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Publishing in Scientific Journals

Scopus, in the sense that scientists that publish in such journals almost
surely have access to them. In such databases an OA advantage would not
be visible. This leads to the question: “Is such an advantage more visible
in lower impact or more nationally oriented journals than in international
top journals?” As far as we know there is not yet an answer to this ques-
tion. Finally we mention that when studying the OA advantage one must
make a distinction between download advantage and citation advantage.
Although both types of study depend on the used sets of databases or
repositories, download data mostly have a more local character, reducing
comparability between different observations.
Besides OA to research results, many researchers and policy makers
strive for Open Data, the idea that the data on which research is based
should also be freely available to everyone to reuse and republish
without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of
control.

3.3 SCIENTIFIC MISCONDUCT: FRAUD,
PLAGIARISM, RETRACTION AND THE INTEGRITY
OF THE PUBLICATION RECORD

Although the term scientific misconduct is generally used, a more precise
formulation can be found in (Fanelli, 2013). He proposes to redefine mis-
conduct as distorted reporting: “any omission or misrepresentation of the
information necessary and sufficient to evaluate the validity and signifi-
cance of research, at the level appropriate to the context in which the
research is communicated.” He further writes that carefully crafted guide-
lines could make fabrication and plagiarism more difficult, by requiring
the publication of verifiable details. These guidelines could help to
uncover questionable practices such as ghost authorship, exploiting subor-
dinates, introducing posthoc hypotheses or dropping outliers. If authors
refused or were unable to comply, their paper (or grant application or
conference talk) would be rejected.
If scientific misconduct occurs it are always scientists who exhibit this
behavior. Hence they are the culprits. Yet, as mentioned in Fanelli’s pro-
posal, journals must play an essential role in applying best standards. They
must constantly improve the transparency and rigor of the research they
publish. This, unfortunately, means that they must put some measures in
practice to avoid fraud and plagiarism and make sure that the share of the
publication record for which they are responsible stays clean.