Authorship and Peer Review Chapter 4 PDF

Authorship and Peer Review Chapter 4  Case 4 An East Coast geneticist and a West Coast biochemist are engaged in a productive, well-defined collaborative project. The geneticist prepares an abstract, approved by his collaborator, for submission to...

Authorship and Peer Review Chapter 4  Case 4 An East Coast geneticist and a West Coast biochemist are engaged in a productive, well-defined collaborative project. The geneticist prepares an abstract, approved by his collaborator, for submission to a large international genetics meeting. The scientific content of the abstract reflects the equal contributions of both collaborators. Within 1 month, the biochemist prepares an abstract of the same work to be submitted to a national biochemistry meeting. The two abstracts have different titles and different wording, but they report the same experiments and the same results and interpretations. The abstracts submitted to both of these meetings will be published in the journals of the respective societies as “meeting proceedings.” Have these investigators acted appropriately in reporting their research?  Simultaneous submission, prior publication Submitting the same manuscript simultaneously to two or more journals is considered unethical. ▪ Unfair burden on the peer-review and editorial processes ▪ Acceptance of the same manuscript by two or more journals could create copyright disputes that might have unwanted consequences for publishers and authors. Primary scientific publication can be submitted again. ▪ Original work published in conference reports, symposium or meeting proceedings, or equivalent monographs are preliminary.  Case 5 Suzanne Booth is recruited as a postdoctoral fellow in a laboratory where research centers on the cell biology of a specific mammalian cell type. Suzanne’s training has been in eukaryotic gene cloning and molecular genetics; no such technology is available in this laboratory. Suzanne completely trains a senior-level graduate student working in the group. Under Suzanne’s supervision, the student proceeds to build a complementary DNA (cDNA) library and isolates by molecular cloning a gene for a membrane protein. Several months later, a manuscript describing this work is prepared for submission. The principal investigator of the laboratory, Professor Jack Martin, and the student are listed as coauthors. Suzanne is listed in the “Acknowledgments” section of the paper. She is upset with this disposition and confronts Dr. Martin. Dr. Martin says that he has strict rules about authorship and that Suzanne’s contribution was a technical one that does not merit authorship. Dr. Martin quotes from several different standards-of-conduct documents indicating that authorship must be strictly based on intellectual and conceptual contributions to the work being prepared for publication. Technical assistance, no matter how complex or broad in scope, is not grounds for authorship. Does Suzanne have a case for authorship? Why or Why not?  Authorship 1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work Formulating hypothesis, experimental design, writing and critical editing, data collection and processing, analysis and interpretation, and literature review and citation. 2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content 3. Final approval of the version to be published 4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved: All authors on a manuscript take responsibility for its content or have read and approved the manuscript or content to its submission.  Scientific Publication and Authorship Reporting new scientific findings Credits other scientist whose contributions and ideas have been built upon Enables others to extend and repeat work by providing a description of experiments performed. Doing scientific research means you must report it. All the thinking, all the analysis, all the experiments, and the data gathering aren’t anything until we write them up.  The Pressure to Publish Helps scientists to successfully compete for grants Achieve promotions, tenure, higher salaries, priority of discovery, and professional prestige. Competitive nature of scientific research Salami Science: Publication of related results in slices, data are split and published separately instead of being presented in a unified way. ▪ Some journals and editors contribute to these practices: Notes, Short Communications, Preliminary Reports  Authorship An author has made a significant contribution to the work. Development of methodologies Data analysis Design, execution, and/or interpretation of the research  Authorship 1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work Formulating hypothesis, experimental design, writing and critical editing, data collection and processing, analysis and interpretation, and literature review and citation. 2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content 3. Final approval of the version to be published 4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved: All authors on a manuscript take responsibility for its content, or have read and approved the manuscript, or content to its submission.  Inappropriate Authorship Contributors who meet fewer than all 4 of the above criteria for authorship should not be listed as authors, but they should be acknowledged. General administrative support Writing assistance, technical editing, language editing, and proofreading. Guest author PNAS” Coauthors who make specific, limited contributions to a paper are responsible for their contributions but may only be limited responsibility for other results.  Authorship First Author: Having played a major role in generating the data, interpreting the results, and writing the first draft of the manuscript. Doing experiments and collecting the data Interpreting the results Witting the first draft of the manuscript Some journals accept shared first authorship position Senior author and first author may be different. The senior author could be last. Senior author usually coordinates and oversees the responses to peer reviewers’ comments if the manuscript has to be revised. Senior author, along with the first author, typically decides who else will be listed as co-authors. The order of these coauthors can be based on the importance of their contributions to the work in descending order from the first author  Authorship Criteria Wrong to include an author on a paper someone who made no experimental, technical, or intellectual contributions to the work If someone thought and performed a key experiment and provided an interpretation of the results, authorship of that person would be obligatory. The authors assign the copyright to the publisher. Many journals require the authors to obtain permission to use any copyrighted material that is included in their manuscript, e.g., a diagram from a previously published paper. Open Access (OA) publications use a variety of copyright models but often allow the authors to retain copyright while abiding by some type of an OA license that permits users to download, print, and use the content with appropriate attribution to the authors and the publisher.  Acknowledgments People whose contributions to the work do not meet the criteria established for authorship. Someone who provided technical help but did not have a full appreciation of the experimental work Editorial assistance  Discussion Questions Should all coauthors share equally in blame and punishment when fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism is proved to have occurred in a published paper? What sanctions or punishments are appropriate for those who perpetrate fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in scientific publications? Should the scientific publication enterprise do more to be able to detect falsified or fabricated data during the peer review process? Why or why not?  Authorship 1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work Formulating hypothesis, experimental design, writing and critical editing, data collection and processing, analysis and interpretation, and literature review and citation. 2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content 3. Final approval of the version to be published 4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved: All authors on a manuscript take responsibility for its content, or have read and approved the manuscript, or content to its submission.  Type of Journals Institutional or Personal Subscription Printed and digital scientific publication Open Access (OA): Exclusively digital with no printed counterparts Access is free to the end user, Instead of the cost of publication being paid by subscription fees, the authors bear the cost of publication. Electronic repository: Papers that have been peer-reviewed and published are available for free, electronic access PubMed Central contains papers that report research that has been supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)  Journal Impact Factor Journal average citation frequency The more the papers published in a journal are cited in other publications, the higher the quality of the journal. High-impact journal H-Index (Citation Frequency) measures both productivity and impact Number of papers with a citation number higher or equal to h. If a researcher has published 130 papers and 33 of those papers have been cited 33 or more times, then the h-index is 33.  The Peer-reviewed scientific literature Submission: A written critique of a manuscript that has been submitted to a journal for publication by someone who is deemed to be knowledgeable in the subject matter. Peer Review: Anonymously and overseen by an individual who has a formal relationship with the journal Originality of the work Appropriateness of details Sufficiency of the methodology The degree to which interpretations and conclusions are supported by the data. Compliance with applicable standards of the research Recommendations can range from accepting the manuscript for publication without modification and performing additional experiments in support of conclusions, to rejecting it.  Peer Review Editors, Editorial Board Anonymous Ad Hoc Reviewers (two or three reviewers), Confidential Accept the paper Reject the paper Return the manuscript to the authors for revisions (May suggest improvement in writing style, presentation of data, or even further experiments to be done).  Peer Review Authors giving appropriate credit to prior work Originality: Does the manuscript report a new discovery or it extend or confirm the previous work Abstract needs to clearly describe the essence of the problem, how it was approached, and the outcome of the research. Did the authors use the right tools and techniques to test their hypothesis? Description of detailed methods Are figures and photographs unclear? Is data presentation cluttered or confusing? Should data in tables be combined?  Manuscript Review Excluded as Impartial Reviewers are: ▪ People at the author’s institution ▪ People who have been recently associated with the author’s laboratory ▪ The author’s collaborators or coauthors ▪ Individuals in the latter two categories are considered in the view of the time that has elapsed since the author’s last interactions with them.  Conflict of Interest Associations that connect the author or authors with a corporation whose products or services could be affected by the paper. The company provided a grant to the author to do the research. The author is a paid consultant to the company The author is a member of an advisory committee or the board of directors of the company The author regularly gives public lectures or provides other services that are paid for by the company. The author owns significant equity in the company The author receives royalty payments from the company for an invention that has been licensed to the company by the author and/or the author’s institution.  Discussion Questions Should all coauthors share equally in blame and punishment when fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism is proved to have occurred in a published paper? What sanctions or punishments are appropriate for those who perpetrate fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in scientific publications? Should the scientific publication enterprise do more to be able to detect falsified or fabricated data during the peer review process? Why or why not?  Discussion Questions Should all coauthors share equally in blame and punishment when fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism is proved to have occurred in a published paper? What sanctions or punishments are appropriate for those who perpetrate fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in scientific publications? Should the scientific publication enterprise do more to be able to detect falsified or fabricated data during the peer review process? Why or why not?  Plagiarism Text-similarity software programs are used to detect plagiarism. Self-plagiarism will be flagged by the journal  Digital Image Integrity No specific feature or portion of the image may be enhanced, obscured, moved, removed, or introduced. Adjustments made to brightness, contrast, or color are acceptable only if they are made to the entire image (not part of it) and if they do not have any effect on the information contained in the original image. The creation of composite images (e.g., independently obtained images grouped together using editing software) must be explicitly indicated by some visual means (e.g., borders or dividing lines) and explained in the legend to the figure.  Biosecurity Certain scientific information should not be published because of its risk of use by terrorists. An editor may conclude that the potential harm of publication outweighs the potential societal benefits. Dual-Use Research of Concern (DURC) must be reported by the authors to the journal.  Simultaneous submission, prior publication Submitting the same manuscript simultaneously to two or more journals is considered unethical. ▪ Unfair burden on the peer-review and editorial processes ▪ Acceptance of the same manuscript by two or more journals could create copyright disputes that might have unwanted consequences for publishers and authors. Primary scientific publication can be submitted again. ▪ Original work published in conference reports, symposium or meeting proceedings, or equivalent monographs are preliminary.  Subjects Protection in Research Statement in the manuscript: Institutional approval was sought and obtained from an institutional review board or Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee The inclusion of a statement that accepted practices or codes were followed in the conduct of the research. Confirming that informed consent was obtained from human subjects Approval dates Human subject privacy The results of clinical trials require that they be registered in an accepted clinical trial registry (e.g., ClinicalTrials.gov)  Discussion Questions Would you volunteer to enroll in a clinical trial as a healthy volunteer? Why or why not? Is it ethical to oversimplify an informed consent document so that, in reality, it is no longer scientifically accurate? Is it legal to do this? What are some examples of coercion that might come up in recruiting human subjects into human trials? Under what conditions should a human subject research study be immediately stopped?  Case 6 You have been attending a meeting on eukaryotic growth factors and have just finished listening to Dr. Sidney Wolanski give his keynote address. His overview involved some clinical studies, and he showed slides of patients undergoing procedures as part of an institutionally approved clinical trial. In all instances the faces of the patients were clearly visible. On two other slides there were clinical materials depicted and these were labeled with a tag that read “ Mrs. MacDonald.” After the lecture you leave to make a phone call. As you return to the lecture, you are intercepted by Professor Susan Jeris, a colleague you know casually from another institution. Susan confides in you that one of the slides shown by Dr. Wolanski was a picture of her stepmother, Shirley MacDonald. She is agitated and claims that Dr. Wolanski’s use of the picture and disclosure of her stepmother’s name are a violation of her stepmother’s privacy and in violation of accepted standards of clinical research. She claims that Dr. Wolanski’s presentation is an egregious violation of human subjects research practices and thinks he should be punished. She asks you what she should do about this situation. What advice and guidance will you provide to Dr. Jeris.  Case 7 Professor Angela Durate is the course director of a physiology lab taught to medical students. One of the laboratory exercises involved students drawing blood from one another (under supervision) and using the serum to perform a variety of chemical and cellular analyses. The lab exercise is carried out successfully. At its conclusion, Professor Duarte announces to the class of 100 students that she would like to retain leftover blood sera. She informs them that some of the sera will be used individually while some will be pooled. In all cases, these sera will be used to gather baseline control data for a number of research projects. She asks if anyone wants to refuse to have his or her serum used for research but receives no objections. Are Professor Duarte’s actions appropriate? Is an IRB-approved protocol needed? Do the students need to give informed consent?  Discussion Questions How would you respond to an animal rights activist who says the use of animals in research is bad science? Can you describe an experiment in which a computer could effectively substitute for the use of an animal?  Case 8 You are a graduate student working on a project that involved administering nerve toxins directly into the cerebrospinal fluid of rats by using a special infuser connected to tubing that you have surgically implanted into the base of each rat’s skull. Administering different nerve toxins to block specific effects of different types of drugs will help how the drug work. After surgery, the nerve toxin is given, and a few days later the investigational drug is given to determine whether it will have an effect. This protocol has been approved by the IACUC and is being funded by a grant from the Department of Defense. When you go to the vivarium to take the rats to the lab to administer the investigational drugs, you find that a number of rats are paralyzed or dead. The lab director is out of town, so you go to the lab’s senior graduate student, Tom, for advice. Tom will be able to complete his dissertation writing when this experiment is done and has made it clear that he wants his experiment to run without delay. You ask him whether you should stop the experiment to determine why some of the rats are dead or paralyzed. He responds that stopping the experiment now would waste several weeks of work and delay the completion of his dissertation. He suggests that the paralysis and death of some of the rats may be due to your adequate experience in performing rat surgery or infusions, so your gaining further practice by continuing this experiment may result in better outcomes for the rest of rats. What do you do now? Do you continue performing surgery and infusions on the rats, knowing that more rats may be harmed? Do you stop the experiment and inform the IACUC, which risks earning the disfavor of Tom, with whom you have to work? How would you explain each course of action to the IACUC?  Case 9 Myron Castillo is a new graduate student in Dr. Jessica Ripka’s lab. Dr. Ripka instructed Myron to complete the university animal training program within his first 2 weeks of being in the lab. Six weeks after Myron begins his lab work., Dr. Ripka personally begins training Myron in performing specialized injections in rats to begin used in her research. During an injection, Myron is bitten by one of the rats, resulting in a significant laceration of his thumb. Dr. Ripka instructs Myron to go to the student health clinic where he was screened for possible animal allergies at the conclusion of his animal-use training. Myron confesses that he has not had time to complete the animal-use training, nor has he been screened for allergies at the student health clinic. Dr. Ripka chastise Myron for failing to tell her he had not completed the training and for not disclosing this before engaging in the specialized injection training with her. Dr. Ripka is worried that if Myron goes to the student health clinic, the report that will ensue from the visit will be filed with the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee. She fears this will lead to sanctions being placed on her animal use authorization, thus impeding her research progress. She instructs Myron to get the bite wound sutured at the emergency room of a nearby community hospital. Later in the day, Dr. Ripka shares the incident and her response to it with you over a cup of tea. She asks you if she did the right thing. What is your analysis of the situation, and what do you tell her? If she has not acted appropriately, what should she have done?  Case 10 You are a graduate student in behavioral pharmacology, and your lab is conducting a drug discrimination study, an operant procedure in which rats are trained to identify drugs with stimulus properties similar to those of a training dog. The primary goal of the present study is to test several experimental compounds for their similarity to clozapine, an important treatment for schizophrenia. The compounds to be tested have been sent to your advisors as part of a contract awarded from a drug company. The generalization testing portion of the study is nearing completion, with only one dose-response curve left to obtain. During routine feeding, you notice that 8 of the 10 animals in the study have developed tumor- like growths at the site of injection on the stomach. Additionally, these animals have begun losing weights. Finally, you note that the animals do not exhibit any behaviors suggesting that they are experiencing any discomfort. Concerned, you mention the growths and weight loss to your advisor, who instructs you to continue with generalization testing. He is concerned that having to train a new set of animals in order to test one drug would waste large amounts of research time and resources and may cause problems in interpreting the results. He further states that the animals will be euthanized as soon as the testing phase of the study is completed in less than a month and that the animals will be fine until then. Is your advisor’s suggested course of action legally and ethically appropriate? If not, what should be done in this case? What are your obligations in this situation?