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The peer-reviewed scientific literature is the bedrock of science. However, scientific publishing is undergoing dramatic changes, which include the expansion of open access, an increased number of for-profit publication houses, and ready availability of preprint manuscripts that have not been peer reviewed. In this opinion article, we discuss the inequities and concerns that these changes have wrought., (Copyright © 2021 Alwine et al.)

Fraudulent papers from paper mills are a serious threat to the entire scientific community. Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's Archives of Pharmacology has become the target of a massive attack of fraudulent papers originating from paper mills. This editorial highlights 20 important features we observed with paper mills and explains how the journal is responding to this serious threat to restore the integrity of science. Hopefully, this editorial is also helpful for editors of other scientific journals.

Academic journals provide a key quality-control mechanism in science. Yet, information asymmetries and conflicts of interests incentivize scientists to deceive journals about the quality of their research. How can honesty be ensured, despite incentives for deception? Here, we address this question by applying the theory of honest signaling to the publication process. Our models demonstrate that several mechanisms can ensure honest journal submission, including differential benefits, differential costs, and costs to resubmitting rejected papers. Without submission costs, scientists benefit from submitting all papers to high-ranking journals, unless papers can only be submitted a limited number of times. Counterintuitively, our analysis implies that inefficiencies in academic publishing (e.g., arbitrary formatting requirements, long review times) can serve a function by disincentivizing scientists from submitting low-quality work to high-ranking journals. Our models provide simple, powerful tools for understanding how to promote honest paper submission in academic publishing., Competing Interests: We note that Simine Vazire is a member of the PLOS Board of Directors and that Leonid Tiokhin and Daniel Lakens are co-founders of Red Team Market. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Peer review has been the principal way of evaluating scientific articles, ensuring that publications meet standards of methodology, integrity, and ethics. Occasionally, however, reviews are suboptimal, especially those by inexperienced reviewers. Therefore, this article offers suggestions on how to review a scientific article. Some of the most important suggestions include submitting the review in a timely fashion without undue delay, not breeching confidentiality, focusing mainly on the methodology, following specific format, and avoiding embarrassing comments to the authors.

Most studies of research integrity in the general media focus on the coverage of specific cases of misconduct. This paper tries to provide a more general, long-term perspective by analysing media discourse about research integrity and related themes in the Italian and United Kingdom daily press from 2000 to 2016. The results, based on a corpus of 853 articles, show that media coverage largely mirrors debates about integrity and misconduct. In fact, salient themes in the news include the importance to overcome the so-called "rotten apple" paradigm; the key role of public trust in science; and the need to address flaws in the peer-review system.

Peer review can seem like a barrier we have to scale in order to publish. In this Perspective, we ask what would happen if, instead, the focus of peer review was to help everyone in the field improve the quality of their papers.

Scientific hypotheses are essential for progress in rapidly developing academic disciplines. Proposing new ideas and hypotheses require thorough analyses of evidence-based data and predictions of the implications. One of the main concerns relates to the ethical implications of the generated hypotheses. The authors may need to outline potential benefits and limitations of their suggestions and target widely visible publication outlets to ignite discussion by experts and start testing the hypotheses. Not many publication outlets are currently welcoming hypotheses and unconventional ideas that may open gates to criticism and conservative remarks. A few scholarly journals guide the authors on how to structure hypotheses. Reflecting on general and specific issues around the subject matter is often recommended for drafting a well-structured hypothesis article. An analysis of influential hypotheses, presented in this article, particularly Strachan's hygiene hypothesis with global implications in the field of immunology and allergy, points to the need for properly interpreting and testing new suggestions. Envisaging the ethical implications of the hypotheses should be considered both by authors and journal editors during the writing and publishing process., Competing Interests: The authors have no potential conflicts of interest to disclose., (© 2019 The Korean Academy of Medical Sciences.)

Peer-review publishing has long been the gold standard for disseminating research. The peer-review process holds researchers accountable for their work and conveys confidence that the article is of value to the reader. Predatory journals and publishing pose a global threat to the quality of scientific literature, accuracy of educational resources, and safety of patient care. Predatory publishing uses an exploitative business model, substandard quality control measures, and deceptive publishing practices. Given the proliferation of these journals and the extreme measures utilized to disguise substandard publishing practices, avoiding them can prove difficult. Understanding the nature of predatory publishing and how to recognize the warning signs provide helpful measures to authors, researchers, students, and readers. Additional resources known to help avoid predatory publishers have been discussed in addition to reviewing the Journal of Human Lactation guidelines for publishing.

Purpose: Robotic-assisted unicompartmental knee arthroplasty (UKA) has gained popularity over the last decade claiming enhanced surgical precision and better joint kinematics, with peer-reviewed publications about this new technology also increasing over the past few years. The purpose of our study was to compare manuscripts about robotic-assisted UKA to those about standard UKA in terms of industry funding, author conflict of interest, scientific quality, and bibliometrics., Methods: A systematic search using PRISMA guidelines on PubMed and Google Scholar from 2012 to 2016 resulted in 45 papers where robotic technology was performed for UKA and 167 papers that UKA were performed without the assistance of a robot. Between the two groups, we compared (1) rate of manuscripts with reported conflict of interest or industry funding, (2) journal impact factor, (3) level of evidence, and (4) relative citation ratio., Results: Fifty-one percent (23/45) of robotic UKA manuscripts were industry-funded or had authors with financial conflict of interest, compared to 29% ([49/167], p < 0.01) of non-robotic UKA papers. Significantly more robotic UKA papers (24% [11/45] vs 9% [16/167), p < 0.01) were published in journals that were not assigned an impact factor by the Journal Citations Report. There was no difference in regard to bibliometrics or level of evidence., Conclusion: Manuscripts in which UKA was performed with the assistance of a robot were more likely to be industry funded or be written by authors with financial conflicts of interest and published in less prestigious journals. There were no differences in scientific quality or influence between the two groups. Readers analyzing published data should be aware of the potential conflicts of interests in order to more accurately interpret manuscripts data and conclusions.

Voluntary peer review is generally provided by researchers as a duty or service to their disciplines. They commit their expertise, knowledge and time freely without expecting rewards or compensation. Peer review can be perceived as a reciprocal mission that aims to safeguard the quality of publications by helping authors improve their manuscripts. While voluntary peer review adds value to research, rewarding the quantity or the volume of peer review is likely to lure academics into providing poor quality peer review. Consequently, the quantity of peer review may increase, but at the expense of quality, which may lead to unintended consequences and might negatively affect the quality of biomedical publications. This paper aims to present evidence that while voluntary peer review may aid researchers, pressurized peer review may create a perverse incentive that negatively affects the integrity of the biomedical research record. We closely examine one of the proposed models for rewarding peer review based on the quantity of peer review reports. This article also argues that peer review should remain a voluntary mission, and should not be prompted by the need to attain tenure or promotion., Competing Interests: Potential conflict of interest: None declared.

The Internet is rapidly changing the way the results of academic research are communicated within communities and with the wider public. In a push to accelerate change and make the results of research immediately and freely available online for all to read and use, the European Commission, with support from a group of high-profile funders, has proposed a plan to influence the way academic research is published. Here, we discuss the likely impact of this plan on the publishing landscape, the potential benefits, and some possible unintended consequences., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Editorial Boards of mainstream journals occasionally face ethical misconducts in received manus cripts. The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) provides recommendations for editors on how to deal with suspected ethical misconduct in either received or published manuscripts. The manus cript is rejected when malpractice is observed during the peer review process, however, if the mis conduct is detected after the publication, the publication will be retracted. The Revista Chilena de Pediatría (Chilean Journal of Pediatrics) has not been exempt from these type of conflicts. In this article, we analyze different aspects regarding the lack of integrity in publications, such as authorship, plagiarism, and conflict of interest. We can conclude that malpractices take place mainly due to the lack of knowledge of the authors rather than intent to defraud. It is expected that this article will suc ceed in instructing and sensitizing our researchers on good practices in research and publication, and contribute, as far as possible, to prevent this actions in the manuscripts sent to our Journal.

Authors endure considerable hardship carrying out biomedical research, from generating ideas to completing their manuscripts and submitting their findings and data (as is increasingly required) to a journal. When researchers submit to journals, they entrust their findings and ideas to editors and peer reviewers who are expected to respect the confidentiality of peer review. Inherent trust in peer review is built on the ethical conduct of authors, editors and reviewers, and on the respect of this confidentiality. If such confidentiality is breached by unethical reviewers who might steal or plagiarize the authors' ideas, researchers will lose trust in peer review and may resist submitting their findings to that journal. Science loses as a result, scientific and medical advances slow down, knowledge may become scarce, and it is unlikely that increasing bias in the literature will be detected or eliminated. In such a climate, society will ultimately be deprived from scientific and medical advances. Despite a rise in documented cases of abused peer review, there is still a relative lack of qualitative and quantitative studies on reviewer-related misconduct, most likely because evidence is difficult to come by. Our paper presents an assessment of editors' and reviewers' responsibilities in preserving the confidentiality of manuscripts during the peer review process, in response to a 2016 case of intellectual property theft by a reviewer. Our main objectives are to propose additional measures that would offer protection of authors' intellectual ideas from predatory reviewers, and increase researchers' awareness of the responsible reviewing of journal articles and reporting of biomedical research.