O texto volta-se ao estudo da noção de epieikeia (equidade) na tradição aristotélica, procedendo-se à análise do instituto e a uma tentativa crítica de conceituação, destacando-se o problema da generalidade da lei e da singularidade dos casos. Ainda, vê-se brevemente a epieikeia na obra de Tomás de Aquino.

In a recent opinion paper, it was argued that individuals with multiple retractions or a record of academic misconduct should not serve as editors, including as editors-in-chief, on the editorial boards of scholarly or academic journals. As a first step towards appreciating how such a policy could be applied in practice, the presence of 30 individuals listed on the Retraction Watch Leaderboard on editorial boards was screened. Six cases are highlighted to gain an appreciation of the potential reputational risks that (...) journals and publishers might incur by including individuals with a tainted academic record on editorial boards. Given the reputational, legal and other risks associated with this type of assessment and decision, more formal positioning and guidance are needed by global ethics policy-related bodies such as COPE, the ICMJE, and the CSE, even more so in journals that claim to follow these organizations’ ethical guidelines. (shrink)

The natural instinct for members of the Committee on Publication Ethics, which now number almost 12,200, as well as academia, is to assume that this organization works under strict and clearly defined ethical parameters, with a solid vision, and an independent mandate that is not influenced by power, think tanks, or partisan interests. Naturally, whistle-blowing and science shaming are not practices that one would usually associate with an ethics organization like COPE, because they involve ethically and morally questionable practices. Despite (...) this, ethical borders have become blurred between the objectives of Retraction Watch and PubPeer, two self-moderated science watchdogs that rely heavily on these questionable practices, in their efforts to grow and survive, and the values espoused by COPE. A Retraction Watch post, in which the former COPE Chair, Virginia Barbour, made a claim of apparent harassment, is the most striking example of the dangers when collaboration may take place between science-shaming websites, and an ethics organization, COPE. These bonds appear to have been in development for a number of years already, with the inclusion of Elizabeth Wager, the former COPE Chair, as a director of The Center for Science Integrity Inc., Retraction Watch’s parent organization. Retraction Watch was financed by, among other groups, the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, whose leader, John Arnold, an ex-Enron trader, declared a “war on bad science”, which may naturally include the destruction of aspects of science as well. Retraction Watch embraces several infamous pseudonymous personas under the broad umbrella of freedom of speech, liaising thereby with PubPeer. There is no doubt that errors in the literature need correcting, but this apparent connection with COPE raises questions about the basic ethical foundation of this relationship. Are scientists to embrace this bond between COPE and science watchdogs and pseudonymous whistle-blowers as the new normal in the correction of the scientific literature? This opinion piece puts forward arguments why the author believes that the ethical compass of COPE has become skewed. (shrink)

Multiple authorship is the universal solution to multi-tasking in the sciences. Without a team, each with their own set of expertise, and each involved mostly in complementary ways, a research project will likely not advance quickly, or effectively. Consequently, there is a risk that research goals will not be met within a desired timeframe. Research teams that strictly scrutinize their modus operandi select and include a set of authors that have participated substantially in the physical undertaking of the research, in (...) its planning, or who have contributed intellectually to the ideas or the development of the manuscript. Authorship is not an issue that is taken lightly, and save for dishonest authors, it is an issue that is decided collectively by the authors, usually in sync with codes of conduct established by their research institutes or national ministries of education. Science, technology and medicine publishers have, through independent, or sometimes coordinated efforts, also established their own sets of guidelines regarding what constitutes valid authorship. However, these are, for the greater part, merely guidelines. A previous and recent analysis of authorship definitions indicates that the definitions in place regarding authorship and its validity by many leading STM publishers is neither uniform, nor standard, despite several of them claiming to follow the guidelines as set forward by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors or ICMJE. This disparity extends itself to ghost and guest authorship, two key authorship-related issues that are examined in this paper to assess the extent of discrepancies among the same set of STM publishers and what possible influence they might have on publishing ethics. (shrink)

This paper explores that the topic of ethics dumping, its causes and potential remedies. In ED, the weaknesses or gaps in ethics policies and systems of lower income countries are intentionally exploited for intellectual or financial gains through research and publishing by higher income countries with a more stringent or complex ethical infrastructure in which such research and publishing practices would not be permitted. Several examples are provided. Possible ED needs to be evaluated before research takes place, and detected prior (...) to publication as an academic paper, because it might lead to a collaborative effort between a wealthier country with restrictive ethical policies and a less wealthy country with more permissive policies. Consequently, if that collaboration ultimately results in an academic paper, there are ethical ramifications of ED to scholarly communication. Institutional review board approval is central to avoid ED-based collaborations. Blind trust and goodwill alone cannot eliminate the exploitation of indigenous or “vulnerable” populations’ intellect and resources. Combining community-based participatory research using clear codes of research conduct and a simple but robust verification system in academic publishing may reduce the risks of ED-based research from being published. (shrink)

Retractions of COVID-19 literature in both preprints and the peer-reviewed literature serve as a reminder that there are still challenging issues underlying the integrity of the biomedical literature. The risks to academia become larger when such retractions take place in high-ranking biomedical journals. In some cases, retractions result from unreliable or nonexistent data, an issue that could easily be avoided by having open data policies, but there have also been retractions due to oversight in peer review and editorial verification. As (...) COVID-19 continues to affect academics and societies around the world, failures in peer review might also constitute a public health risk. The effectiveness by which COVID-19 literature is corrected, including through retractions, depends on the stringency of measures in place to detect errors and to correct erroneous literature. It also relies on the stringent implementation of open data policies. (shrink)

Authors endure considerable hardship carrying out biomedical research, from generating ideas to completing their manuscripts and submitting their findings and data (as is increasingly required) to a journal. When researchers submit to journals, they entrust their findings and ideas to editors and peer reviewers who are expected to respect the confidentiality of peer review. Inherent trust in peer review is built on the ethical conduct of authors, editors and reviewers, and on the respect of this confidentiality. If such confidentiality is (...) breached by unethical reviewers who might steal or plagiarize the authors’ ideas, researchers will lose trust in peer review and may resist submitting their findings to that journal. Science loses as a result, scientific and medical advances slow down, knowledge may become scarce, and it is unlikely that increasing bias in the literature will be detected or eliminated. In such a climate, society will ultimately be deprived from scientific and medical advances. Despite a rise in documented cases of abused peer review, there is still a relative lack of qualitative and quantitative studies on reviewer-related misconduct, most likely because evidence is difficult to come by. Our paper presents an assessment of editors’ and reviewers’ responsibilities in preserving the confidentiality of manuscripts during the peer review process, in response to a 2016 case of intellectual property theft by a reviewer. Our main objectives are to propose additional measures that would offer protection of authors’ intellectual ideas from predatory reviewers, and increase researchers’ awareness of the responsible reviewing of journal articles and reporting of biomedical research. (shrink)

The blogosphere is full of personalities with masks, or pseudonyms. Although not a desired state of public communication, one could excuse the use of pseudonyms in blogs and social media, which are generally unregulated or weakly regulated. However, in science publishing, there are increasingly strict rules regarding the use of false identities for authors, the lack of institutional or contact details, and the lack of conflicts of interest, and such instances are generally considered to be misconduct. This is because these (...) violations of publishing protocol decrease trust and confidence in science and bring disrepute to those scientists who conform to the rules set out by journals and publishers and abide by them. Thus, when cases are encountered where trust and protocol in publishing are breached, these deserve to be highlighted. In this letter, I focus on Neuroskeptic, a highly prominent science critic, primarily on the blogosphere and in social media, highlighting the dangers associated with the use of pseudonyms in academic publishing. (shrink)

A surge in post-publication activity related to editing, including by technical editors and copyeditors, is worthy of some discussion. One of these issues involves the issue of 'tortured phrases', which are bizarre terms and phrases in academic papers that replace standard English expressions or jargon. This phenomenon may reveal an attempt to avoid the detection of textual similarity or to masquerade plagiarism, and yet remain undetected by editors, peer reviewers and text editors. Potentially thousands of cases have already been discovered (...) and reported publicly on the post-publication platform PubPeer. In this opinion paper, 35 cases from ranked scholarly journals are presented, mainly the fields of materials, computer and engineering sciences. This collation serves to expand discussion about this integrity-related phenomenon and to increase educational awareness of the topic. (shrink)

In the academic world, despite their corrective nature, there is still a negative stigma attached to retractions, even more so if they are based on ethical infractions. Editors-in-chief and editors are role models in academic and scholarly communities. Thus, if they have multiple retractions or a record of academic misconduct, this viewpoint argues that they should not serve on journals’ editorial boards. The exception is where such individuals have displayed a clear path of scholarly reform. Policy and guidance is needed (...) by organizations such as the Committee on Publication Ethics. (shrink)

As part of a continuous process to explore the factors that might weaken or corrupt traditional peer review, in this paper, we query the ethics, fairness and validity of the request, by editors, of authors to suggest peer reviewers during the submission process. One of the reasons for the current crisis in science pertains to a loss in trust as a result of a flawed peer review which is by nature biased unless it is open peer review. As we indicate, (...) the fact that some editors and journals rely on authors’ suggestions in terms of who should peer review their paper already instills a potential way to abuse the trust of the submission and publishing system. An author-suggested peer reviewer choice might also tempt authors to seek reviewers who might be more receptive or sympathetic to the authors’ message or results, and thus favor the outcome of that paper. Authors should thus not be placed in such a potentially ethically compromising situation, especially as a mandatory condition for submission. However, the fact that they do not have an opt-out choice during the submission process—especially when using an online submission system that makes such a suggestion compulsory—may constitute a violation of authors’ rights. (shrink)

Purpose Whistle-blowing, which has become an integral part of the post-publication peer-review movement, is being fortified by social media. Anonymous commenting on blogs as well as Tweets about suspicions of academic misconduct can spread quickly on social media sites like Twitter. The purpose of this paper is to examine two cases to expand the discussion about how complex post-publication peer review is and to contextualize the use of social media within this movement. Design/methodology/approach This paper examines a Twitter-based exchange between (...) an established pseudonymous blogger and science critic, Neuroskeptic, and Elizabeth Wager, the former COPE Chair, within a wider discussion of the use of social media in post-publication peer review. The paper also discusses false claims made on Twitter by another science watchdog, Leonid Schneider. The policies of 15 publishers related to anonymous or pseudonymous whistle-blowing are examined. Findings Four issues in the Neuroskeptic–Wager case were debated: the solicitation by Wager to publish in RIPR; the use of commercial software by Neuroskeptic to make anonymous reports to journals; the links between “publication ethics” leaders and whistle-blowers or pseudonymous identities; the issues of transparency and possible hidden conflicts of interest. Only one publisher out of 15 scientific publishers examined claimed in its official ethical guidelines that anonymous reports should be investigated in the same way as named reports, while three publishers referred to the COPE guidelines. Originality/value No such Twitter-based case has yet been examined in detail in the publishing ethics literature. (shrink)

Academic publishing is undergoing a highly transformative process, and many established rules and value systems that are in place, such as traditional peer review (TPR) and preprints, are facing unprecedented challenges, including as a result of post-publication peer review. The integrity and validity of the academic literature continue to rely naively on blind trust, while TPR and preprints continue to fail to effectively screen out errors, fraud, and misconduct. Imperfect TPR invariably results in imperfect papers that have passed through varying (...) levels of rigor of screening and validation. If errors or misconduct were not detected during TPR’s editorial screening, but are detected at the post-publication stage, an opportunity is created to correct the academic record. Currently, the most common forms of correcting the academic literature are errata, corrigenda, expressions of concern, and retractions or withdrawals. Some additional measures to correct the literature have emerged, including manuscript versioning, amendments, partial retractions and retract and replace. Preprints can also be corrected if their version is updated. This paper discusses the risks, benefits and limitations of these forms of correcting the academic literature. (shrink)

PurposeThe issue of “predatory” publishing and the scholarly value of journals that claim to operate within an academic framework, namely, by using peer review and editorial quality control, but do not, while attempting to extract open access or other publication-related fees, is an extremely important topic that affects academics around the globe. Until 2017, global academia relied on two now-defunct Jeffrey Beall “predatory” OA publishing blacklists to select their choice of publishing venue. This paper aims to explore how media has (...) played a role in spinning public impressions about this issue.Design/methodology/approachThe authors focus on a 2017New York Timesarticle by Gina Kolata, on a selected number of peer reviewed published papers on the topic of “predatory” publications and on an editorial by the Editor-in-Chief ofREM, a SciELO- and Scopus-indexed OA journal.FindingsThe Kolata article offers biased, inaccurate and potentially misleading information about the state of “predatory” publishing: it relies heavily on the assumption that the now-defunct Beall blacklists were accurate when in fact they are not; it relies on a paper published in a non-predatory non-OA journal that claimed incorrectly the existence of financial rewards by faculty members of a Canadian business school from “predatory” publications; it praised a sting operation that used methods of deception and falsification to achieve its conclusions. The authors show how misleading information by theNew York Timeswas transposed downstream via theREMeditorial.Originality/valueEducation of academics. (shrink)

In 2015, the Retraction Watch leadership, Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky, retracted an article that they had written for The Lab Times in 2013. According to Marcus and Oransky, in the 2013 piece, they had offered “bad advice” to academics. In the 2013 piece, Marcus and Oransky suggested that when an error, actual or potential, was detected in a published paper, that they should first contact – by name or anonymously – the editor, then the author, and finally the research (...) institute, following Committee on Publication Ethics guidelines. They also recommended readers to copy Retraction Watch on their communications – most likely so that Retraction Watch could gather a scoop – suggesting even that by mentioning or copying Retraction Watch would twist the arm of the editor, and perhaps speed up – or influence – the journal’s action, or decision. Offering such bad, flawed and unscholarly advice, claiming boldly, without any citations “that cronyism can protect obvious fraud”, the 2013 Lab Times piece was a clear act of antiscience advice. Clearly recognizing their own bad advice, and flawed and misleading logic, but taking considerable time to do so, Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky retracted their 2013 article in December of 2015, but replaced it with a substitute offering even worse advice, indicating to concerned academics to scrap their 2013 advice of contacting authors, editors and academic institutes, and opting instead for a potentially biased anonymous option, using a whistle-blower website, PubPeer. Marcus and Oransky failed to indicate any financial or other conflicts of interest in their Lab Times piece. This is important, because, as we now know, the marriage between these watchdogs has been in the pipe-line for years now, reaching public prominence in early 2016 during a meeting in UC Berkeley, and culminating in generous financial backing – in the hundreds of thousands of US$ – by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, to both Retraction Watch and PubPeer. This commentary examines how the retraction of one badly written journalistic piece for lack of professionalism led to the emergence of an even worse article full of biases. Perspectives on how this could be interpreted, and what should happen, are provided. (shrink)

This opinion paper takes aim at an error made recently by Clarivate Analytics in which it sent out an email that congratulated academics for becoming exclusive members of academia’s most cited elite, the Highly Cited Researchers. However, that email was sent out to an undisclosed number of non-HCRs, who were offered an apology shortly after, through a bulk mail, which tried to down-play the importance of the error, all the while praising the true HCRs. When Clarivate Analytics senior management was (...) contacted, the company declined to offer an indication of the number of academics who had been contacted and erroneously awarded the HCR status. We believe that this regrettable blunder, together with the opacity offered by the company, fortify the corporate attitude about the value of the journal impact factor, and what it represents, namely a marketing tool that is falsely used to equate citations with quality, worth, or influence. The continued commercialization of metrics such as the JIF is at the heart of their use to assess the “quality” of a researcher, their work, or a journal, and contributes to a great extent to driving scientific activities towards a futile endeavor. (shrink)

The editors of scholarly journals have a duty to uphold and promote the highest standards of ethical conduct of research. They also have a responsibility to maintain the integrity of the literature, and to promote transparency and honesty in reporting research findings. In the process of screening manuscripts they receive for possible publication, editors have the obligation to report infractions to the institutions of offending authors, and request an investigation. Since editors can reject a paper on ethical grounds, they can (...) be considered to be the guardians of ethics who should express high ethical standards in conducting and publishing their own research. An examination of several publishers’ websites reveals no such requirement or clear selection criteria for journal editors. Therefore, we aim to discuss the factors that publishers, in a broad sense, should consider when selecting editors for scholarly journals and believe that such criteria should be made public to ensure accountability. This would restore some of the eroding public trust in disseminated research, fortify confidence in the composition and qualification of members of an editorial board, and help to protect the reputations of publishers and editors. (shrink)

Este trabajo investiga las interrelaciones entre la regulación y los as-pectos económicos y ambientales en una comunidad de agricultores familiares en la región conocida como Zona da Mata Mineira, en el estado brasileño de Minas Gerais. El estudio es producto de una acti-vidad de extensión realizada entre 2016 y 2018, y tuvo como objetivo asesorar a los pequeños productores en el proceso de adecuación legal de la producción. Durante este período se realizaron cerca de cinco reuniones entre investigadores y comuneros, (...) en las que se analizaron las dificultades encontradas por los pequeños productores en relación con el referido proceso. Las experiencias reportadas fueron confron-tadas con el régimen legal regulatorio para la actividad acuícola en Brasil, tomando como categorías de análisis los atributos de norma-tividad y facticidad del sistema legal. Se concluyó que la regulación ambiental en el área de la acuicultura en Brasil, diseñada para grandes productores, carga de manera desproporcionada a los pequeños pro-ductores, generando un desequilibrio económico injustificado. Como aporte a la teoría, se propone, en definitiva, la formulación de un con-cepto de regulación jurídica inclusiva, cuyos rasgos distintivos inclu-yen la participación social y la promoción de la alfabetización jurídica como derecho fundamental. (shrink)

Editors have increasing pressure as scholarly publishing tries to shore up trust and reassure academics and the public that traditional peer review is robust, fail-safe, and corrective. Hidden conflicts of interest (COIs) may skew the fairness of the publishing process because they could allow the status of personal or professional relationships to positively influence the outcome of peer review or reduce the processing period of this process. Not all authors have such privileged relationships. In academic journals, editors usually have very (...) specialized skills and are selected as agents of trust, entrusted with the responsibility of serving as quality control gate-keepers during peer review. In many cases, editors form extensive networks, either with other professionals, industry, academic bodies, journals, or publishers. Such networks and relationships may influence their decisions or even their subjectivity towards a set of submitting authors, paper, or institute, ultimately influencing the peer review process. These positions and relationships are not simply aspects of a curriculum, they are potential COIs. Thus, on the editorial board of all academic journals, editors should carry a COI statement that reflects their past history, as well as actual relationships and positions that they have, as these may influence their editorial functions. (shrink)

Publishing has become, in several respects, more challenging in recent years. Academics are faced with evolving ethics that appear to be more stringent in a bid to reduce scientific fraud, the emergence of science watchdogs that are now scrutinizing the published literature with critical eyes to hold academics, editors and publishers more accountable, and a barrage of checks and balances that are required between when a paper is submitted and eventually accepted, to ensure quality control. Scientists are often under increasing (...) pressure to produce papers in an increasingly stringent publishing environment. In such a climate, timing is everything, as is the efficiency of the process. Academics appreciate that rejections are part of the fabric of attempting to get a paper published, but they expect the reason to be clear, based on careful evaluation of their work, and not on superficial or unsubstantiated excuses. A desk rejection occurs when a paper gets rejected even before it has entered the peer review process. This paper examines the features of some desk rejections and offers some guidelines that would make desk rejections valid, fair and ethical. Academics who publish are under constant pressure to do so quickly, but effectively. They are dependent on the editors’ good judgment and the publisher’s procedures. Unfair, unsubstantiated, or tardy desk rejections disadvantage academics, and editors and publishers must be held accountable for wasting their time, resources, and patience. (shrink)

As part of a continuous process to explore the factors that might weaken or corrupt traditional peer review, in this paper, we query the ethics, fairness and validity of the request, by editors, of authors to suggest peer reviewers during the submission process. One of the reasons for the current crisis in science pertains to a loss in trust as a result of a flawed peer review which is by nature biased unless it is open peer review. As we indicate, (...) the fact that some editors and journals rely on authors’ suggestions in terms of who should peer review their paper already instills a potential way to abuse the trust of the submission and publishing system. An author-suggested peer reviewer choice might also tempt authors to seek reviewers who might be more receptive or sympathetic to the authors’ message or results, and thus favor the outcome of that paper. Authors should thus not be placed in such a potentially ethically compromising situation, especially as a mandatory condition for submission. However, the fact that they do not have an opt-out choice during the submission process—especially when using an online submission system that makes such a suggestion compulsory—may constitute a violation of authors’ rights. (shrink)

Most departments in any field of science that have a sound academic basis have discussion groups or journal clubs in which pertinent and relevant literature is frequently discussed, as a group. This paper shows how such discussions could help to fortify the post-publication peer review movement, and could thus fortify the value of traditional peer review, if their content and conclusions were made known to the wider academic community. Recently, there are some tools available for making PPPR viable, either as (...) signed or anonymous comments, or in a hybrid format. Thus, limited platforms are currently in place to accommodate and integrate PPPR as a supplement to traditional peer review, allowing for the open and public discussion of what is often publicly-funded science. This paper examines ways in which the opinions that emerge from journal clubs or discussion groups could help to fortify the integrity and reliability of science while increasing its accountability. A culture of reward for good and corrective behavior, rather than a culture that protects silence, would benefit science most. (shrink)

Publishing has become, in several respects, more challenging in recent years. Academics are faced with evolving ethics that appear to be more stringent in a bid to reduce scientific fraud, the emergence of science watchdogs that are now scrutinizing the published literature with critical eyes to hold academics, editors and publishers more accountable, and a barrage of checks and balances that are required between when a paper is submitted and eventually accepted, to ensure quality control. Scientists are often under increasing (...) pressure to produce papers in an increasingly stringent publishing environment. In such a climate, timing is everything, as is the efficiency of the process. Academics appreciate that rejections are part of the fabric of attempting to get a paper published, but they expect the reason to be clear, based on careful evaluation of their work, and not on superficial or unsubstantiated excuses. A desk rejection occurs when a paper gets rejected even before it has entered the peer review process. This paper examines the features of some desk rejections and offers some guidelines that would make desk rejections valid, fair and ethical. Academics who publish are under constant pressure to do so quickly, but effectively. They are dependent on the editors’ good judgment and the publisher’s procedures. Unfair, unsubstantiated, or tardy desk rejections disadvantage academics, and editors and publishers must be held accountable for wasting their time, resources, and patience. (shrink)

This opinion paper takes aim at an error made recently by Clarivate Analytics in which it sent out an email that congratulated academics for becoming exclusive members of academia’s most cited elite, the Highly Cited Researchers. However, that email was sent out to an undisclosed number of non-HCRs, who were offered an apology shortly after, through a bulk mail, which tried to down-play the importance of the error, all the while praising the true HCRs. When Clarivate Analytics senior management was (...) contacted, the company declined to offer an indication of the number of academics who had been contacted and erroneously awarded the HCR status. We believe that this regrettable blunder, together with the opacity offered by the company, fortify the corporate attitude about the value of the journal impact factor, and what it represents, namely a marketing tool that is falsely used to equate citations with quality, worth, or influence. The continued commercialization of metrics such as the JIF is at the heart of their use to assess the “quality” of a researcher, their work, or a journal, and contributes to a great extent to driving scientific activities towards a futile endeavor. (shrink)

Retractions are on the rise as a result of a surge in post-publication peer review and an emboldened anonymous whistle-blowing movement. Cognizant that their brand may be damaged as a result of not...

Physiological responses in futsal have not been studied together with temporal information about the players’ stay on the court. The aim of this study was to compare heart rate and blood lactate concentration responses between 1-H and 2-H considering the time of permanency of the players on the court at each substitution in a futsal match. HR was recorded during entire match and [La−] was analyzed after each substitution of seven players. %HRmean and [La−] mean did not differ between 1-H (...) and 2-H. Time in intensity zones of 50–100 %HRmax differed only in 60–70 %HRmax. HR coefficient of variation throughout the match was low and among the four outfield players on the court. Substitutions, time of permanence on the court, ratio between time in- and out-ratio on the court also were similar between 1-H and 2-H. Balancing the number of substitutions, and the In:Outcourt ratio of players in both halves of the match, playing lower time at 1-H, ~8 min for each participation in the match, made it possible to maintain intensity of the match in 2-H similar to the 1H. These results are a good guidance to coaches and for application in future studies. (shrink)

Editors have increasing pressure as scholarly publishing tries to shore up trust and reassure academics and the public that traditional peer review is robust, fail-safe, and corrective. Hidden conflicts of interest may skew the fairness of the publishing process because they could allow the status of personal or professional relationships to positively influence the outcome of peer review or reduce the processing period of this process. Not all authors have such privileged relationships. In academic journals, editors usually have very specialized (...) skills and are selected as agents of trust, entrusted with the responsibility of serving as quality control gate-keepers during peer review. In many cases, editors form extensive networks, either with other professionals, industry, academic bodies, journals, or publishers. Such networks and relationships may influence their decisions or even their subjectivity towards a set of submitting authors, paper, or institute, ultimately influencing the peer review process. These positions and relationships are not simply aspects of a curriculum, they are potential COIs. Thus, on the editorial board of all academic journals, editors should carry a COI statement that reflects their past history, as well as actual relationships and positions that they have, as these may influence their editorial functions. (shrink)

Multiple authorship is the universal solution to multi-tasking in the sciences. Without a team, each with their own set of expertise, and each involved mostly in complementary ways, a research project will likely not advance quickly, or effectively. Consequently, there is a risk that research goals will not be met within a desired timeframe. Research teams that strictly scrutinize their modus operandi select and include a set of authors that have participated substantially in the physical undertaking of the research, in (...) its planning, or who have contributed intellectually to the ideas or the development of the manuscript. Authorship is not an issue that is taken lightly, and save for dishonest authors, it is an issue that is decided collectively by the authors, usually in sync with codes of conduct established by their research institutes or national ministries of education. Science, technology and medicine publishers have, through independent, or sometimes coordinated efforts, also established their own sets of guidelines regarding what constitutes valid authorship. However, these are, for the greater part, merely guidelines. A previous and recent analysis of authorship definitions indicates that the definitions in place regarding authorship and its validity by many leading STM publishers is neither uniform, nor standard, despite several of them claiming to follow the guidelines as set forward by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors or ICMJE. This disparity extends itself to ghost and guest authorship, two key authorship-related issues that are examined in this paper to assess the extent of discrepancies among the same set of STM publishers and what possible influence they might have on publishing ethics. (shrink)

This paper provides an introduction to the history of the concept of “emerging infectious diseases” (EID) and reflects on how humanities and social science scholars have interacted with it. It starts with a chronological outline of the coinage of the concept in the early 1990s in the wake of the shocks provoked by Ebola and HIV/AIDS, which disrupted the idea that the West was transitioning from a period of infectious diseases to one of chronic diseases. We argue that humanities and (...) social science scholars in disciplines such as history, anthropology, STS, and literature studies have critically explored the concept, showing how entrenched it was in the perceptions of the US and Europe about threats posed by the rest of the globe. Moreover, we explore how scholars in the humanities have used the EID concept to comment on contemporary realities and mobilized it to create dialogues with scientists, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Subsequently, we explore how the growing contemporary interest in EID has pushed historians to research the ontological and epistemological factors that enabled the “emergence” of diseases long before the invention of the EID concept, such as plague, Chagas disease, and sleeping sickness, as well as the factors that transformed these and other emerging diseases into pandemics. We conclude by outlining a few neglected factors in the EID literature that could be addressed: the circulation and reception of the concept outside of the West, the examination of EID as a problem for wild animals and not just for humans, and global histories of disease emergence as an epistemological and social process. (shrink)

Most departments in any field of science that have a sound academic basis have discussion groups or journal clubs in which pertinent and relevant literature is frequently discussed, as a group. This paper shows how such discussions could help to fortify the post-publication peer review movement, and could thus fortify the value of traditional peer review, if their content and conclusions were made known to the wider academic community. Recently, there are some tools available for making PPPR viable, either as (...) signed or anonymous comments, or in a hybrid format. Thus, limited platforms are currently in place to accommodate and integrate PPPR as a supplement to traditional peer review, allowing for the open and public discussion of what is often publicly-funded science. This paper examines ways in which the opinions that emerge from journal clubs or discussion groups could help to fortify the integrity and reliability of science while increasing its accountability. A culture of reward for good and corrective behavior, rather than a culture that protects silence, would benefit science most. (shrink)

The editors of scholarly journals have a duty to uphold and promote the highest standards of ethical conduct of research. They also have a responsibility to maintain the integrity of the literature, and to promote transparency and honesty in reporting research findings. In the process of screening manuscripts they receive for possible publication, editors have the obligation to report infractions to the institutions of offending authors, and request an investigation. Since editors can reject a paper on ethical grounds, they can (...) be considered to be the guardians of ethics who should express high ethical standards in conducting and publishing their own research. An examination of several publishers’ websites reveals no such requirement or clear selection criteria for journal editors. Therefore, we aim to discuss the factors that publishers, in a broad sense, should consider when selecting editors for scholarly journals and believe that such criteria should be made public to ensure accountability. This would restore some of the eroding public trust in disseminated research, fortify confidence in the composition and qualification of members of an editorial board, and help to protect the reputations of publishers and editors. (shrink)

The blogosphere is full of personalities with masks, or pseudonyms. Although not a desired state of public communication, one could excuse the use of pseudonyms in blogs and social media, which are generally unregulated or weakly regulated. However, in science publishing, there are increasingly strict rules regarding the use of false identities for authors, the lack of institutional or contact details, and the lack of conflicts of interest, and such instances are generally considered to be misconduct. This is because these (...) violations of publishing protocol decrease trust and confidence in science and bring disrepute to those scientists who conform to the rules set out by journals and publishers and abide by them. Thus, when cases are encountered where trust and protocol in publishing are breached, these deserve to be highlighted. In this letter, I focus on Neuroskeptic, a highly prominent science critic, primarily on the blogosphere and in social media, highlighting the dangers associated with the use of pseudonyms in academic publishing. (shrink)

We aimed to characterize the age of onset of training, age at menarche, menstrual periodicity, and performance perception during the menstrual cycle and examined the impact of these reproductive variables on body composition, morphology, and body weight satisfaction in Brazilian elite futsal players. The study consisted of 115 female Brazilian elite futsal players from the top national teams. Data were collected during the twentieth Women’s Brazil Futsal Cup. Players were interviewed and self-reported their age of onset of training, age at (...) menarche, menstrual periodicity, and the menstrual period, where they performed best. We also asked for what they considered to be their ideal body weight as well as information related to their training. Subsequently, anthropometric measurements were performed to estimate the body composition and determine morphological characteristics. Fifty-nine players were postmenarche-trained and 52 were premenarche-trained. Eighteen, 65, and 28 were classified as early, normal, and late menarche, respectively. Only 11 and 1 had irregular menstrual cycles and were amenorrheic, respectively. Seventy-three, 23, and 9 reported that their game performance was the best at the follicular phase, menses, and luteal phase of the menstrual cycle, respectively. No associations between the four reproductive-related variables were found. Postmenarche-trained players had significant lower age at menarche and higher percentage body fat. The somatotype profile registered lower ectomorphy rate for the postmenarche-trained participants after controlling for covariates. Early menarche group presented higher sum of six skinfold thickness and endomorphy rate compared to normal and late menarche groups. No differences were found when menstrual periodicity groups and best performance groups were compared, except for higher femur width in the regular menstrual cycle group compared to the irregular one. The association between body weight satisfaction and the four reproductive-related variables were not observed. Premenarche-trained Brazilian elite futsal players had the menarche later than the postmenarche-trained athletes. Most of the participants had menarche age classified as “normal,” presented “regular” menstrual cycles and perceived to perform better during the follicular phase of the menstrual cycle. (shrink)

En varios estudios ya se ha documentado la falta de transparencia en los avisos de retractación (AdR), que a menudo omiten infor-mación de vital importancia que permitiría a los lectores apreciar las complejidades de todo el proceso, incluidos los involucrados y las razones que llevaron a la retractación en sí. Un tema específico que rara vez se discute en la literatura académica es el desacuerdo de los autores con las retractaciones, la redacción de las AdR o las propias retractaciones. En (...) este artículo, mediante seis ejemplos de retractaciones y sus respectivos AdR en diferentes revistas y/o editoriales, todos miembros de la COPE, se ofrece una reflexión sobre por qué este tema necesita mayor debate y claridad de procedimiento por parte de editores, revistas y editoriales. (shrink)

Many journals and publishers employ online submission systems to process manuscripts. In some cases, one “template” format exists, but it is then molded slightly to suit the specific needs of each journal, a decision made by the editor-in-chief or editors. In the past few years, there has been an increase in the number of cases in which OSSs have been abused, mostly by the authorship, either through the creation of fake identities or the use of false e-mail accounts. Although the (...) abusive or fraudulent authors are at fault in such cases, the fact that such cases remained undetected for so long is of concern. Moreover, the current OSSs are imperfect, have security issues and may not be able to detect false information, except through post-submission verification. Sting operations, which involve the submission of false manuscripts with false identities and false affiliations, are no less unethical, and those who abuse the publishing protocol deserve to be as reprimanded as those who abuse OSSs. Finally, I question the ethics of editors or publishers creating OSS accounts on behalf of reviewers prior to obtaining their explicit permission. doi: 10.5294/pebi.2016.20.2.3. (shrink)

The article points to the reasons why Kelsen’s basic norm does not include a transition from is to ought. Alexy’s arguments on why the basic norm would imply a transition from is to ought are presented and discussed. How Hume’s assertions on the impossibility of a transition from is to ought must be seen in the context of Kelsen’s basic norm theory are analyzed. In addition, the question is considered of what sense Hart’s legal theory comprises the idea that a (...) causal connection exists between facts and norms. As a means of rejecting one of Alexy’s key arguments it is argued that the basic norm operates only with posited norms, so that it would not transform facts into norms, but only justify the assertion that already established norms are valid norms. (shrink)

A partir da crítica dos fundamentos da psicologia científica e da inteligência, Bergson investiga a possibilidade de uma perspectiva renovada sobre a consciência humana, culminando na concepção de uma consciência em duração. Na contramão das tendências positivistas da época de sua produção intelectual, o filósofo propõe uma apreensão direta da experiência subjetiva, a partir de um método introspectivo, afastando qualquer tipo de inteligibilidade fundada na racionalidade prática. Iniciando pela problematização da linguagem, pretendemos acompanhar o movimento de constituição do método bergsoniano, (...) analisando a passagem do momento descritivo, onde o aspecto empírico da duração se revela, para o momento da análise transcendental da concretude da consciência. Este artigo é uma versão revisada de um capítulo da minha monografia de conclusão de graduação. (shrink)

Without peer reviewers, the entire scholarly publishing system as we currently know it would collapse. However, as it currently stands, publishing is an extremely exploitative system, relative to o...

A very important event took place on January 15, 2017. On that day, the Jeffrey Beall blog was silently, and suddenly, shut down by Beall himself. A profoundly divisive and controversial site, the Beall blog represented an existential threat to those journals and publishers that were listed there. On the other hand, the Beall blog was a ray of hope to critics of bad publishing practices that a culture of public shaming was perhaps the only way to rout out those (...) journals—and their editors—and publishers who did not respect basic publishing ethical principles and intrinsic academic values. While members of the former group vilified Beall and his blog, members of the latter camp tried to elevate it to the level of policy. Split by extreme polar forces, for reasons still unknown to the public, Beall deliberately shut down his blog, causing some academic chaos among global scholars, including to the open access movement. (shrink)

Evidencia a dignidade pessoal do corpo humano, integrado nos atos pessoais, através do pensamento antropológico de Karol Wojtyla. Expõe a dignidade pessoal na integração da reatividade somática na vontade humana, quando orientada pela norma personalista, que dá base à família e à comunidade humana, conforme os conceitos de participação e alienação nas relações “eu-tu” e "nós”.

Apresenta a vida e fragmentos dos escritos de S. Francisco de Assis, em sentido positivo, a partir de chaves de leitura dos conceitos de dionisíaco e amor fati no filósofo germânico F. Nietzsche, bem como da integração do naturalismo em seus escritos.