TY - JOUR
T1 - Transparency in conducting and reporting research
T2 - A survey of authors, reviewers, and editors across scholarly disciplines
AU - Malički, Mario
AU - Aalbersberg, I. Jsbrand Jan
AU - Bouter, Lex
AU - Mulligan, Adrian
AU - ter Riet, Gerben
N1 - Funding Information:
This study was part of an Elsevier funded project: Fostering Transparent and Responsible Conduct of Research: What can Journals do?. Details of the project are available on our project’s data repository: http://dx.doi.org/10.17632/53cskwwpdn.6. The funder (other than the funder-affiliated authors IJJA and AM) had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Malički et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2023/3/1
Y1 - 2023/3/1
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
UR - https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?partnerID=HzOxMe3b&scp=85149745952&origin=inward
UR - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36888682
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0270054
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0270054
M3 - Article
C2 - 36888682
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 18
JO - PLoS ONE
JF - PLoS ONE
IS - 3 March
M1 - e0270054
ER -