ArticlePloS one2015
Misconduct Policies, Academic Culture and Career Stage, Not Gender or Pressures to Publish, Affect Scientific Integrity.
Article in PloS one, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 66 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
66 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 269 citations in OpenAlex.
- Integrity in Biomedical Research: A Systematic Review of Studies in China.Science and engineering ethics · 2019Pooled it
- Research misconduct in health and life sciences research: A systematic review of retracted literature from Brazilian institutions.PloS one · 2019Pooled it
- Meta-assessment of bias in science.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2017Pooled it
- Research integrity in Spain: Great expectations, mediocre results.Accountability in research · 2026Article
- Favorable research environment is a key determinant of research integrity according to a ten-country survey across Central and Eastern Europe.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- The publish or perish, publish and perish, publish then perish, and now retract and perish cultures in academia.Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archives of pharmacology · 2026Article
- Navigating the ethical world of clinical researchers in China: challenges and pathways for improvement.BMC medical ethics · 2025Article
- A Comparative Study on the Construction of Research Integrity in Public Medical Universities/Colleges in China: 2020-2024.Science and engineering ethics · 2025Article
- Publication integrity: what is it, why does it matter, how it is safeguarded and how could we do better?Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand · 2025Review
- Identifying fabricated networks within authorship-for-sale enterprises.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Perceptions of the Research Integrity Climate in Egyptian Universities: A Survey Among Academic Researchers.Journal of empirical research on human research ethics : JERHRE · 2024Article
- How Competition for Funding Impacts Scientific Practice: Building Pre-fab Houses but no Cathedrals.Science and engineering ethics · 2024Article
- Addressing researcher fraud: retrospective, real-time, and preventive strategies-including legal points and data management that prevents fraud.Frontiers in research metrics and analytics · 2024Article
- Retraction of biomedical publications with Tunisian affiliation: causes, characteristics, and legislation regarding breaches of scientific integrity.The Pan African medical journal · 2024Article
- A Survey Study on Knowledge and Attitude Toward the Ethics Committee and Research Ethical Practices Among Researchers From Kuwait.Science and engineering ethics · 2023Article
- Women Are Underrepresented Among Authors of Retracted Publications: Retrospective Study of 134 Medical Journals.Journal of medical Internet research · 2023Article
- Fifty years of research on questionable research practises in science: quantitative analysis of co-citation patterns.Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- Bullying, harassment, and discrimination of musculoskeletal researchers and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic: an international study.European spine journal : official publication of the European Spine Society, the European Spinal Deformity Society, and the European Section of the Cervical Spine Research Society · 2023Article
- NSF Fellows' perceptions about incentives, research misconduct, and scientific integrity in STEM academia.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Ethical Orientation and Research Misconduct Among Business Researchers Under the Condition of Autonomy and Competition.Journal of business ethics : JBE · 2023Article
6 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The honesty and integrity of scientists is widely believed to be threatened by pressures to publish, unsupportive research environments, and other structural, sociological and psychological factors. Belief in the importance of these factors has inspired major policy initiatives, but evidence to support them is either non-existent or derived from self-reports and other sources that have known limitations. We used a retrospective study design to verify whether risk factors for scientific misconduct could predict the occurrence of retractions, which are usually the consequence of research misconduct, or corrections, which are honest rectifications of minor mistakes. Bibliographic and personal information were collected on all co-authors of papers that have been retracted or corrected in 2010-2011 (N=611 and N=2226 papers, respectively) and authors of control papers matched by journal and issue (N=1181 and N=4285 papers, respectively), and were analysed with conditional logistic regression. Results, which avoided several limitations of past studies and are robust to different sampling strategies, support the notion that scientific misconduct is more likely in countries that lack research integrity policies, in countries where individual publication performance is rewarded with cash, in cultures and situations were mutual criticism is hampered, and in the earliest phases of a researcher's career. The hypothesis that males might be prone to scientific misconduct was not supported, and the widespread belief that pressures to publish are a major driver of misconduct was largely contradicted: high-impact and productive researchers, and those working in countries in which pressures to publish are believed to be higher, are less-likely to produce retracted papers, and more likely to correct them. Efforts to reduce and prevent misconduct, therefore, might be most effective if focused on promoting research integrity policies, improving mentoring and training, and encouraging transparent communication amongst researchers.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.