Conducting research and writing a journal article or other publication is hard work. Research takes time. So does gathering and analyzing data. Then, you take that data – sometimes with your colleagues – and put together an article for publication.
It seems like a straightforward path, but things could go wrong. And if something goes wrong, it could derail your career.
“I do believe our intentions are good and things don’t start off going sideways, but sometimes it happens,” Associate Professor and Division Chair of Health Systems, Leadership, and Informatics at the University of Colorado College of Nursing at Anschutz Medical Campus Deborah Kenny, PhD, RN, FAAN, says.
Kenny gave a presentation about publication ethics during the college’s Grand Rounds. Kenny explained three things that can get an article retracted: plagiarism, unreliable data, and data fabrication or falsification. These three types of plagiarism equal about 85% of the reasons why a publication gets retracted. Kenny says out of every 10,000 published research articles, about six are retracted.
Plagiarism: It Happens More Than You Think
Kenny explained several types of plagiarism including plagiarizing someone’s ideas, word-for-word copying, and mosaic plagiarism (“when you take someone’s writings and change a few words to make it sound like your own”).
“I’ve seen plagiarism way more than I would like to admit as a journal reviewer,” she says. “I always do plagiarism checks.”
Kenny says students may be guilty of mosaic plagiarism mostly because they don’t understand what plagiarism is, or that they did anything wrong.
“Educate your students on plagiarism and enforce infractions if they’re guilty,” she says. “Most students are horrified because they didn’t know they plagiarized something and so it is a good chance to make it a learning experience for them.”
Using Correct Data
What You Can Do to Help Your Research: Top Tips from Dr. Kenny |
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Something else researchers should keep an eye on is their data. Is the data accurate? Reliable? Inconsistent data may not necessarily be falsified, but it could be inconsistent with what’s being asked in a publication. Unreliable data might be incomplete or have missing data points.
“Unreliable data is problematic because it can lead to inappropriate decisions,” she says, citing ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine studies that came out at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Those articles spread false beliefs (about treating COVID-19). some had methodological weaknesses,” she explained. “There were untenable timelines for these studies. I knew they were flawed, but the general public didn’t, so it can lead to false beliefs and degrade our science. Some of the publications were retracted.”
Why might someone take shortcuts with data? Pressure to publish results.
“There are ways this type of data gets into publications. The first way is from the researcher,” Kenny says. “They might feel pressure to publish results of a study that’s being funded or they want to look good. They’ll cherry-pick data and publish what they think the funder (of the study) wants them to push out.”
Everyone’s Impacted
Publication Ethics Resources |
Kenny says researchers and their teams must create and follow strict rules for the research in case there’s a question from a publisher. And, it is vital to determine authorship (who is included, who is listed as a principal author, etc.) first thing – to avoid any issues during the writing process.
“If you have these rules and follow them, then you can go back and review them if there’s an investigation,” she says. “Make sure your team follows them. It’s your responsibility and the rules help determine things well before data is collected or analyzed. Make sure everything is written down.”
Falsifying information in a research publication has a wide impact. It not only harms the author (or authors), but it damages the nursing profession and the public.
“If a published paper has been falsified, it can make news,” Kenny says. “You don’t want to end up on the front page of the New York Times. Personally, it can be devastating to your career. Professionally, it degrades the nursing profession. And more globally, it degrades the science and public trust in the science.”
