Research integrity guidelines in the academic environment: The context of Brazilian institutions with retracted publications in health and life sciences.

Although research misconduct is responsible for most retractions in health and life sciences from authors affiliated with Brazilian institutions, there are few studies evaluating retraction notices and research misconduct in the country. Understanding the form of research misconduct may share light on the weaknesses and strengths of individual, organizational, and structural factors toward the implementation of a research integrity culture. This review on policies and practices aims to access the available information from research integrity offices and the guidelines from Brazilian funding institutions and universities who were involved in retractions in health and life science publications based on a previously published systematic review. Additionally, we summarize the available guidelines and policies for research integrity in the country. Additionally, we searched publicly available guidelines and offices for research integrity. In total, 15 institutions were analyzed: five funding agencies and 10 universities. Approximately 40% of the funding agencies promoted local research, and 60% promoted national research. Considering national funding agencies, 66% had the commission on research integrity. Approximately 30% of the universities do not have the official office for research integrity or any publicly available guidelines. Most institutions involved in retractions due to some form of research misconduct. Brazilian institutions involved in publication retractions lack instruments to prevent, supervise, and sanction research misconduct. Institutions of the country have insufficiently developed a system to promote and sustain research integrity practices. Nevertheless, there is a positive movement of researchers who are engaged in the investigation of research integrity, policy creation and training. This study emphasizes increased influence of Brazilian scientific collaboration and production globally as well as the impact of retractions in medical sciences. In contrast, it addresses the need for clear research integrity policies to foster high-quality and trustworthy research.

Research Misconduct in the Croatian Scientific Community: A Survey Assessing the Forms and Characteristics of Research Misconduct.

The prevalence and characteristics of research misconduct have mainly been studied in highly developed countries. In moderately or poorly developed countries such as Croatia, data on research misconduct are scarce. The primary aim of this study was to determine the rates at which scientists report committing or observing the most serious forms of research misconduct, such as falsification , fabrication, plagiarism, and violation of authorship rules in the Croatian scientific community. Additionally, we sought to determine the degree of development and the extent of implementation of the system for defining and regulating research misconduct in a typical scientific community in Croatia. An anonymous questionnaire was distributed among 1232 Croatian scientists at the University of Rijeka in 2012/2013 and 237 (19.2 %) returned the survey. Based on the respondents who admitted having committed research misconduct, 9 (3.8 %) admitted to plagiarism, 22 (9.3 %) to data falsification, 9 (3.8 %) to data fabrication, and 60 (25.3 %) respondents admitted to violation of authorship rules. Based on the respondents who admitted having observed research misconduct of fellow scientists, 72 (30.4 %) observed plagiarism, 69 (29.1 %) observed data falsification, 46 (19.4 %) observed data fabrication, and 132 (55.7 %) respondents admitted having observed violation of authorship rules. The results of our study indicate that the efficacy of the system for managing research misconduct in Croatia is poor. At the University of Rijeka there is no document dedicated exclusively to research integrity, describing the values that should be fostered by a scientist and clarifying the forms of research misconduct and what constitutes a questionable research practice. Scientists do not trust ethical bodies and the system for defining and regulating research misconduct; therefore the observed cases of research misconduct are rarely reported. Finally, Croatian scientists are not formally educated about responsible conduct of research at any level of their formal education. All mentioned indicate possible reasons for higher rates of research misconduct among Croatian scientists in comparison with scientists in highly developed countries.

Scientists Admitting to Plagiarism: A Meta-analysis of Surveys.

We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of anonymous surveys asking scientists whether they ever committed various forms of plagiarism. From May to December 2011 we searched 35 bibliographic databases, five grey literature databases and hand searched nine journals for potentially relevant studies. We included surveys that asked scientists if, in a given recall period, they had committed or knew of a colleague who committed plagiarism, and from each survey extracted the proportion of those who reported at least one case. Studies that focused on academic (i.e. student) plagiarism were excluded. Literature searches returned 12,460 titles from which 17 relevant survey studies were identified. Meta-analysis of studies reporting committed (N = 7) and witnessed (N = 11) plagiarism yielded a pooled estimate of, respectively, 1.7% (95% CI 1.2-2.4) and 30% (95% CI 17-46). Basic methodological factors, including sample size, year of survey, delivery method and whether survey questions were explicit rather than indirect made a significant difference on survey results. Even after controlling for these methodological factors, between-study differences in admission rates were significantly above those expected by sampling error alone and remained largely unexplained. Despite several limitations of the data and of this meta-analysis, we draw three robust conclusions: (1) The rate at which scientists report knowing a colleague who committed plagiarism is higher than for data fabrication and falsification; (2) The rate at which scientists report knowing a colleague who committed plagiarism is correlated to that of fabrication and falsification; (3) The rate at which scientists admit having committed either form of misconduct (i.e. fabrication, falsification and plagiarism) in surveys has declined over time.

Summarizing and presenting numerical data.

Scientific hypothesis and type of the study define variables that have to be measured. Measurements are determined by four distinct scales of measurement; nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio, producing two distinct types of data: categorical and numerical. Numerical data are usually summarized and presented by distribution, measures of central tendency and dispersion. For normally distributed data, arithmetic mean and standard deviation are used. For data not normally distributed, median with data range (minimum to maximum, interquartile range or percentile range) and mode are used. Commonly used graph types in descriptive statistics for numerical data presentation are error bar and box-and-whisker plots. Outliers are values that are numerically distant from the rest of the data and must be recognized.