- Email: [email protected]
Academic dishonesty primer: How to avoid it—Advice for authors
Technovation 34 (2014) 1–2
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Technovation journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/technovation
Editorial
Academic dishonesty primer: How to avoid it—Advice for authors
Sadly academic dishonesty is of increasing concern. It is being discussed more frequently within the Technology Innovation Management community. In my first 5 years as Editor-in-Chief, academic dishonesty in one form or another was an issue that I dealt with no more than once per year. More recently this problem appears to be increasing in frequency and severity. Whether this is a trend or random variation is unclear. However, it is clear that offering some insights into the typical paths authors take to get themselves into trouble is helpful in raising awareness levels and hopefully reducing the occurrence of academic dishonesty. Consideration of academic dishonesty may also relieve some unnecessary concerns, as anecdotal evidence suggests that some researchers are defining academic dishonesty too widely. Many consider the increase of academic dishonesty to be a reflection of the pressure to publish. Traditional research institutions and funders are increasing publication pressure and many institutions that expected little or no research activity have new ambitions regarding publishing in prominent outlets. This increasing supply of papers is confronted with a lack of expansion in the preferred submission targets (journals with strong reputations). Consequently, competition to publish in these journals has increased significantly and the likelihood of success has declined.
Ways in which people get in trouble during the publishing process To assist authors in better understanding expectations, repercussions and to avoid accidental errors. Different ways in which people sometimes get into trouble are considered below. The manner in which academic dishonest cases are being addressed in an increasingly consistent manner as the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and publishers are working to address these issues on a continuous basis. Complete copying is what people often think of in terms of plagiarism. Authors occasionally take existing published papers and resubmit them as their own. For example an interesting wellwritten empirical paper was submitted to Technovation. Except for the title and abstract, it was identical to an already published paper in terms of wording, figures, and references. In another case of plagiarism, a paper’s novelty was limited to the title, abstract, a few sentences and some references to the plagiarizing author’s own works. In both cases, plagiarism was identified early—by the area editor. The assistance of detection software and reviewers is helpful, but often not required. The recommended editor response to complete copying of an article, is submitting the original and duplicate article to the author’s university and request that an 0166-4972/$ - see front matter & 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.technovation.2013.11.002
internal investigation be conducted. Such an investigation can lead to significant disciplinary action, including termination of the researcher. Double submission occurs when an author tries to reduce review time by having a paper considered by two journals simultaneously. Double submission is often identified by (1) a reviewer—since the same ideal reviewer is often identified by different editors, or (2) at or after time of withdrawal as the paper has already been accepted by another journal. Please be clear once a paper is submitted somewhere, the review process should be allowed to go to its logical conclusion. For example, an author suggested that they had been approached by another journal and warned if the original journal was not planning to publish the paper soon, they would withdraw the paper and submit it to the interested journal. The typical response to such an ultimatum is for both editors to reject the paper. If double submission is suspected, editors do contact their counterparts at the other relevant journals. Double submission is considered dishonest as papers are to be under consideration at only one journal at a time. This is important as the publishing system involves a tremendous amount of volunteer effort for each paper placed under review. Double submission undermines the volunteer resources of journals. While I am unaware of double submission complaints being forwarded to an author’s university, editors may automatically decline future submissions from double submitting authors. Self-plagiarism is sometimes seen as okay by authors—when it is really not. While one can do what one wants with one’s own work, copyright agreements do limit the reuse of large amounts of text. Furthermore, submission to a journal does imply that the idea presented in the paper is novel. Novelty is missing if the idea has already been published elsewhere and the prior publication is not clearly acknowledged. There are opportunities for honest confusion in regard to the significance and precedence of earlier forms of disclosure and publication. If an article provides the same ideas to a different audience, the presence of the earlier article should be referenced. If an article appeared in an earlier forum, such as a conference, the appearance should be acknowledged. If an article appears as a book chapter, it cannot be submitted later on to a journal—this violates the need for novelty that is central to academic journals. If the article appears in a journal, it can be reprinted in a book (if permission is obtained from the journal publisher and referenced appropriately). An article can be used as the basis for a book—this often occurs with trade-oriented management books. The future is likely to involve misunderstandings regarding proceedings and internet access of papers prior to publication. Conference proceedings can be a handy benefit to conference attendees; however, sometimes proceedings
2
Editorial / Technovation 34 (2014) 1–2
include an ISSN (and be classified as a book) and/or are included on search engines like Scopus. At some point, the conference proceeding may be considered as a book chapter and the paper lacking novelty as it is already in the public domain. Once this occurs, submission to a journal may be seen as self-plagiarism. My personal solution is to avoid working papers series and conference proceedings and to focus only on journal publications or books. Self-plagiarism may lead to a journal editor requesting the author(s) employers to investigate. An author should expect that the submitted paper will be rejected and/ or an already published paper retracted. It is highly likely that future submissions will be politely declined and returned to the author. Withholding relevant information is often self-plagiarism, but warrants separate consideration as it is a growing problem that has led to decisions to retract already published papers. This problem involves two or more papers that are very similar not referencing each other. Each paper on its own makes a contribution worthy of publication. However if a reviewer is aware of both papers, publication will not occur—as there is insufficient novelty and contribution to warrant publication of both. By withholding information, the author creates a false image of the paper offering a contribution that is in fact lacking—since the contribution is already offered elsewhere. For example, Paper A indicates phenomena-of-interest in all companies. Paper B demonstrates the same phenomena in small companies. Paper C demonstrates the same phenomena in multinational companies. All three papers utilize the same database. However, none of the papers acknowledge the existence of the other papers. Alternatively, the same data set is used, but different variables are considered/overlooked in different articles. Once again the presence of other papers on the same topic and database are not disclosed. While the unacceptability of this approach will seem obvious to some, there are many authors that feel it is okay to suppress or withhold information on their own research during the review process in an effort to protect the double-blind review process. (The idea that the reviewers and authors should not know each other's identity.) While the provision of full disclosure may make the identity of authors apparent to the reviewers, full disclosure is more important than risking violations of the double-blind process. Articles have been retracted based on the lack of full disclosure. At some universities, article retraction leads to disciplinary procedures that include termination. In cases of withholding relevant information, articles that are under review will be rejected. In addition, the case may be referred to the researcher's home institution for investigation and papers from the author(s) might be politely declined for review in the future. Where is the beef? Salami publishing involves attempting to take a single idea and translate it into a large number of papers. The ambitious researcher may attempt to slice a single idea into a series of papers: (1) literature review and statement of problem; (2) development of propositions; (3) model or framework; (4) case study illustration of model; and (5) empirical study testing the proposed model. Many editors advise authors that they and their readers are uninterested in a serial that takes place over many episodes and years. Each paper should offer one idea in a complete format. That is, crafting a paper so that it includes all five episodes listed above in a single work. If one wants to try to publish their work in a serial fashion there is nothing unethical about this. It is mentioned here, however, as this is seen by many editors as an unsatisfactory outcome of the pressure to publish—and many
editors will desk reject the slices or installments. If an author forgets to reference the other parts of the serial they can, however, get into trouble. In fact if an early episode proceeds through review process slowly and is overtaken by a later episode, there will be an appearance of withholding information. Exaggerating or falsifying data should require little explanation. This problem is more common in other fields. In some cases (1) decisions are made by researchers to include some, but not all data, or (2) data might be artificially added or adjusted. Personally, I have not heard of this being an issue in management journals. However, misstatement of statistical significance is an existing concern. Misstatement of statistics involves suggesting statistical significance exists when it does not. In summary, fabricating data, altering data, selectively deleting data or misstating statistical significance are grounds for retraction of an academic paper and disciplinary action by home institution, including termination of the researcher.
How to avoid problems without avoiding publishing A junior researcher expressed concern that their thesis adviser did not want more than one paper published out of the thesis to avoid potential accusations of self-plagiarism. Such a statement is misplaced and unfair. In fact it is one of the reasons for writing this editorial. Researchers should follow the rule one big idea per article. Occasionally a submission is full of possibility. The author has many interesting ideas and has integrated these ideas into a single academic paper. The resulting article is difficult to follow, as the ideas are underdeveloped and interwoven in an attempt to fit a multi-faceted contribution into the limited space of a journal article. When a research program or database has numerous independent novel contributions, multiple publications are appropriate. However, appropriate recognition that the data source is shared and referencing all related articles is required. A single idea, however, should not be sliced into many different papers. Remember once something is published it remains publically available. So while one may occasionally get away with publishing articles that are too similar, making a habit of breaking the rules will eventually create trouble. Once one paper is found to have broken publishing ethics, the author's other papers will come under scrutiny and the researchers can get caught in a downward spiral. Sometimes the spiral is loud and sensational with a large number of papers being retracted over a short time. Other times the spiral is rather subtle with the researcher having to move institutions, losing access to funding sources and their future work being either placed under tremendous scrutiny or ignored by publication outlets. In summary, you will benefit in the long run by ensuring full disclosure in your references and acknowledgments and avoiding the various forms of academic dishonesty.
Jonathan D. Linton, PhD, PEng Power Corporation Professor for the Management of Technological Enterprises, University of Ottawa, DMS 6108, 55 Laurier St. E, Ottawa, Canada K1N 6N5 E-mail address: [email protected]
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Technovation journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/technovation
Editorial
Academic dishonesty primer: How to avoid it—Advice for authors
Sadly academic dishonesty is of increasing concern. It is being discussed more frequently within the Technology Innovation Management community. In my first 5 years as Editor-in-Chief, academic dishonesty in one form or another was an issue that I dealt with no more than once per year. More recently this problem appears to be increasing in frequency and severity. Whether this is a trend or random variation is unclear. However, it is clear that offering some insights into the typical paths authors take to get themselves into trouble is helpful in raising awareness levels and hopefully reducing the occurrence of academic dishonesty. Consideration of academic dishonesty may also relieve some unnecessary concerns, as anecdotal evidence suggests that some researchers are defining academic dishonesty too widely. Many consider the increase of academic dishonesty to be a reflection of the pressure to publish. Traditional research institutions and funders are increasing publication pressure and many institutions that expected little or no research activity have new ambitions regarding publishing in prominent outlets. This increasing supply of papers is confronted with a lack of expansion in the preferred submission targets (journals with strong reputations). Consequently, competition to publish in these journals has increased significantly and the likelihood of success has declined.
Ways in which people get in trouble during the publishing process To assist authors in better understanding expectations, repercussions and to avoid accidental errors. Different ways in which people sometimes get into trouble are considered below. The manner in which academic dishonest cases are being addressed in an increasingly consistent manner as the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and publishers are working to address these issues on a continuous basis. Complete copying is what people often think of in terms of plagiarism. Authors occasionally take existing published papers and resubmit them as their own. For example an interesting wellwritten empirical paper was submitted to Technovation. Except for the title and abstract, it was identical to an already published paper in terms of wording, figures, and references. In another case of plagiarism, a paper’s novelty was limited to the title, abstract, a few sentences and some references to the plagiarizing author’s own works. In both cases, plagiarism was identified early—by the area editor. The assistance of detection software and reviewers is helpful, but often not required. The recommended editor response to complete copying of an article, is submitting the original and duplicate article to the author’s university and request that an 0166-4972/$ - see front matter & 2013 Published by Elsevier Ltd. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.technovation.2013.11.002
internal investigation be conducted. Such an investigation can lead to significant disciplinary action, including termination of the researcher. Double submission occurs when an author tries to reduce review time by having a paper considered by two journals simultaneously. Double submission is often identified by (1) a reviewer—since the same ideal reviewer is often identified by different editors, or (2) at or after time of withdrawal as the paper has already been accepted by another journal. Please be clear once a paper is submitted somewhere, the review process should be allowed to go to its logical conclusion. For example, an author suggested that they had been approached by another journal and warned if the original journal was not planning to publish the paper soon, they would withdraw the paper and submit it to the interested journal. The typical response to such an ultimatum is for both editors to reject the paper. If double submission is suspected, editors do contact their counterparts at the other relevant journals. Double submission is considered dishonest as papers are to be under consideration at only one journal at a time. This is important as the publishing system involves a tremendous amount of volunteer effort for each paper placed under review. Double submission undermines the volunteer resources of journals. While I am unaware of double submission complaints being forwarded to an author’s university, editors may automatically decline future submissions from double submitting authors. Self-plagiarism is sometimes seen as okay by authors—when it is really not. While one can do what one wants with one’s own work, copyright agreements do limit the reuse of large amounts of text. Furthermore, submission to a journal does imply that the idea presented in the paper is novel. Novelty is missing if the idea has already been published elsewhere and the prior publication is not clearly acknowledged. There are opportunities for honest confusion in regard to the significance and precedence of earlier forms of disclosure and publication. If an article provides the same ideas to a different audience, the presence of the earlier article should be referenced. If an article appeared in an earlier forum, such as a conference, the appearance should be acknowledged. If an article appears as a book chapter, it cannot be submitted later on to a journal—this violates the need for novelty that is central to academic journals. If the article appears in a journal, it can be reprinted in a book (if permission is obtained from the journal publisher and referenced appropriately). An article can be used as the basis for a book—this often occurs with trade-oriented management books. The future is likely to involve misunderstandings regarding proceedings and internet access of papers prior to publication. Conference proceedings can be a handy benefit to conference attendees; however, sometimes proceedings
2
Editorial / Technovation 34 (2014) 1–2
include an ISSN (and be classified as a book) and/or are included on search engines like Scopus. At some point, the conference proceeding may be considered as a book chapter and the paper lacking novelty as it is already in the public domain. Once this occurs, submission to a journal may be seen as self-plagiarism. My personal solution is to avoid working papers series and conference proceedings and to focus only on journal publications or books. Self-plagiarism may lead to a journal editor requesting the author(s) employers to investigate. An author should expect that the submitted paper will be rejected and/ or an already published paper retracted. It is highly likely that future submissions will be politely declined and returned to the author. Withholding relevant information is often self-plagiarism, but warrants separate consideration as it is a growing problem that has led to decisions to retract already published papers. This problem involves two or more papers that are very similar not referencing each other. Each paper on its own makes a contribution worthy of publication. However if a reviewer is aware of both papers, publication will not occur—as there is insufficient novelty and contribution to warrant publication of both. By withholding information, the author creates a false image of the paper offering a contribution that is in fact lacking—since the contribution is already offered elsewhere. For example, Paper A indicates phenomena-of-interest in all companies. Paper B demonstrates the same phenomena in small companies. Paper C demonstrates the same phenomena in multinational companies. All three papers utilize the same database. However, none of the papers acknowledge the existence of the other papers. Alternatively, the same data set is used, but different variables are considered/overlooked in different articles. Once again the presence of other papers on the same topic and database are not disclosed. While the unacceptability of this approach will seem obvious to some, there are many authors that feel it is okay to suppress or withhold information on their own research during the review process in an effort to protect the double-blind review process. (The idea that the reviewers and authors should not know each other's identity.) While the provision of full disclosure may make the identity of authors apparent to the reviewers, full disclosure is more important than risking violations of the double-blind process. Articles have been retracted based on the lack of full disclosure. At some universities, article retraction leads to disciplinary procedures that include termination. In cases of withholding relevant information, articles that are under review will be rejected. In addition, the case may be referred to the researcher's home institution for investigation and papers from the author(s) might be politely declined for review in the future. Where is the beef? Salami publishing involves attempting to take a single idea and translate it into a large number of papers. The ambitious researcher may attempt to slice a single idea into a series of papers: (1) literature review and statement of problem; (2) development of propositions; (3) model or framework; (4) case study illustration of model; and (5) empirical study testing the proposed model. Many editors advise authors that they and their readers are uninterested in a serial that takes place over many episodes and years. Each paper should offer one idea in a complete format. That is, crafting a paper so that it includes all five episodes listed above in a single work. If one wants to try to publish their work in a serial fashion there is nothing unethical about this. It is mentioned here, however, as this is seen by many editors as an unsatisfactory outcome of the pressure to publish—and many
editors will desk reject the slices or installments. If an author forgets to reference the other parts of the serial they can, however, get into trouble. In fact if an early episode proceeds through review process slowly and is overtaken by a later episode, there will be an appearance of withholding information. Exaggerating or falsifying data should require little explanation. This problem is more common in other fields. In some cases (1) decisions are made by researchers to include some, but not all data, or (2) data might be artificially added or adjusted. Personally, I have not heard of this being an issue in management journals. However, misstatement of statistical significance is an existing concern. Misstatement of statistics involves suggesting statistical significance exists when it does not. In summary, fabricating data, altering data, selectively deleting data or misstating statistical significance are grounds for retraction of an academic paper and disciplinary action by home institution, including termination of the researcher.
How to avoid problems without avoiding publishing A junior researcher expressed concern that their thesis adviser did not want more than one paper published out of the thesis to avoid potential accusations of self-plagiarism. Such a statement is misplaced and unfair. In fact it is one of the reasons for writing this editorial. Researchers should follow the rule one big idea per article. Occasionally a submission is full of possibility. The author has many interesting ideas and has integrated these ideas into a single academic paper. The resulting article is difficult to follow, as the ideas are underdeveloped and interwoven in an attempt to fit a multi-faceted contribution into the limited space of a journal article. When a research program or database has numerous independent novel contributions, multiple publications are appropriate. However, appropriate recognition that the data source is shared and referencing all related articles is required. A single idea, however, should not be sliced into many different papers. Remember once something is published it remains publically available. So while one may occasionally get away with publishing articles that are too similar, making a habit of breaking the rules will eventually create trouble. Once one paper is found to have broken publishing ethics, the author's other papers will come under scrutiny and the researchers can get caught in a downward spiral. Sometimes the spiral is loud and sensational with a large number of papers being retracted over a short time. Other times the spiral is rather subtle with the researcher having to move institutions, losing access to funding sources and their future work being either placed under tremendous scrutiny or ignored by publication outlets. In summary, you will benefit in the long run by ensuring full disclosure in your references and acknowledgments and avoiding the various forms of academic dishonesty.
Jonathan D. Linton, PhD, PEng Power Corporation Professor for the Management of Technological Enterprises, University of Ottawa, DMS 6108, 55 Laurier St. E, Ottawa, Canada K1N 6N5 E-mail address: [email protected]