If a young researcher does research on a specific topic and completes all formalities regarding prep, characterization, activity, application etc honestly with enthusiasm. After this he submits his paper to a journal for publishing, the reviewers give him feedback that you should review your paper and should do amendments etc etc and then submit again.
On the other hand, if anyone sitting in a lab/room and working on laptop/pc and amends the results of the study already reported, then reports that he has done this study, although this consists of fake results alround. He submits the paper to a journal and the journal accepts his paper.
HOW REVIEWERS AND EDITORS OF JOURNAL MAKE SURE THAT THIS STUDY IS ORIGINAL AND THIS STUDY IS FAKE?
Valuable answers will be appreciated.
This is a big issue. I have seen a lot of discussion on this topic on researchgate as well as other prestigious forums such Science and Nature. In addition to all obvious things like anti-plagiarism, cross-ref, ORCID, presentation of someone through selected papers, impact factor, citations etc., I think AREA OF EXPERTIES and TIMELINE may also work. For example, a person usually have a specific area of experty and publishes in this field. However, those who publish fake papers usually don't remain in their domain. Next is timeline, the number of papers a student can publish differ hugely from a professor who is supervising tens of students. I personally cases where someone is in teaching in an institution which is not dealing in higher education (and thus research), however, they are publishing papers every months with co-authors from same institute.
Thanks for your feeback pedro and mubashar.
But in my opinion, anti-plagiarism software is not sufficent to make sure either work is original or not because every senior researcher has anti-plagiarism software from where he can check the plagiarism of his paper and amends the research paper after plagiarism.
Hy,
its a crime to use the data of others as well as to publish the fake research articles. in addition to anti plagiarism software, there is a moral aspect for the researcher.
Dear Nayab
yes, I'm agree wth you that it's a crime to publish fake data.Tha's why i am asking that how we can say this data is fake and this data is original. Nowadays many scientists are working for their research papers so that they can improve their profile/timeline. So in this race of research articles, I think they will no bother either they are using fake data or original data
AoA
Muhammad Usman Munir, Nayab Tahir , Mubashar Rehman and Pedro Ribeiro Mucharreira.
There is a solution to this issue, every journal should demand the crude data of that particular experiment plus relevant pictures. Lets say you are doing Green synthesis of metal nanoparticles plus characterization and Application. The Journal should ask for following things.
1) Relevant Voucher number of plant sample submitted in a particular institute, with contact number.(which can be contacted in case of suspection).
2) Pictures of Synthesis step plus optimization.
3) Data points of U.V Spectroscopy on which graphs are made.
4) Crude data of FTIR,XRD,TGA analysis.
5) From which institute SEM/TEM is performed? Contact number of relevant technician and head of institute.
6) Similarly crude data for Anti-cancer activity lets say.
This way the chances of publishing fake data can be lowered significantly.
Another way which came in my mind is very interesting.
Every reviewer of a paper should arrange a Skype session of 10 minutes with the corresponding author of a particular study and asks him technical questions and let him defend his study.
I believe these are the very interesting ways to stop some one from publishing fake data. Secondly if you demand for such things almost 80% of fake writers will quit.
I hope you all will respond with your valuable suggestions.
Thanks
Dear Ovais,
I like your idea of skype interview and it will be challenging for fake researchers to defend his fake research.
The idea of skype call with corresponding author is not realistic because journals receives dozens of papers daily and editors usually have busy schedules of their other assignments. An editor may not be able to critically read the paper and go for the 10 minutes call.
A similar idea may be the non-blinded or open peer review where authors and reviewer know each other's name (and address). They may be able to communicate during review process and names of reviewer will also appear on paper. Although it may appear biased, because authors can contact reviewer for favor, but reviewers will be held accountable if anything wrong (technically incorrect) gets published.
A few weeks ago, Ocorrafoo Cobange reported to Science that he sent a fake research paper to hundreds of peer reviewed journals. According to him, a student with high school knowledge of chemistry "should have spotted the paper's shortcoming", and they accepted this paper to be "promptly rejected" by editor. However, they found that more than 100 journals accepted it [1]. You can also browse through online map and find geographically distribution of journal that accepted or rejected on following [2].
[1] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2012/10/10/science.1227833.figures-only
[2] http://scicomm.scimagdev.org/
Warmest regards,
Mubashar
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