In the context of academic ethics, how does the scholarly community view the intentional omission of citations to previous work based on personal relationships? Furthermore, to what extent can the selection of peer reviewers influence such omissions? Despite the emphasis on scientific rigor, concerns about these issues persist in the academic world.
The intentional omission of citations to previous work based on personal relationships is generally viewed as a form of academic dishonesty and a violation of scholarly ethics. The scholarly community values the importance of giving credit where it is due and acknowledging the contributions of other researchers in the field. Failure to cite relevant work can be seen as an attempt to take credit for the ideas or findings of others, which undermines the integrity of the academic enterprise. The selection of peer reviewers can potentially influence the degree of citation omissions, as reviewers may have personal relationships with the authors or be more closely aligned with their research perspectives. However, reputable academic journals have strict policies and procedures in place to ensure that peer reviewers are objective and unbiased, and that they evaluate submissions solely on the basis of their scientific merit.
Ahmed El Hassani This is an interesting question. I believe the academic community would collectively agree that any omission of citation to other authors' previous work would be wrong, whatever the context or author. That said, perhaps the intentional omission of citation that you are talking about is because the authors believe it is self-evident due to their own personal relationship and perspective. However, any author using the work of others needs to remember the reader's perspective and the necessity for attribution of work, and peer reviewers would definitely have a role in pointing out where citation is missing before work is published.
Hi,
It depends. If the reference is omitted because of personal issues, it is clearly not ethical.
Also, if the reference is omitted because its content disproves the research or casts doubts on it, then it is unethical.
By contrast, several journals limit the number of references. In that case, authors may choose to omit references because they might consider others more important. The choice then becomes political or strategical or a question of taste, and might seem unethical without being really unethical.
Ultimately, there is no simple answer to that question.
The scientific community generally considers intentionally avoiding or refusing to cite relevant prior literature as unethical. That said, this is one of many aspects in academia where despite being agreed to be unethical, everyone will also admit this kind of behavior is expected and even common within academia.
The problem here is twofold...
1) it's really hard to prove not citing a resource was due to malice, rather than simply being overlooked. This is especially the case where there is a language barrier and researchers will often skim the figures of a paper written in a language that is not their primary one rather than read the actual ideas/data presented in the text.
That said there are cases where, given context, it can be really easy to see intentional omissions. For example, a researcher over a 10-20 year career having a significant blind spot when it comes to citing one of their major competitors. I've also seen cases where people claim they didn't cite a paper because "they didn't know it existed" when they were a reviewer or handling editor for that paper.
2) The other problem is even if you can demonstrate deliberate omission has occurred, in the words of many researchers "what are you going to do about it?" There are essentially no consequences for bad behavior beyond an institutional level. Once a paper gets through review there is essentially nothing that can be done. Even if a manuscript is rejected for not approproately citing prior literature, it will just get accepted elsewhere in a less prestigious journal. And reviewers asking authors to include citations (often their own) in a paper is considered impolite, even if it's a *really* obvious case of the authors deliberately omitting colleagues' research for personal reasons.
As mentioned above, one of the few acceptable situations where it is okay to omit citations are in shorter, higher impact journals such as Science, Nature, PNAS, and Proceedings of the Royal Society B/Biology Letters. There space is at a premium, and less is more. Citations take up a *lot* of wordcount and page limits, especially if the author does due diligence.
World academia is truly asymmetrical, and highly competitive, when we (under development countries) publish in local journal to support local academia development, then the develop countries colleagues don't mention our publications because our journals are, regarding them, Obscure publication.
Beyond that, when we (scientist from development country) publish something, that clearly is in competition with the ideas of colleagues from Develop countries, always they do not cite us, arguing languages barriers, bad english, and a plethora of excuses to avoid to cite those papers, valuable or not.
But sometimes we are under Scientific Ostracism!, because some colleagues do not tolerate different ideas, hypothesis etc, and they avoid to cite our papers, by simple personal ego, or more complicated personal differences.
Science this days has transforme as a "Business" for more money and power, and because that some colleagues ostracize others.
Even worse, some colleagues called themself as Specialist, and avoid to cite other colleagues, to try to delete them, because that means more money for project to the "Specialist" and more power!
Thats is the Ugly Truth! in my humble opinion!
The fact of the matter is, if you work on area where you are the expert, you have no choice but to self cite yourself or your close work colleagues. I don't consider it rude or impolite, its just the way it is. Fisheries is not as big a field as one may think. Just my opinion.
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