important topic, but we also address other issues that are important during manuscript writing, preparing the article for publication and publishing it, understanding the process of publication and availability of the article during the process and, later on, in communication with the scientific community and the public. We also give advice how correct published articles and how to avoid negative publication practices.

Case Scenario: Deserved Authorship

This hypothetical scenario was adapted from a narrative concerning the links between research environments and research integrity. The original case scenario is developed by the Members of The Embassy of Good Science and is available at the Embassy of Good Science. The case below is published under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, version 4.0 (CC BY-SA 4.0).

After recently graduating in biomedicine, you have been offered a temporary position as a laboratory technician at the Department of Physiology. Although you were planning to apply for a PhD position, you have accepted this job, but still continue to pursue doctoral study options. Unfortunately, all of your interviews end up unsuccessfully, as they ask for a candidate with a research publication. In your laboratory, you perform animal experiments and other laboratory experimental work, whilst doctoral students and postdocs do data analysis and interpretation for publication. For one project, you have been asked to perform data analysis, since you have experience with that kind of analysis. The results of your experiment are included in the manuscript which is planned to be sent to a high-impact journal. You ask the Head of the Department, who is also the principal investigator on the project, whether you will be included in the paper as a co-author. He responds that you were employed as a laboratory technician, not a doctoral student, and that your primary duty was to provide technical support, not to provide analysis. When you raise an argument that according to International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) authorship criteria, you are eligible for authorship, he reminds you that the position was opened specifically for you, while the institution is waiting for a doctoral student grant, and that you can discuss authorship when you become a doctoral student. In communication with other colleagues, you hear that this isn’t the first time the Head does such thing. One colleague also mentions the case when the Head has added a colleague of his as an author, even though other authors were not aware that he has been working on publication. Will you follow the example of your colleagues and let authorship go in order to get a PhD position, therefore participating in unethical behaviour, or raise the question with University’s research ethics committee?

Questions for You

• 1. Which authorship criteria have been breached in this case?

• 2. How could adherence to responsible practice in this research be increased, to prevent this situation?

• 3. If a third person finds out about uncredited authorship, would you be responsible for negligence to report?

When Is a Paper Published?

In pre-internet times, a paper was considered published when it was released in print. Nowadays, many journals make article available online when it is accepted and publish it at a later, scheduled time. Some journals require that you publish the preprint version of your article in a preprint archive, like eLife, and some journals have moved to full transparency – publishing the preprint, and then reviewing it in an open peer review process, like F1000Research and Open Research Europe. All versions of the manuscript (and reviewers’ comments) are published and the final, accepted version is indexed in bibliographical databases. It is important that you get acquainted with the publication practices of the journal for your own manuscripts, as that will influence the time when your article will be publicly visible. It will also influence the time at which your article will be cited. For example, Clarivate, which produces one of the largest citation databases and calculated journal impact factors, uses online publishing date as the date to count citations to a published article.

All authors are fully responsible for the content of a publication, unless otherwise specified.

All authors agree on the sequence of authorship , acknowledging that authorship itself is based on a significant contribution to the design of the research, relevant data collection, or the analysis or interpretation of the results.

There are several different definitions of authorship, depending on the research field, ranging from usually a single author in some humanities to several thousand authors in high-energy particle physics. In life sciences and medicine, the definition from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) is most prevalent, defining an author as someone who:

• 1. Substantially contributes to the conception OR design of the work, OR the acquisition, analysis, OR interpretation of data for the work;

  AND

• 2. Drafts the work OR revises it critically for important intellectual content

  AND

• 3. Approves final version to be published

  AND

• 4. Agrees to be accountable for all aspects of the work in the publication, ensuring that all questions related to the accuracy and integrity of the whole work are investigated and resolved.

In other research fields, authorship may have a wider definition. For example, the American Psychological Association (APA), defines the authorship in this way:

An author is considered anyone involved with initial research design, data collection and analysis, manuscript drafting, or final approval.

This means that any of the listed contributions are eligible for authorship, in contrast to the ICMJE definition, which requires all of those contributions for a deserved authorship. APA also defines which contributions are not eligible for authorship:

However, the following do not necessarily qualify for authorship: providing funding or resources, mentorship, or contributing research but not helping with the publication itself.

You should carefully check the standards for authorship in your research field. Defining authorship on a publication is critical because of its academic, social and financial implications, and responsibility for the published work. Keep in mind that good research practice, according to the ICMJE; would be to offer researchers who had participated in research (the first criterion from the ICMJE definition) to contribute to manuscript writing, so that they can deserve authorship on the article.

Although there is no quantitative measure to evaluate authorship, journals often have a contributorship policy to make authorship evaluation less ambiguous. Contributorship policy means declaring individual contributions of co-authors in a published article, which increases transparency and may prevent misuse of authorship. Contribution declaration for published articles with a large number of authors may be challenging, and some journals have developed a visual contribution matrix, which can look like this one in Fig. 7.1.

Fig. 7.1

Example of a visual authorship contribution matrix, using CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy) author statement

You have to keep in mind that authorship is not only about who did what or who wrote what, but also about responsibility. You have to ensure that all authors agree that the manuscript is submitted to a journal, and that they are all aware that they are accountable for the research and the article. It has become a practice in some journals to send a notice to all authors of a submitted manuscript to confirm their authorship. This may prevent authorship misuse, such as guest, gift and ghost authorship (Box 7.1).

Box 7.1 Authorship Misuse

• Guest authorship means including researchers as authors on articles where they did not contribute. This is quite common in academia, where it is “expected” that the head of the department or similar senior researcher is always an author on the articles from the department.

• Gift authorship happens when a researcher prominent in a research field is invited to be an author on an article, although the researcher did not make any contribution. This is done to increase the “importance” of the article and has been described for clinical trials funded by pharmaceutical companies.

• Ghost authorship happens when an individual who participates in research or in manuscript writing but is not listed as an author. This is a practice common in large clinical trials, where professional writers are employed by a pharmaceutical company to write the article on a trial. They always have to acknowledged and their role made transparent.

While official definitions of authorship are common, there are few requirements or rules about the order of authors on the byline. For example, the ICMJE Recommendations state that the order of the authors should be discussed and decided by the research team. Standards and practices about the order of authors differ in different research fields. For example, the first author on articles in biomedicine is usually the one that contributed most work (e.g., a doctoral student on a paper from the dissertation). The last author is the senior researcher – head of the research group, principal investigator on a grant, etc. In economics and high-energy physics, the order is usually alphabetical. Knowing these practices is imperative for you to successfully navigate authorship in your research and research collaborations.

In some research fields, where multidisciplinary and multigroup collaboration in common, there is increasing practice of joint first or last authorships, where it is indicated that two or more authors equally contributed to the research, either as first authors (important to early career researchers) or senior (last) authors (important for grant applications).

In large research collaborations, a group of researchers can be an author. The name of the group is stated in the list of authors. If the group has members, their names are usually indexed in bibliographical databases as collaborators or investigators, and not authors. It is important to be aware of such distinctions, because collaboratorship on an article may not be eligible for a doctoral dissertation paper, for example. Researchers in biomedicine should check how different types of authorship are indexed in MEDLINE.

Good research practice from the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity:

• All authors disclose any conflicts of interest and financial or other types of support for the research or for the publication of its results.

A conflict of interest can occur when an investigator’s relationship to an organization affects, or gives the appearance of affecting his/her objectivity in the conduct of the research. Financial relationships are the easiest to identify, but other interests, such as personal relationships, academic competition and beliefs may also affect the primary interest of the research. Whilst conflict of interest by itself is not unethical, author’s disclosure of interest keeps personal, financial and other relations transparent, and therefore keeps public trust in the scientific process. Good practice is to, when possible, to avoid agreements with study sponsors when they interfere with any aspect of authors work on the research or publication itself.

Some journals require submission of a disclosure form in which you have to identify financial and non-financial relationships and activities relevant to the research presented in the article. In some professions, like medicine, there are public registries of financial relationships. There are also initiatives for public registries for the disclosures of interest in research, such as the Convey Global Disclosure System, developed by the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Good research practice from the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity:

• Authors and publishers consider negative results to be as valid as positive findings for publication and dissemination.

Due to positive-publications-only climate, there is a higher chance for positive results to be published, especially in prestigious journals. Getting a negative result may be demotivating, after you have put in a lot of time and effort. However, the results of studies with a valid methodology should be published, to prevent waste in research. This is especially important in some fields of applicative research, like health, where evidence synthesis, usually in the form of systematic reviews and meta-analysis, provides guidance for practice. Publishing negative results ensures, for example, that the benefits of an intervention are objectively assessed. Also, publishing negative results prevents unnecessary duplication of effort and waste in research. Some research funders use special publishing platform to promote publishing of all results from funded research. For example, check whether the funder of your research uses the Open Research Central platform for open dissemination of research results. Results can also be published in the open repositories such as the Open Science Framework (OSF), Zenodo and others, or in clinical trials registries.

Good research practice from the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity:

• Authors ensure that their work is made available to colleagues in a timely, open, transparent, and accurate manner, unless otherwise agreed, and are honest in their communication to the general public and in traditional and social media.

Today, research results are often available to the wider public through open access publications. Open access is a part of Open Science (see Chapter on Data Management), making knowledge available to all levels of society, both amateur or professional. Raw data used in the research should be made public, preferably at the same time as the publication, so that anyone can assess it, interpret it, and work with it. Problems and challenges in the research (or eventual reasons for not finishing research) should be communicated transparently, so they can be assessed by other researchers who will conduct similar research in the future.

Communicating Research to the Public

Oftentimes, media create interest in a research topic by overexaggerating study results, generating positive or negative expectations. However, misleading is also caused by scientists themselves or their institution press offices, who may write press-releases which may differ from the actual study findings by using oversimplified language and exaggerating research findings. It is important to bear in mind that people tend to use social media as their primary source of information and knowledge, using little to none critical thinking when acquiring that information, especially if they come from a scientific source.

It is an obligation for every researcher to communicate research finding clearly and unequivocally, to be available for any additional questions by the journalists who will present findings to the public, so that a clear, correct and understandable final information is presented to the public.

You should also be aware that results from a study can be published only once. You may be tempted to publish results of your study in an international journal, in English, and then in your local journal, in your native language (or the other way around), without acknowledging the primary publication. This is not a good research practice because it creates the impression that you have published two studies instead of one. Such duplicate publications, may have a detrimental effect in some research fields, like health, because they distort evidence and may have consequences on practice. What is allowed is a secondary publication, which clearly indicates that it is a republication and/or translation of an already published article. Examples of legitimate secondary publications are official statements (like from an association, to be published in all journals published by the association), health practice guidelines (also published in several health journals), republication of important articles, and translation.

You may also be tempted to publish more articles from a single study than it is necessary. This is sometimes acceptable and appropriate: for example, the main results of a clinical trial are published first, and may be followed by articles addressing specific aspects of the study, such as subgroup or ancillary analysis. However, it is not a good practice to artificially increase the number of publications from one study by publishing “smallest publishable units” (the so-called salami publications). An example of this practice is publishing separate articles on variables measured in the same study sample, especially if it is not stated in the published article that the sample and study were the same and already published studies are cited. A responsible a practice is to publish all relevant measurements on the same sample in a single study. In that way, there will later be no confusion whether the results come from the same study participants, which is important for evidence synthesis in systematic review and metanalyses.

Preprints vs Peer-reviewed Articles

The quality control in science is peer review (see Chapter Reviewing, Evaluating and Editing), which ensures that the validity of the published articles has been checked by experts. However, peer review is time-consuming, several weeks or months. Even after the final version of the article is accepted by the journal, it takes some time to get to the article to its final form and then publish it. Some journals will publish accepted articles as “online ahead of print” so that they are available to the public as they the final, definitive version is being prepared.

In some fields, it is a custom to publish a paper on a preprint server so that the community can discuss and review it. In some fields, such articles can be later published in a journal, but not necessarily – they may remain in the preprint server and be cited as such. The peer-review journal to which article is submitted later on should be informed that the article has been published in a pre-print archive.

When an article originally published in a preprint server is submitted to a journal, the authors have the obligation to indicate that to the editor. They also have the obligation to go back to the preprint article once the final version of the article is published in a peer-reviewed journal, and update the information about the final publication.

If you want to cite a pre-print in your article, the citation should clearly state that the reference is a pre-print. If the article has been both published as a pre-print, and later on in a peer-reviewed journal, you should cite the journal article, as it is the definitive version of record for the research report.

Good research practice from the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity:

• Researchers adhere to the same criteria as those detailed above whether they publish in a subscription journal, an open access journal or in any other alternative publication form.

Traditional publishing means publishing in a subscription journal, in which access to an article is gained by subscribing to a journal or by buying an individual article. Open-access journals allow access to a publication without any barriers. Somebody has to pay the article publication charges, though – usually the authors or their institutions (the so-called golden open access), and in some cases a funder may support an open-access journal so that there are no charges to the authors (so-called diamond open access). Open access is seen as positive as it makes research readily accessible without restrictions, which is particularly important for publicly funded research. Many open-access peer-reviewed journals are indexed in a community-curated online directory, Directory of Open Access Journals.

However, be aware of predatory journals! These are journals that misuse the open-access publishing model and are not legitimate scientific journals (Box 7.2). Most of published researchers get mails, commending them for the published article and inviting them to make a submission to their journal. You have to carefully check such an invitation, firstly because journals rarely directly solicit articles from authors in such a way, and, secondly, you may be tricked into sending the article into a predatory journal. You will waste a good publication by publishing in an academically unimportant journal. We recommend that you use the tool ThinkCheckSubmit to identify trusted (i.e. peer reviewed, legitimate) journals and publishers.

Box 7.2 Characteristics and Giveaways of Predatory Journals (Pseudo-journals)

• Sole purpose is making profit and not presenting new knowledge

• Not following standard of peer-reviewed research publishing

• Send mass e-mails as calls for publishing in their journal

• Promise rapid publication

• No transparent data available about the journal/publisher

• No retraction policy

• Unprofessional email addresses, websites and communication

• False representation

Good research practice from the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity:

• Authors and publishers issue corrections or retract work if necessary, the processes for which are clear, the reasons are stated, and authors are given credit for issuing prompt corrections post publication.

Despite existing safeguards, mistakes in published articles can happen. Published articles may also be the stage in the research process where research misconduct can be identified. Mistakes can be noticed by authors, reviewers (during the review process) and by editors. Concerns about research misconduct can be raised by reviewers and editors before the publication and by readers after the publication of an article in a journal.

Mistakes and misconduct in published articles must be addressed. Mistakes are corrected by publishing a correction (often listed as an erratum or corrigendum in journal table of contents). If you become aware of the mistake in your published article, you should notify your co-authors and then you need to notify the journal and work with it to publish the correction. If your article is indexed in a bibliographical database, a notice of correction will appear in the bibliographical record, linking to the text of the correction. Sometimes a published article contains a major error that changes the conclusion of the article – meaning that the whole article needs to be changed. If the error is honest (and can be documented), the journal may decide to retract the article and republish the new, corrected version. If an article is no longer valid because of misconduct (falsification, fabrication, and plagiarism), the article must be retracted. Retractions (with or without republication) are also published as notices linked to the original article and are indexed and visible in bibliographical databases.

You should also be aware of the practice in many journals to check text similarity of submitted or accepted articles. Plagiarism (using data, words or ideas of others without proper acknowledgment) is not acceptable. Self-plagiarism (copying from yourself, i.e. using your own already published texts or data without proper acknowledgment is also discouraged.

If your research generates images (e.g., gels, micrographs) you should be aware that many journals will check the images in a submitted manuscript for image manipulation. What does this mean, in the age of common image use on social media? In a research article, it is not allowed to change the information present in the figure – this means that you cannot add, delete, change, move, obscure or enhance any feature of an image. It is also not allowed making composites of images without indicating that they are separate images (such as happens when gel lines are grouped in a single figure). What is allowed is to adjust brightness, contrast or color balance but without changing the information in the image and stating these changes in the figure legend.

To learn more about publication ethics and integrity; check the resources at the Committee of Publication ethics (COPE), and the latest STM recommendations on image alterations and duplications.

Good research practice from the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity:

• Authors acknowledge important work and intellectual contributions of others, including collaborators, assistants, and funders, who have influenced the reported research in appropriate form, and cite related work correctly.

There are three main reasons for referencing in a research article – to give credit to the author who has been cited, to give credibility to the text that the author has written, and to give insight and possibility to read the original material to the reader. There are different styles of references used, but all of them consist of accurate and complete data, which univocally leads back to only one source. By not referencing the original source, author claims the written text as own and as a part of the material the reader is currently reading. If data or information come from author’s previous work, this has to be clearly indicated and referenced.

Authors, reviewers and journals can misuse referencing practice for their benefit; authors can cite themselves or their colleagues, therefore artificially raising number of citations on the article. Same practice has been seen by reviewers, who “suggest referencing a certain article in order to improve it”, and by journals themselves, by referencing articles previously published by them.

Other important declarations must be also included in a published article. This includes funding support for research, which should always include the official name of the funder and the funding programme and the number of the specific grant(s). Keep in mind that some journals may require a declaration that the funder had no role in the design of the study, its execution, analyses, interpretation of data, or decision to submit the results. Such declaration serves to ensure that the funder did not influence the research in any way, and is particularly common for commercial pharmacological research.

Researchers or other individuals who do not fulfil authorship criteria should be acknowledged in the published article, in the Acknowledgment section at the end of the article). Be aware that some journals may require that you provide a written consent from these individuals (a signed letter, and e-mail) that they agree to be acknowledged in the article.

You will also be asked to provide other types of consent. For example, many journals ask not only for the documentation related to ethics approval and consent research for articles describing research involving human participants, but also consent for publishing potentially identifying data about individuals (photographs in clinical case reports, videos). Although you may think that by pasting a black stripe over the eyes on photograph is a good de-identification technique, we know from research that this is not the case and that persons can still be identified. So, you have to obtain a signed consent from a research participant for publishing an identifying photo. Endoscopic, ultrasound and other un-identifying photographs can be used without consent.

Approvals from relevant ethics bodies should also be declared, including the official numbers of the document(s).

Another type of declaration includes the information about data availability, where you are expected to state whether and in what form the raw data may be available to other researchers. If the data cannot be shared, such as when they are confidential, this also has to be clearly indicated.

If You Want to Learn More

The Embassy of Good Science

• Authorship criteria

• Consent for publication – author

• Consent for publication – participant

• Conflict of interest

• Salami publication

• Duplicate and secondary publication

Published Articles

• Allen L, O’Connell A, Kiermer V (2019) How can we ensure visibility and diversity in research contributions? How the Contributor Role Taxonomy (CRediT) is helping the shift from authorship to contributorship. Learn Publ 32:71–74. https://doi.org/10.1002/leap.1210

• Glasziou P, Altman DG, Bossuyt P, Boutron I, Clarke M, Julious S, Michie S, Moher D, Wager E (2014) Reducing waste from incomplete or unusable reports of biomedical research. Lancet 383(9913):267–276. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(13)62228-X

• Huisman J, Smits J (2017) Duration and quality of the peer review process: the author’s perspective. Scientometrics 113:633–650. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-017-2310-5

• Marušić A, Bošnjak L, Jerončić A (2011) A systematic review of research on the meaning, ethics and practices of authorship across scholarly disciplines. PLoS One 6(9):e23477. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0023477

• Bošnjak L, Marušić A (2012) Prescribed practices of authorship: review of codes of ethics from professional bodies and journal guidelines across disciplines. Scientometrics 93:751–763. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-012-0773-y

• Roguljić M, Buljan I, Veček N, Dragun R, Marušić M, Wager E, Marušić A (2022) Deidentification of facial photographs: a survey of editorial policies and practices. J Med Ethics 48(1):56–60. https://doi.org/10.1136/medethics-2019-105823

Guidance

• American Psychological Association – Publication Practices & Responsible Research

• Committee on Publication Ethics – Guidelines Intended to Advise Editors and Publishers on Expected Publication Ethics Practices

• International Committee of Medical Journal – Defining the Role of Authors and Contributors

• International Committee of Medical Journal – Disclosure of Financial and Non-Financial Relationships and Activities, and Conflicts of Interest

• National Library of Medicine – Authorship in MEDLINE

• National Library of Medicine – NIH Preprint Pilot

• STM Working Group on Image Alteration and Duplication Detection – Recommendations for handling image integrity issues.