(20 Jan 2021) China is ramping up its crackdown on academic misconduct with plans for plagiarism spot checks on undergraduate dissertations, warning universities that they face losing funding or having their right to enrol students suspended if they consistently perform poorly. The Ministry of Education said that provincial education authorities will sample at least 2 per…
Only a small fraction of research misconduct ever comes to light. Independent investigative bodies could remedy that. (11 Aug 2020) From Nature Index: Only a small fraction of research misconduct ever comes to light. What’s more, many commonplace research misbehaviors are categorized as questionable research practices (QRPs) rather than outright misconduct. That includes publication bias, where scholarly…
(4 Aug 2020) Turnitin today announced a comprehensive academic integrity solution called Turnitin Originality. Turnitin Originality combines the text similarity checking functionality that Turnitin is known for with new features that help instructors address trends such as contract cheating and teach students the value of original thinking skills. Turnitin Originality uses comprehensive technology to help…
(13 May 2020) From Nature: “The world’s largest science publishers are teaming up to discuss how to automatically flag altered or duplicated images in research papers. A new working group — the first formal cross-industry initiative to discuss the issue — aims to set standards for software that screens papers for problematic images during peer…
(11 Feb 2020) From Elsevier Research Academy: “Advancing technology has put the control of scientific images in the hands of researchers and authors. According to most journal guidelines, images submitted with a manuscript for review should be minimally processed. However, with limited knowledge on the subject, it is difficult to assess whether the manipulation of an image is…
(24 Jan 2020) An investigation by Elisabeth Bik, Smut Clyde, Morty and Tiger BB8 reveals the workings of a paper mill. Its customers are Chinese doctors desperate for promotion. Apparently even journal editors are part of the scam, publishing fraudulent made-up science. Read the full story here.
(7 Nov 2019) A former researcher at Boys Town National Research Hospital in Nebraska has agreed to a five-year ban from the U.S. Office of Research Integrity (ORI) on receiving federal science funding after being found guilty of having fabricated data in numerous grant applications and articles. The researcher has been reported using the same…
(20 Aug 2019) A new set of standards to define publishing misconduct in China should make Chinese authors’ work more acceptable to international journals, according to the standards’ lead author. The agency in charge of China’s publishing sector, the National Press and Publication Administration (NPPA), released and adopted in July the Academic publishing specification—Definition of academic misconduct for…
(25 Jul 2019) The UK is establishing a research integrity committee to better monitor how robustly the nation’s universities carry out research misconduct investigations. The committee is due to begin its work in early next summer, the government has announced. More details can be found here.
(10 Jul 2019) Sweden has passed a law to create a government agency to investigate research misconduct. On June 18, the Swedish Parliament passed the law to create the Research Misconduct Board, which will become active in January 2020 and oversee cases of misconduct from public higher education institutions, central government agencies, municipalities, county councils,…