Revised observation editor -in -chief Nature Published: 300 papers with a monthly papers, but still not enough

Compilation | Tang Ning

In 2010, when Ivan ORANSKY and Adam Marcus founded the withdrawal of academic integrity websites to observe, they did not expect to catch up with a tide. Initially, they estimated that about 3 papers were withdrawn every month. However, in the first year, 45 papers were withdrawn every month. By last year, this number had reached 300.

As of 2018, in the database observation of the draft, the number of dissertations has been withdrawn 35,000. One of the earliest articles was published by Benjamin Franklin in 1756 and published in the Royal Society of Philosophy.

Since its establishment 12 years ago, the withdrawal observation has gone through a round of the papers withdrawal. As his founder and the editor -in -chief of removal, Ivan ORANSKY recently wrote in Nature that although the number of withdrawals is increasing, it is still not enough, and the scientific community must do more.

The following is the content of Ivan ORANSKY:

On the surface, the increase in the number of dissertations in recent years is a good thing, which seems to mean that science is becoming more and more rigorous, and the work of scientific publishing has become better and better. However, it is not that simple. The number of magazines is amazing, and the dissertation that should be withdrawn is much more with the actual withdrawal.

A study on withdrawal of papers shows that at least one of each papers violates the International Publishing Ethics Commission (COPE). Whether it is for pseudo -data, plagiarism, false peer reviews, or because of major mistakes -including contaminated cell lines or other non -fraud mistakes, these mean "the results of the research are not reliable." However, the proportion of the dissertation is still less than 0.1%.

We found that the process of withdrawal in recent decades is changing, and we have begun to realize that the academic publishing community has been unable to follow.

The withdrawal of traditional papers has made people feel outdated. In the past, most of the effort to correct the paper was to send the editors to send the very low question letters. Today, critics no longer send letters, but express their concerns through social media, PUBPEER and other greater media. Journal editors and publishing houses are not so easy to correct records and hidden criticisms.

These sounds have forced some action. Some journals have hired all employees to pay attention to these criticisms at all times. But this is like a mouse game. His malicious researchers will continue to "actively" look for loopholes and play this publishing system: they use false mailbox addresses to pretend to be reviewers, use the paper factories, betray the paper author The name position and so on.

At the same time, the process of withdrawal of a paper is extremely slow and difficult, which often takes several years. This is still smooth. Publishers always feel that they can admit that they have suffered from the articles they have issued, which will damage their dignity and challenge the bottom line, which has caused them not to be active in investigation issues.

Even if the problem papers have been withdrawn, the harm is still there. The withdrawal allows researchers to avoid those unreliable studies, and an withdrawal papers should not be cited anymore. However, a recently released research on 400 anesthesias found that nearly 90%of them did not realize that the dissertation they cited had been withdrawn.

My colleague Adam first reported the story of Scott Reuben from 2008-2009, which is worth pondering. Reuben is an anesthesiologist who studies painkillers. He was found for falsifying data in clinical trials, and eventually he was imprisoned due to academic allegations. At the same time, his 25 papers were withdrawn. However, during the ten years after the incident was exposed, these withdrawal papers were cited hundreds of times, and only 40%of the references indicated that the paper had been withdrawn.

This situation will inevitably happen when the publisher fails to mark the dissertation papers on his website or fails to maintain the index service. To solve this problem, the author should use services such as EndNote, Papers, Third Iron or Zotero. All these services are merged with our database and automatically label to withdraw.

Clean up the documents that have been withdrawn, and we must not just remind the authors who are sorting out the list of references. The publisher should add a reliable withdrawal thesis inspection process in the process of submission and review of the paper.

The dissertation must be supported as a necessary component to support scientific and healthy development and support it. Academic detectives should be rewarded and have the opportunity to use effective tools to improve counterfeiting efficiency instead of facing ridicule, harassment and legal lawsuits. Just like when a hacker finds the defect of the computer security system, you can get a "vulnerability bounty", and publishers should also create a bonus pool for academic detectives. At the same time, scientific research institutions should correctly evaluate those researchers who honestly correct their errors. They should be praised instead of being stifled because of withdrawal.

Of course, if these problems mentioned above are not resolved, the withdrawal observation will continue to exist at least another 12 years -because there is no shortage of materials.

Reference materials:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02071-6

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