Research and Publication Ethics

Module 4: Open access publishing and Publication misconduct

Basic details

Module 4 Open Access Publishing, Publication Misconduct,

Software tools

Teaching hours (Practical hours) 08 (4+2+2)

Module 4: Overview of content

Open Access Publishing

1. Open access publications and initiatives
2. SHERPN/RoMEO online resource to check publisher copyright & self-archiving
policies
3. Software tool to identify predatory publications developed by SPPU
4. Journal finder / journal suggestion tools viz.JANE, Elsevier Journal Finder, Springer
Journal Suggester, etc.
Publication Misconduct: Group discussions, and Software tools
Group Discussions:
1. Subject specific ethical issues, FFP, Authorship
2. Conflicts of interest
3. Complaints and appeals: Examples and fraud from India and abroad
Software tools:
1. Use of plagiarism software like Turnitin, Urkund and other open source software tools

Topic Page no.

Learning Resource

Topic Learning resource

4.1 Open access publications and initiatives

● Accessibility to research information is paramount for smooth and effective

conduct of research
● Hence, access to publications in peer reviewed journals plays an important role
● Limitations in accessing research output:
○ High number of peer reviewed journals: A library obviously cannot gain
access to all available journals
○ High subscription fee
○ Limited library budget
● Open access refers to the practice of making peer-reviewed scholarly research
and literature freely available online to anyone interested in reading it
● Open access is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research
outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers; barriers to
copying or reuse are also reduced or removed by applying an open license for
copyright.
● Types of open access (OA) publishing
○ Open Access Journals (OAJ)
○ Open Access Repositories (OAR): An open-access repository or open
archive is a digital platform that holds research output and provides free,
immediate and permanent access to research results for anyone to use,
download and distribute
● Basic characteristics of OA publishing:
○ Free availability
○ Digital in nature
○ Mostly free for publishing, sometimes may avail processing fees
○ Free from copyright and licensing restrictions
○ Research oriented
○ Have editorial board and peer review process
● Open access has two different versions:
○ Gratis: Making research available for others to read without having to pay
 for it, but does not grant the user the right to make copies, distribute, or
modify the work in any way beyond fair use (free of charge)
○ Libre: Libre open access is gratis, meaning the research is available free of
charge, but it goes further by granting users additional rights, usually via a
Creative Commons license, so that people are free to reuse and remix the
research. (free of charge and free of use)
● Open Access Strategies
○ Open access journals (Gold road): Gold open access articles are published
in a journal that is open access, which means the journal will handle
hosting and distributing the journal article in a free and open manner,
without any fee or subscription charge; may involve charge for publishing
○ Self archiving (Green road): Authors self-archive their articles by sharing
them on their own website, or more preferably, in their institution's
Institutional Repository or in some other public archive by themself or
their representatives or right holders depending upon the policy of the
publisher where work is published
● Routes of Open Access
○ Green open Access (Self archiving): Authors publish in scholarly, peer
reviewed journals of their choice; During the copyright transfer process,
they secure rights to deposit a version of their article in an open access
repository or post on a personal website. Works for both pre-prints and
post-prints
○ Gold open access: Authors publish directly in peer-reviewed open access
journals; works only for postprints; List available in DOAJ; Criteria to be
considered open access (BOAI): have editorial board, peer review process,
research oriented. Works only for post prints
○ Hybrid open access: Mixture of open and closed access articles. Partially
funded by subscriptions; open access for only those articles for which
authors have paid publication fee
○ Bronze open access: Articles free to read on publisher page, but lack
clearly identifiable license; freely available journal article that has no open
 license
○ Diamond/ Platinum open access: Journals which publish open access
without charging authors article processing charges; require funding from
external sources
● Selection criteria for inclusion in DOAJ
○ Subject: Scientific and Scholarly
○ Type: Periodicals that publish research or review papers in full text
○ Acceptable sources: Academic, Government, Commercial, Non-profit
○ Level: Primarily researchers
○ Content: Mainly research papers in full text
○ All languages
● Open access movement emerged globally so as to increase accessibility to
research output
○ Started in 1991: Paul Ginsparg
○ Objective: Output of public funded research should be made available to
the public at large without any barrier such as cost, access and copyright
obligations
○ Major initiatives: Budapest Open Access Initiative (2001), Bethesda
Statement on Open Access Publishing (April 2003), Berlin Declaration on
Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities (October
2003)

Year Initiative

1991 Started by Paul Ginsparg (arXiv repository: free distribution

service)

1993 Project MUSE: Online database of peer reviewed journals

● Open access movement in India

● How to choose publications?
4.2 SHERPA/RoMEO online resource to check publisher copyright &
self-archiving policies

● Sherpa (Securing a hybrid environment for research preservation and access)

Romeo is an online resource that aggregates and analyses publisher open access
policies from around the world and provides summaries of publisher copyright
and open access archiving policies on a journal-by-journal basis
● Upgradation via community contributions
● RoMEO’s (Rights MEtadata for Open archiving) own database covers around
22000 journals
● Aim is to establish institutional repositories and open access archiving
● Basically lists copyright and publishing policies thus helping authors in making
key decisions with respect to publication
● Gives publication information such as title, ISSNs, URL, Publishers
● Gives information regarding publisher policy such as OA fee, OA publishing,
Embargo, Licence, Copyright owner, Location and so on for Published, Accepted
and Submitted versions
● If an academic author wants to put their research articles online, they are faced
with an increasingly complex situation. Some publishers prohibit authors from
using their own articles. Others allow it, but only under certain conditions.
RoMEo helps to clarify the situation. RoMEO contains publishers’ general
policies on self-archiving of journal articles and certain conference series. It
provides information regarding what version of an article can be deposited, and
under what conditions?, and so on.

4.3 Software tool to identify predatory publications developed by SPPU

● Predatory journals are a global threat. They accept articles for publication
without performing necessary quality checks for issues such as plagiarism or
ethical approval.
● Think Check Submit campaign
● A predatory journal is an opportunistic publishing venue that exploits the
academic need to publish but offers little reward for those using their services.
● Deceptive publishing: Write only for the purpose of publishing
● Motivation: Publish or Perish, Ease of launching online journals
● Why is it bad?
○ Creates confusion
○ Promotes shoddy scholarship
○ Wastes resources
● Definition: Predatory journals and publishers are entities that prioritize
self-interest at the expense of scholarship and are characterized by false or
misleading information, deviation from best editorial and publication practices, a
lack of transparency, and/ or the use of aggressive and indiscriminate solicitation
practices
● Characteristics
○ Money making is the primary goal
○ Do not care about quality of work being published
○ Weak peer review process
○ Make false claims and promises
○ Fail to follow accepted standards and best practices
○ Engage in unethical practices
○ Too much campaigning
○ Appointing false academicians to the editorial board
○ Copying or mimicking names of popular journals
○ Non existent Impact factors
● Eriksson and Helgesson’s 25 features of predatory journals:
○ Not a member of professional body committed to best practices
○ Not indexed
○ False claims
○ Unfamiliar to most
○ Existing papers are of poor quality
 ○ Lot of errors in published papers
○ Website does not look professional
○ Lack of credible information in website such as editorial board, location
and so on
○ Publishing schedule is not clearly stated
○ Mimics or copies popular journals
○ Misleading Imoact factor
○ Non-academic advertisements in website
○ High volume publishing in a very short span of time
○ Articles out of scope
○ Poor email etiquette; contradictory claims
○ Lack of strong peer review process
○ No copyright agreement description
● Tips to identify predatory journals
○ Low h-indices
○ Invitations from conferences
○ Too wide a scope (too many fields)
○ Relatively unknown speakers
● Software tools to identify predatory publications developed by SPPU
○ Set guidelines for considering a journal to be a good one: Publishing for at
least 5 years, genuine website, reputed academicians, associated with
reputed professional bodies, and so on
○ Papers published in private in-house journals, proceedings of workshops,
seminars, refresher/ orientation courses should not be considered as
research publication
○ Universities should develop a comprehensive department wise list of
quality journals and reputed publications in each subject to be used as
mark of standard in research processes
○ Mere ISSN not sufficient for qualifying as a peer-reviewed journal
○ Record of citations in other reputed journals
○ Do not rely on just one metrics in ascertaining quality of a journal
 ○ Due recognition to languages other than English should be given, all the
while following a transparent and quality conscious process
○ Faculty wise expert list should be developed at university level with utmost
care and due diligence
○ List of quality journals should be displayed in university website, and
should be reviewed and updated every year; utmost care should be taken
before including a journal in the university list, keeping in mind the rise of
fake and counterfeit journals
○ Beall’s list can be referred
○ RPE and guidelines should be widely circulated, and undertaking should
be taken from research guides and scholars for adherence to the same
○ Research articles, Thesis and such research works should go through
Departmental Research Committee consisting of internal and external
experts duly approved by Vice-Chancellor
○ Anti-plagiarism tools to be made mandatory
○ Awareness programs regarding predatory publishing at university level
○ Quality of work to be judged by external experts anonymously
○ Universities should bring in external peer review system to critically
evaluate its research output
○ Necessary guidelines and comprehensive department wise lists of Journals
in each subject should be published in University Annual report and
displayed prominently on University website
○ UGC has set up CARE to promote ethics in research
○ Publications in predatory journals will be assessed during a university’s
accreditation process
● Consequences of publishing in predatory journals
○ Damage to reputation
○ Research based on works from predatory journals may lead to wrong
conclusions
○ Lack of quality control
○ Lack of reproducibility
 ○ Work could disappear/ Loss of information: Predatory journals do not
care to set up an IT infrastructure to ensure information preservation, as
cost effectiveness and money making is the sole purpose
○ Work will be hard to find
○ Concealed conflict of interests: Eg: Wakefield case study
● Cabell’s Predatory reports is the only searchable database that identifies
deceptive and fraudulent journals using 74 weighted behavioral indicators
● Journalytics database is an complete source for Journal info, evaluation metrics,
and submission details
● Journal evaluation metrics: Audience, Relevance, Quality, Peer review, Policies,
Publication practices
● How to avoid predatory publishers?
○ Use Cabell’s predatory reports and Journalytics
○ APA questionnaire: Informal email tone, Unprofessional website
○ PsycINFO journal coverage list

4.4 Journal finder/ journal suggestion tools: JANE, Elsevier Journal Finder,
Springer Journal Suggester, etc.

Journal finder tools

● Journal finder tools helps a researcher in locating the best suited journal for
publishing his/ her research work
● Journal finder identifies highly ranked journals based on some standard metrics
such as Scopus or Journal Citation Reports (JCR)
● How to select best suited journal for my article?
○ Make a List of the Journals Available: Consulting your peers,
searching through online listings, and checking with professional
associations
○ Determine the Impact of the Journal: Impact Factor, Journal Rank,
Article Influence, and h-Index are used to determine the impact of the
journal
 ○ Make Sure the Journal Scope and Policies match your Needs:
Helps in anticipating any situations that may emerge during the
submission and peer review process
○ Check the Journal Requirements and Distribution: Most journals
have a certain style for the article. The article must be consistent with the
requirements of the journal.
○ Collect Information about the Journal’s Peer Review Process:
Stature of reviewers, objectivity, and timelines, should be gleaned from a
variety of sources. Actual values or estimates of rejection rates should be
obtained.
○ Check the “Instructions for Authors” thoroughly: Certain
additional information for the authors that one must keep in mind before
submitting the manuscript: Page limit, Conflict of interest, Archiving
policies, Copyright policies, Author rights, and so on
● JANE (Journal/ Author name estimator)
○ Objectives:
■ Assisting authors in right journal selection
■ Assiting authors in finding relevant articles to cite
■ Assisting editors in finding right reviewers
○ How?
■ Just enter the title and/or abstract of the paper in the box, and click
on 'Find journals', 'Find authors' or 'Find Articles'. Jane will then
compare your document to millions of documents in PubMed to
find the best matching journals, authors or articles
■ Instead of using a title or abstract, you can also search using a
keyword search, similar to popular web search engines
■ Find journals: Upon search, JANE gives out a list of journals sorted
with decreasing level of confidence and article influence. List of
similar articles can also be seen with similarity index.
■ Article influence measures how often articles in the journal are
cited within the first 5 years of its publication
 ■ Types of journal measures
○ JANE relies on the data in PubMed, which can contain papers from
predatory journals, and therefore these journals can appear in JANE's
results. To help identify high-quality journals, JANE now tags journals
that are currently indexed in MEDLINE, and open access journals
approved by the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).
○ Updated on a monthly basis
○ Includes papers published in last 10 years
○ Database works by searching gor 50 articles most similar to the given
input. For each of these articles, similarity score is calculated. The
similarity scores of all the articles belonging to a certain journal or author
are summed to calculate the confidence score for the journal or the author.
○ Information sent to JANE server is not stored
● Elsevier Journal finder
○ EJF uses paper title, abstract, keywords, field of research in helping
researchers to select appropriate journals
○ Smart search can be done by refining the search for: Publication type
(Gold OA, Subscription), Journal Impact (Cite score, Impact factor,
0:10+), Review and publication time (Time to 1st decision, Time to
publication)
○ Powered by the Elsevier Fingerprint Engine
● Springer Journal Suggester
○ Uses semantic technology to help researchers in selecting appropriate
journals out of 2500 springer and BioMed central journals
○ Researchers can specify acceptance rate, impact factor threshold,
maximum time to first decision, indexing services so as to narrow down
the search
● Wiley Journal Suggester
● Wiley Journal finder
● SJFInder
 ● JournalGuide
● Think Check Submit

4.5 Subject specific ethical issues: Engineering ethics

● Click on this link to read about Engineering ethics in detail

● Article 1: Social Responsibility to Uphold Ethical Values of the Society:
○ Public safety: Safety, health and welfare of public
○ Compliance with social order: Laws of land, local customs
○ Impartiality and fairness: Irrespective of caste, color, nationality
○ Environment protection and improvement
● Article 2: Responsibility to maintain high standards of professional quality:
○ Development of technical and managerial skills
○ Undertake assignment where professionally competent: Only if skilled
○ Performance responsibility
○ Proper verification of documents and production processes
● Article 3: Obligation to Maintain High Standard of Personal Behaviour in a
Responsible Manner
○ Honesty and integrity in professional dealing
○ Compensation for services rendered
○ Professional opinion
○ Professional relationship with the employer
○ Information communication with employers
○ Mutual obligation and trust
○ Self promotion: Do not indulge
○ Employers’ business secrets
○ Personal conflict: Conflict of interest
4.6 Complaints and appeals: examples and fraud from India and abroad

● Scientific plaigiarism in India

● Frauds in Indian scientific research
● Kerala university faculty in research fraud row
● Disentangling the epidemic of scientific misconduct
4.7 Software tools

● Turnitin
○ Paid web based software to check plagiarism
○ Create turnitin account and login
○ Create class using Add class button and filling in necessary details like
class name, subject, student level and so on
○ Go inside the class, and create assignment using Add assignment button
by filling in necessary details
○ Go to action:view button
○ Select file and submit by filling in necessary details
■ Single file upload
■ Multiple file upload
■ Cut and paste upload
■ Zip upload
○ Keep on refreshing until you get similarity index
■ Color coded matching
■ Use document viewer in the top left corner to download pdf version
of similarity report
○ User Manual
○ Key determinants in similarity checking
■ Speed of the internet
■ Online availability of databases
■ Digitization
■ Filtering tools used
 ■ Documents in regional languages
■ Similarity % varies from tool to tool
● Ouriginal
● Difference between turnitin and original