[paper] Publish or be ethical?

Mariola Paruzel-Czachura, Lidia Baran, Zbigniew Spendel 

Publish or be ethical? Publishing pressure and scientific misconduct in research 

First Published CC BY-NC 4.0 Dec. 18, 2020 

SAGE Journals: Research Ethics (2020) 

DOI: 10.1177/1747016120980562 

* Institute of Psychology, University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland

Abstract: The paper reports two studies exploring the relationship between scholars’ self-reported publication pressure and their self-reported scientific misconduct in research. In Study 1 the participants (N = 423) were scholars representing various disciplines from one big university in Poland. In Study 2 the participants (N = 31) were exclusively members of the management, such as dean, director, etc. from the same university. In Study 1 the most common reported form of scientific misconduct was honorary authorship. The majority of researchers (71%) reported that they had not violated ethical standards in the past; 3% admitted to scientific misconduct; 51% reported being were aware of colleagues’ scientific misconduct. A small positive correlation between perceived publication pressure and intention to engage in scientific misconduct in the future was found. In Study 2 more than half of the management (52%) reported being aware of researchers’ dishonest practices, the most frequent one of these being honorary authorship. As many as 71% of the participants report observing publication pressure in their subordinates. The primary conclusions are: (1) most scholars are convinced of their morality and predict that they will behave morally in the future; (2) scientific misconduct, particularly minor offenses such as honorary authorship, is frequently observed both by researchers (particularly in their colleagues) and by their managers; (3) researchers experiencing publication pressure report a willingness to engage in scientific misconduct in the future.

Fig: Ways in which respondents have infringed ethical principles

Founding: The current research was supported by Miniatura1 2017/01/X/HS6/01332 from the National Science Centre (NCN, Poland) to Mariola Paruzel-Czachura. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of them authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Center. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.