A Legal Evaluation of the Legislation Regarding Scientific Research and Publishing Ethics Committees in the Fields of Social and Humanatirian Sciences and Educational Sciences in Universities: A Qualitative Research

In Article 65 of Higher Education Law numbered 2547, formation, duties and operations of scientific research and publication ethics boards have to be regulated by regulations issued by Higher Education Council (HEC). Despite this legal obligation, ethical committees in higher education institutions are not regulated by regulation; They are regulated by HEC Scientific Research and Publication Ethics Directive (HECSRPED) issued in 2016. Universities also make regulations regarding these boards within their own bodies with directives issued by decisions of their senates. In the research, firstly, the literature on the ethics committees and relevant legislation are examined. Then, categories are determined by using the document review method, considering regulations of ethics committees in HECSRPED; in the context of these categories, directives issued by 3 state universities in İstanbul regarding ethics committees in fields of social and humanities and educational sciences are analyzed. Findings show that provisions of a directive issued by universities on ethics committees generally do not coincide with relevant provisions in HECSRPED and even contain significant contradictions. It has also been discussed that ethical committees in universities may harm the principle of conducting scientific research freely and cause important bureaucratic problems and workload for both researchers and board members. It has been suggested that issues related to ethical committees are regulated by HEC, eliminating illegality in directives issued by universities and that universities can issue directives on issues that are not clarified in HECSRPED. In addition, it was recommended to conduct case studies and phenomenological studies regarding ethics committees for researchers.

FUNDAMENTAL AND APPLIED SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH (ICFARS) April 2021, Berlin - Germany: collection of scientific papers / OEAPS OU.; editorial board: Flora Bertrand (editor-in-chief) [and others]. - Tallinn, Estonia: OEAPS OU., 2021. 100 P.

Conference paper Covered by Leading Indexing Databases Open European Academy of Public Sciences aims to have all of its journals covered by the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and Scopus and Web of Science indexing systems. Several journals have already been covered by SCIE for several years and have received official Impact Factors. Some life science related journals are also covered by PubMed/MEDLINE and archived through PubMed Central (PMC). All of our journals are archived with the Spanish and Germany National Library.All Content is Open Access and Free for Readers Journals published by Open European Academy of Public Sciences are fully open access: research articles, reviews or any other content on this platform is available to everyone free of charge. To be able to provide open access journals, we finance publication through article processing charges (APC); these are usually covered by the authors’ institutes or research funding bodies. We offer access to science and the latest research to readers for free. All of our content is published in open access and distributed under a Creative Commons License, which means published articles can be freely shared and the content reused, upon proper attribution. Open European Academy of Public Sciences Publication Ethics StatementOpen European Academy of Public Sciences is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). Open European Academy of Public Sciences takes the responsibility to enforce a rigorous peerreview together with strict ethical policies and standards to ensure to add high quality scientific works to the field of scholarly publication. Unfortunately, cases of plagiarism, data falsification, inappropriate authorship credit, and the like, do arise. Open European Academy of Public Sciences takes such publishing ethics issues very seriously and our editors are trained to proceed in such cases with a zero tolerance policy. To verify the originality of content submitted to our journals, we use iThenticate to check submissions against previous publications.Mission and ValuesAs a pioneer of academic open access publishing, we serve the scientific community since 2009. Our aim is to foster scientific exchange in all forms, across all disciplines. In addition to being at the root of Open European Academy of Public Sciences and a key theme in our journals, we support sustainability by ensuring the longterm preservation of published papers, and the future of science through partnerships, sponsorships and awards.

Unethical practices within medical research and publication – An exploratory study

The data produced by the scientific community impacts on academia, clinicians, and the general public; therefore, the scientific community and other regulatory bodies have been focussing on ethical codes of conduct. Despite the measures taken by several research councils, unethical research, publishing and/or reviewing behaviours still take place. This exploratory study considers some of the current unethical practices and the reasons behind them and explores the ways to discourage these within research and other professional disciplinary bodies. These interviews/discussions with PhD students, technicians, and academics/principal investigators (PIs) (N=110) were conducted mostly in European higher education institutions including UK, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, Czech Republic and Netherlands.Through collegiate discussions, sharing experiences and by examining previously published/reported information, authors have identified several less reported behaviours. Some of these practices are mainly influenced either by the undue institutional expectations of research esteem or by changes in the journal review process. These malpractices can be divided in two categories relating to (a) methodological malpractices including data management, and (b) those that contravene publishing ethics. The former is mostly related to “committed bias”, by which the author selectively uses the data to suit their own hypothesis, methodological malpractice relates to selection of out-dated protocols that are not suited to the intended work. Although these are usually unintentional, incidences of intentional manipulations have been reported to authors of this study. For example, carrying out investigations without positive (or negative) controls; but including these from a previous study. Other methodological malpractices include unfair repetitions to gain statistical significance, or retrospective ethical approvals. In contrast, the publication related malpractices such as authorship malpractices, ethical clearance irregularities have also been reported. The findings also suggest a globalised approach with clear punitive measures for offenders is needed to tackle this problem.

Challenging Issues of Exercising of Rights to Publication of Scientific Articles by Authors

Purpose. Through the prism of the constitutional right of a person and a citizen to freedom of creativity, to identify and consider the problems that arise for authors of works when submitting articles to peer-reviewed scientific publications. To analyze the existing rules used by the editors of scientific publications, including claims arising out of the use of the reporting system ‘anti-Plagiarism’, the problems arising from reviews of specialists, especially at the intersection of science, as well as to evaluate the practice of bounce editors of scientific journals authors in the publications on legitimate grounds contrary, including the principles of publishing ethics, reflected in the recommendations of the Committee on publication ethics (COPE). The research methodology is based on the method of systematic analysis of legislation and existing practice, as well as on dialectical, logical, and formal-legal research methods. Conclusions. As a result of the research, the problems of the author’s dependence on illegal and sometimes illegal requirements that violate his rights when publishing articles in peer-reviewed scientific publications are revealed. The scientific and practical significance of the article lies in the formulated conclusions and proposals that will contribute to the realization of the author’s right to publish his work while fulfilling the fair and legitimate requirements imposed by the editorial offices on scientific works.

Advances in Mobile Learning Educational Research (A.M.L.E.R.): Mobile learning as an educational reform

The journal Advances in Educational Research and Evaluation is a peer-reviewed openaccess journal aimed to be a medium for discussing a wide range of international educational experiences and assessment techniques. The journal intends to publish high-quality articles, the scope of which includes but is not limited to topics mentioned in this editorial. With the support of an international team of educational scholars who kindly volunteered to serve on the editorial board, the journal is set to adhere to the highest publishing ethics standards.

Learning from retracted papers authored by the highly cited Iran-affiliated researchers: Revisiting research policies and a key message to Clarivate Analytics

Background The scientific literature is anticipated to self-correct with time. An integral part of this self-correction is the retraction notices identifying flawed scientific papers. Prevalence of retractions has been investigated in different countries and different scholarly disciplines, including surgery, biomedical sciences, and engineering. Reportedly retractions have increased with increasing number of papers from Iran. However, reasons underlying retractions of papers authored by the Iran-affiliated highly cited researchers (HCRs) have not been documented.Result Here, we report that 229 of the Iran-affiliated researchers were listed by the Clarivate Analytics as HCRs. In total, 51 retracted papers were authored by the HCRs as documented by the Retraction Watch Database interrogated from 2006 to 2019. Twenty-three of the 229 HCRs (10%) had at least one paper retracted. One of the listed HCRs had 22 papers retracted; 14 of the 23 (60.8%) had only one paper retracted. Of the 51 papers, 43 (84%) had a single retraction reason, whereas eight had multiple reasons. Among the 43 papers, 23 (53%) were retracted due to fake peer-review, eight (19%) were duplications, six (14%) had errors, four (9%) had plagiarism, and two (5%) were labelled as “limited or no information.” Duplication of data, which is easily preventable, amounted to 27%. The time from publication to retraction of the 51 papers ranged from one to 2,483 (mean 856.6) days.Conclusion Any publishing oversight committed by an HCR should not be tolerated because they represent the stakeholders of the scientific literature and stand as role-models for other peer researchers. Future policies supporting the Iranian academia should radically change by implementation of educational and awareness programs on publishing ethics to reduce the retraction rate.

Letter from the Editors

Since it was established in 2014, the International Journal of Integrative Pediatrics and Environmental Medicine (IJIPEM) has strongly adhered to publishing ethics, followed a double-blind review process, and published high-quality papers. Our outstanding linguistic service has assisted many grateful authors for whom English is a second language. Last year was a hard year for everyone, but particularly for the first-line medical care providers. We have given priority to SARS-CoV-2-related manuscripts and published them for free, thereby contributing to our universal knowledge of this new disease. One of the most interesting papers was "Pregnancy and COVID-19, a brief review", one of the first articles published on the topic. Another paper, "The new face of Medicine – care flow strategies developed during COVID" by Dr. Sharon Jacob, addressed how to adjust clinic schedules during this unexpected Global disaster. We also published rare and interesting cases related to the journal's scope, which is focused on the interactions between children and their physical and psychological environment. We want to remind you that the journal topics center on modifiable factors, such as environmental pollution, child-parent relationships, social circumstances, quality of life of the sick child, ill-child school performance, mental health, and sensitivity to environmental factors. Topics concerning integrating conventional pediatrics with complementary and alternative medicine for children and research about environmental impacts on cellular and molecular mechanisms of development are of great interest. We will continue giving priority to manuscripts related to the impact of SARS-CoV-2. We are hopeful that the new year will be very fruitful for our goal of increased scientific knowledge and distribution of these discoveries. We are looking forward to reading, reviewing, and publishing your work. We will also see that it is preserved and recorded with DOI links and advertised widely. Manuscripts funded by NIH or their partners will be indexed as PubMed selected citations. We hope you will enjoy working with our editorial team. If you are reading this letter, you may well already be familiar with IIPEM. If you are interested in working with us, please, register as an author on the web at https://ijipem.com/index.php/ijipem/login. We will put our talents to work to make your paper readable and visible.