Bibliometrics as a promising tool for solving publication ethics issues

Abstract

Publication ethics principles became one of the main aspects of conducting scientific research and presenting its results. Publication ethics challenges cover a wide range of problems of varying importance that involve all participants of publication processes: authors, academic authorities, peer-reviewers, editorial board members, publishers, and funders. All stakeholders put efforts to make modern science and publication processes ethical. This goal is achieved first of all through detailed criteria of publication ethics and extensive author guidelines, as well as by increasing the level of awareness of these criteria in educational programs aimed at prophylactics of research misconduct. However, there is a need for technical facilities for detecting different cases of violation of ethical principles, and bibliometric methods are one of the most promising approaches. The paper summarizes the authors' recent studies on bibliometric perspectives for detecting plagiarism, inappropriate authorship, and official misconduct among editorial board members.

Keywords: Academic journals; Academic libraries; Authorship; Bibliometrics; Plagiarism detection; Publication ethics.

Figure 1

Search query process in a bibliographic database for searching possible original source for suspicious paper. L – reference list of the analyzed paper; L_i – each item from the reference list of the analyzed paper; N_i – list of papers from general database that also cited L_i; S – the paper from N_i list with the most similar reference list as compared to that of the analyzed paper; L_S – reference list of S paper.

Figure 2

The stages of processing of the paper lists of references where the same sources are cited as in a suspicious publication.

Figure 3

The identifier of the paper in Web of Science with the largest number of sources (20) also present in the list of references of the analyzed suspicious paper.

Figure 4

Publication coefficients of researchers before and after appointment to leading positions. Dark grey denotes publication coefficient before an appointment; light grey – after an appointment. Unusual cases of higher scholarly output before appointment are boxed.

Figure 5

Dynamics pattern of subject areas in publications by scientists before and after their appointment to leading positions. Dark grey denotes subject areas coefficient before an appointment to leading positions, while light grey coefficient after an appointment. Unusual cases of wider subject distributions before an assignment are boxed.

Figure 6

The absence of editorial board members' papers in parent journal.

Figure 7

The overrepresented volume of editorial board papers in parent journal.