{"title":"Errata and retractions associated with research papers published by authors with Hungarian affiliations","authors":"J. A. T. Silva, Mohammadamin Erfanmanesh","doi":"10.3897/ESE.2021.E60203","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3897/ESE.2021.E60203","url":null,"abstract":"Background: To examine the errata and retractions in total published output of Hungarian research and academia relative to that in 34 other European countries. Objective: To analyse the number of errata and retractions related to papers published by authors with Hungarian affiliations compared to those by authors with affiliations in the 34 other countries. Methods: Errata and retractions retrieved from three databases, namely Retraction Watch, Web of Science (WoS), and Scopus, were counted and sorted by country. Results: Scopus featured 7 retractions linked to Hungarian affiliations and WoS featured 10. Retraction Watch featured 26 such retractions, placing Hungary in 23rd position among the 35 countries arranged in descending order of the number of retractions. Of the 26 retractions from Hungary, 5 were in Elsevier journals and another 5 in Springer Nature; also, 8 of the 26 were associated with the University of Debrecen. When ranked for the number of errata notices for every 1000 published papers, Hungary was ranked 29th in WoS (2.54 notices per 1000 papers) and 26th in Scopus (2.3 notices per 1000 papers). Conclusions: The low numbers of Hungarian affiliations suggest that either research ethics are more stringently observed in Hungary or that publications from Hungarian research institutes, including papers in Hungarian – many Hungarian journals are indexed neither in WoS nor in Scopus – have not been scrutinized adequately through post-publication peer review.","PeriodicalId":35360,"journal":{"name":"European Science Editing","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47415153","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Giving editors and institutions some CLUEs about research integrity cases","authors":"E. Wager, S. Kleinert","doi":"10.3897/ESE.2021.E68868","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3897/ESE.2021.E68868","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:p />","PeriodicalId":35360,"journal":{"name":"European Science Editing","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46214367","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Dasapta Erwin Irawan, Juneman Abraham, Jonathan P. Tennant, O. Pourret
{"title":"The need for a new set of measures to assess the impact of research in earth sciences in Indonesia","authors":"Dasapta Erwin Irawan, Juneman Abraham, Jonathan P. Tennant, O. Pourret","doi":"10.3897/ESE.2021.E59032","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3897/ESE.2021.E59032","url":null,"abstract":"Background: Earth sciences is one of those sensitive field sciences that are closely needed to solve local problems within local physical and social settings. Earth researchers find state-of-the-art of topics in earth sciences by using scientific databases, conduct research on the topics, and write about them. However, the accessibility, readability, and usability of those articles for local communities are major problems in measuring the impact of research, although it may be covered by well-known international scientific databases.\u0000 Objectives: To ascertain empirically whether there are differences in document distribution, in the proportions of openly accessible documents, and in the geographical coverage of earth sciences topics as revealed through analyses of documents retrieved from scientific databases and to propose new measures for assessing the impact of research in earth sciences based on those differences.\u0000 Methods: Relevant documents were retrieved using ‘earth sciences’ as a search term in English and other languages from ten databases of scientific publications. The results of these searches were analysed using frequency analysis and a quantitative- descriptive design.\u0000 Results: (1) The number of articles in English from international databases exceeded the number of articles in native languages from national-level databases. (2) The number of open-access (OA) articles in the national databases was higher than that in other databases. (3) The geographical coverage of earth science papers was uneven between countries when the number of documents retrieved from closed-access commercial databases was compared to that from the other databases. (4) The regulations in Indonesia related to promotion of lecturers assign greater weighting to publications indexed in Scopus and the Web of Science (WoS) and publications in journals with impact factors are assigned a higher weighting.\u0000 Conclusions: The dominance of scientific articles in English as well as the paucity of OA publications indexed in international databases (compared to those in national or regional databases) may have been due to the greater weighting assigned to such publications. Consequently, the relevance of research reported in those publications to local communities has been questioned. This article suggests some open-science practices to transform the current regulations related to promotion into a more responsible measurement of research performance and impact.","PeriodicalId":35360,"journal":{"name":"European Science Editing","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44204910","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
M. Talei, F. Handjani, B. Astaneh, M. Askarian, P. Jafari
{"title":"Factors influencing acceptance or rejection by Iranian medical researchers of invitations to peer review","authors":"M. Talei, F. Handjani, B. Astaneh, M. Askarian, P. Jafari","doi":"10.3897/ESE.2021.E62836","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3897/ESE.2021.E62836","url":null,"abstract":"Background: Peer review is a necessary but costly and time-consuming process to identify good-quality and methodologically sound articles and improve them before publication. Finding good peer reviewers is often difficult. Objective: To identify the incentives that make Iranian biomedical researchers accept invitations to be a peer reviewer and factors that affect these incentives. Methods: Twelve reviewers selected at random from the reviewers pool of each of 26 biomedical journals published from Fars province, Iran, were surveyed using a questionnaire that we had developed and tested in a pilot study of 30 reviewers (Cronbach’s alpha of 0.779). The data included the reviewers’ demographics, history of their reviews, and choice of 11 reasons each for accepting or declining the invitation to review. Results: A total of 233 reviewers completed the questionnaire. The most important reasons for accepting the invitation to review were the journal’s practice to publish the names of the reviewers alongside the article they had reviewed, acknowledgement by the journals by publishing the names of reviewers once a year, free access to journals’ content, and lower publication charges as authors. The most common reasons to decline the invitation were lack of time, busy schedules, and lack of sufficient incentive to review. Conclusion: Acknowledgement by the journal, offering to publish the names of reviewers alongside the articles they had reviewed, and monetary rewards will be effective incentives for biomedical researchers in Iran to serve as peer reviewers.","PeriodicalId":35360,"journal":{"name":"European Science Editing","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-06-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44248448","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rejection rate and reasons for rejection after peer review: a case study of a Russian economics journal","authors":"E. A. Balyakina, Ludmila A Kriventsova","doi":"10.3897/ESE.2021.E51999","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3897/ESE.2021.E51999","url":null,"abstract":"Background: Peer review remains the only way of filtering and improving research. However, there are few studies of peer review based on the contents of review reports, because access to these reports is limited. Objectives: To measure the rejection rate and to investigate the reasons for rejection after peer-review in a specialized scientific journal. Methods: We considered the manuscripts submitted to a Russian journal, namely ‘Economy of Region’ (Rus Экономика региона), from 2016 to 2018, and analysed the double-blind review reports related to rejected submissions in qualitative and quantitative terms including descriptive statistics. Results: Of the 1653 submissions from 2016 to 2018, 324 (20%) were published, giving an average rejection rate of 80%. Content analysis of reviewer reports showed five categories of shortcomings in the manuscripts: breaches of publication ethics, mismatch with the journal’s research area, weak research reporting (a major group, which accounted for 66%of the total); lack of novelty, and design errors. We identified two major problems in the peer-review process that require editorial correction: in 36% of the cases, the authors did not send the revised version of the manuscript to the journal after receiving editorial comments and in 30% of the cases, the reviewers made contradictory recommendations. Conclusions: To obtain a more balanced evaluation from experts and to avoid paper losses the editorial team should revise the journal’s instructions to authors, its guide to reviewers, and the form of the reviewer’s report by indicating the weightings assigned to the different criteria and by describing in detail the criteria for a good paper.","PeriodicalId":35360,"journal":{"name":"European Science Editing","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-05-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44293887","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Randa I. Farah, Saif Aldeen AlRyalat, Wala'a Aburumman, Dana Sakaji, Muna Alhusban, Reema Hamasha, Majd Alkhrissat, Mohammad Qablawi, Ayat Alni’mat
{"title":"Obstacles to health care research projects at the University of Jordan: a cross-sectional survey","authors":"Randa I. Farah, Saif Aldeen AlRyalat, Wala'a Aburumman, Dana Sakaji, Muna Alhusban, Reema Hamasha, Majd Alkhrissat, Mohammad Qablawi, Ayat Alni’mat","doi":"10.3897/ESE.2021.E61658","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3897/ESE.2021.E61658","url":null,"abstract":"Objective: To assess the obstacles faced by biomedical researchers in Jordan and the reasons behind the stagnation of health care research. Background: Health care research is essential for the advancement of medical care but faces obstacles that delay the completion of research projects, and the literature is still deficient, especially in developing countries. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted of all academic staff of health care faculties at the University of Jordan who had been employed for five years or more and had at least one stagnant research project. Questionnaires were completed by the academic staff online using Google Forms after a face-to-face interview to explain the study process to them. Results: A total of 82 researchers with a mean age of 42.68 (±9.16) years were included most of whom (84.1%) had only one stagnant project. Of the 106 stagnant projects, 28.3% were in the basic sciences and 71.7% were in clinical research. Almost a third (29.5%) of the projects remained stagnant after reaching the publication stage. Most researchers (81.3%) identified lack of time and high workload as the most common personal barriers and 44.4% identified lack of funds and research incentives as the most common institutional barriers. Conclusions: Medical research is affected by different barriers including lack of time, high workload, lack of funds, and insufficient incentives for research. An institutional strategic plan is required to overcome those barriers and to improve medical research.","PeriodicalId":35360,"journal":{"name":"European Science Editing","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44461165","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The \"ize\" have it - reflections on spelling and its rules","authors":"Denys Wheatley","doi":"10.3897/ESE.2020.E59855","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3897/ESE.2020.E59855","url":null,"abstract":"A brief discussion is presented of the use of \"ize\" rather than \"ise\" in most current day journals. The need for editors and authors to be consistent in their spelling remains an issue.","PeriodicalId":35360,"journal":{"name":"European Science Editing","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48197852","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Maintaining the integrity of the scientific record: corrections and best practices at The Lancet group","authors":"A. Cooper, J. Dwyer","doi":"10.3897/ESE.2021.E62065","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3897/ESE.2021.E62065","url":null,"abstract":"A transparent corrections process is essential to assist in the maintenance of public confidence in scientific and medical research. In the era of preprints, fast-paced peer review, and early-access publication, errors and oversights from both authors and editors might be more common. The swift and open correction of the public record requires the participation of authors, journal editors, and publishers, and in this Viewpoint we share The Lancet group’s best practices around errors and corrections.","PeriodicalId":35360,"journal":{"name":"European Science Editing","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46976181","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Avoiding predatory journals and publishers: a cross-sectional study","authors":"Alehegn Adane Kinde","doi":"10.3897/ESE.2021.E52348","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3897/ESE.2021.E52348","url":null,"abstract":"Background: Predatory journals (PJs) are journals that receive and publish articles through unethical publishing practices. Due to the boom of PJs, researchers face a wide range of journals from which to choose. Non-peer reviewed and low-quality articles can ruin the trustworthiness of science and have a damaging impact on decision-makers.\u0000 Objective: To assess the level of awareness among Ethiopian researchers of PJs and to improve the awareness level through training.\u0000 Method: The participants were professors, associate professors, assistant professors, and lecturers from different disciplines. The study included 18 statements for participants to indicate their level of awareness on the Likert scale, questions on knowledge resources on PJs, and open-ended questions about ways of avoiding PJs. A one-day programme trained the participants in detecting and avoiding PJs.\u0000 Results: 43 participants completed the pre-assessment online survey and 37 participants completed the post-assessment survey. Many researchers were unaware of PJs and found it somewhat difficult to differentiate PJs from legitimate journals. However, during the post-assessment, the awareness level improved and the participants’ rating of the task of differentiating PJs from legitimate journals changed from ‘Somewhat difficult’ to ‘Easy’.\u0000 Conclusion: Many researchers were unaware of the potential distinctions between PJs and legitimate journals that are crucial to an appropriate journal for publishing. Especially low awareness was found on the journal impact factor, journal indexing services, and reputable publishers. Hence, before manuscript submission, authors ought to know and practise evaluating journals on the basis of the recommended criteria.","PeriodicalId":35360,"journal":{"name":"European Science Editing","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48566979","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A. Shoko, I. Kimirei, B. Sekadende, M. Kishe, I. Sailale
{"title":"Online course in conjunction with face-to-face workshops to improve writing skills leading towards more publications in peer reviewed journals","authors":"A. Shoko, I. Kimirei, B. Sekadende, M. Kishe, I. Sailale","doi":"10.3897/ESE.2021.E54417","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3897/ESE.2021.E54417","url":null,"abstract":"Background: Researchers in the developing countries often have inadequate scientific writing skills to publish their research in international peer reviewed journals.\u0000 Objectives: To improve the research-and proposal-writing skills of researchers and to evaluate the impact of this intervention.\u0000 Methods: An off-the-shelf online course (AuthorAID, developed by INASP) was embedded in the Tanzania Fisheries Research Institute’s (TAFIRI) website and offered to the institute researchers in Tanzania. The 8-week course was followed by a 2-day face- to-face workshop that used the course material contextualized to local conditions, and the combination was repeated one more time.\u0000 Results: A total of 47 participants completed the course and attended the workshop: 21 (54%) completed the course in 2016 and 26 (67%) in 2017. The number of papers published annually by TAFIRI staff more than tripled between 2016 and 2019 after the AuthorAID intervention, most of them (114, or 91%) by researchers who had undergone the training.\u0000 Conclusion: Embedding and contextualizing proven learning materials, such as the AuthorAID online course, can be an economical and effective approach to improving the writing skills of scientists in developing countries.","PeriodicalId":35360,"journal":{"name":"European Science Editing","volume":"47 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43169751","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}