Journal of Childhood & Developmental Disorders

Keywords

Citation; Publication; Research; Peer review; Duplicate publication; Plagiarism; Publication retractions; Publication misconduct; Authorship; Research governance

Introduction

There is outburst of scientific papers published by all research scholars. It produces nuisance to researcher, over and above to funding agencies, employment and promotion boards because they need to evaluate emergent adorable hulk of hyper-competition research publications. Furthermore, remarkable transformation in the publication form and biomedical information broadcast happened because of innumerable new publishers and journals. Publication ethics and professional values are divergent for various disciplines and nations. Research scholars in low- and middle-income countries lack appropriate representation in research papers as well as editorial board members of journals [1].

An embezzlement of authorship weakens the reliability of the authorship system. Honorary authorship (guest or gift authorship) is defined as naming, as an author, an individual who does not meet authorship criteria [2,3]. Honorary authorship may be offered as an honor to a department chair or to grants acquiring researcher [2]. Ghost authorship is defined as failure to name, as an author, an individual who has made substantial contributions to the research or writing of the article [3].

Even if the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) recognized authorship criteria, still authors frequently ignore or are uninformed of these criteria [4]. An array of the existing authorship system abuses are documented [2,3,5]. Resnik et al. [6] randomly analyzed the authorship policies of 600 journals from the Journal Citation Reports database. But, there is lack of equivalent author contribution statements in authorship policy. They concluded that a considerable percentage of articles in peer-reviewed medical journals have honorary authors and ghost authors [6]. However, observance to global standards of paper writing, reviewing, editing, soliciting manuscripts, and publishing may improve journal standards.

A primary ideology of the entire scientific and scholarly work is to question every aspect of study to critical appraisal as peer review, as part of the editorial process. Regardless of its universal recognition of peer review process, it had faced diversity of criticisms [7], but, undeniably, very less is known regarding its effects on the quality and usefulness of published information. In last decade, there is cropping of new journal as well as new publishers and open-access publishing models focusing on specialized sub- fields of each discipline, with an inexcusable outburst of research information generated by each scholar. This plight was predicted by Toffler [8]. He pioneered the concept of “information overload”, in the biomedical sciences papers. Then, the quality and excellence of research papers may be overshadowed by this hypercompetitive scenario. Furthermore, hyper-competition affects the careers of young scientists in the biomedical sciences [9].

Research misconduct, comprising of fabrication, falsification, guest authorship, and plagiarism are unethical behaviors in biomedical research which concerns research world in near future [10]. The proportion of research articles withdrawn owing to deception have been rising nowadays [11]. Thus, these misconduct and academic dishonesty may impede the invention of new knowledge, misuse resources, decline public trust, and diminished contribution in research and surveys [12]. Furthermore, it also endangers the author’s reputation nevertheless may cause troubles for the affiliated institutes [13]. Interdisciplinary, collaboration amid diverse institutions, and international consortiums is the current trend in research where ghost collaborator are seen, who are thoroughly involved, contributed to a project's design, although they are excluded from meetings and publications [14].

Wasteful, or ‘predatory,’ journals affect new researchers’ reputation [15]. Hence, researcher should verify record of predatory open access publishers, standalone journals, and hijacked journal’s list published by Beall (https://scholarlyoa. com/) [16]. The predatory publishing mends profits further than poor services to the authors. Predatory journals publish redundant, poorly edited, unchecked, or rejected by other journals. Some of the indexed predatory journals are influenced by commercial editing personnel and companies procuring unethical corrupt misconduct [17].

Ethical standards of scientific papers are grey areas, because data falsification may affect patients and society evidence basis [18]. The majority of journals evaluate their publications quantitatively and readership statistically to draw attention. Novel types of metrics are employed currently to calculate impact for instance Impact Story [https://impactstory.org/], Alt-Metrics [https:// altmetrics.org/manifesto/, https://altmetric.com], and “Leiden Manifesto” [19], containing a ten-point list for assessment of research. Nonetheless, journals should be judged by SCImago journal rank, impact factor, citation indices, and cited half-life, and must be indexed in global publication directories like Scopus or PubMed.

Conclusion

It is quite uncertain to control the speed, commercialization and digitalization influence on research discipline. However, rigorous data analysis, peer review governance, stringent funding, ethics and global indexing can be solution for these publication abuses. This paper doesn’t critically review all published data with egotistical, prejudiced and dogmatic manner but certainly underlines the on-going endangers of adorable Hulk with hyper-competition of research publication.

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