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. 2023 Mar 8;18(3):e0270054.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0270054. eCollection 2023.

Transparency in conducting and reporting research: A survey of authors, reviewers, and editors across scholarly disciplines

Mario Malički  1 , IJsbrand Jan Aalbersberg  2 , Lex Bouter  3   4 , Adrian Mulligan  5 , Gerben Ter Riet  1   6
Affiliations

Transparency in conducting and reporting research: A survey of authors, reviewers, and editors across scholarly disciplines

Mario Malički et al. PLoS One. .

Erratum in

Abstract

Calls have been made for improving transparency in conducting and reporting research, improving work climates, and preventing detrimental research practices. To assess attitudes and practices regarding these topics, we sent a survey to authors, reviewers, and editors. We received 3,659 (4.9%) responses out of 74,749 delivered emails. We found no significant differences between authors', reviewers', and editors' attitudes towards transparency in conducting and reporting research, or towards their perceptions of work climates. Undeserved authorship was perceived by all groups as the most prevalent detrimental research practice, while fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, and not citing prior relevant research, were seen as more prevalent by editors than authors or reviewers. Overall, 20% of respondents admitted sacrificing the quality of their publications for quantity, and 14% reported that funders interfered in their study design or reporting. While survey respondents came from 126 different countries, due to the survey's overall low response rate our results might not necessarily be generalizable. Nevertheless, results indicate that greater involvement of all stakeholders is needed to align actual practices with current recommendations.

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Conflict of interest statement

IJsbrand Jan Aalbersberg is Senior Vice President of Research Integrity at Elsevier, and Adrian Mulligan is a Research Director for Customer Insights at Elsevier. Mario Malicki is a Co-Editor-In-Chief or Research Integrity and Peer Review journal. Other authors declare no competing interests. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Respondents’ attitudes toward transparency in reporting and conducting research.
In the numerical comparison differences between groups larger than 5% are in bold. In the graphical comparison highest percentage is darker. * Questions are sorted by the total agreement percentage. Order of questions as they were asked in the survey is presented in the Appendix. Slight variations exist for the number of respondents per question, exact numbers are available on our project’s data repository.
Fig 2
Fig 2. Examples of univariate comparisons that were confirmed in regression analyses to be significantly associated with attitudes towards transparency in reporting and conducting research, perceptions of work climate or perceived prevalence of responsible and detrimental research practices.
In the graphical comparison highest percentage is darker. Slight variations exist for the number of respondents per question, exact numbers are available on our project’s data repository.
Fig 3
Fig 3. Respondents’ perceptions toward their work climate.
In the numerical comparison differences between groups larger than 5% are in bold. In the graphical comparison highest percentage is darker. * Questions are sorted by the total agreement percentage. Order of questions as they were asked in the survey is presented in the Appendix. Slight variations exist for the number of respondents per question, exact numbers are available on our project’s data repository.
Fig 4
Fig 4. Respondents’ perceptions of perceived prevalence of responsible and detrimental research practices.
In the numerical comparison differences between groups larger than 5% are in bold. In the graphical comparison highest percentage is darker. * Questions are sorted by the total agreement percentage. Order of questions as they were asked in the survey is presented in the Appendix. Slight variations exist for the number of respondents per question, exact numbers are available on our project’s data repository.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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