Pressure to publish scientific research articles has been mounting not just to sustain and further one’s academic career, but also for universities to secure their “desired spot” in lists of university ranking. Increasing demand for publications has raised many concerns such as plagiarism, duplicate publications, salami slicing, gift authors, and other unethical/dubious research practices.
I am not sure if there is a one size fits all approach to deal with unethical publication practices. On one hand, the authors, editors, reviewers, and publishers have their roles to combat such practices. The authors have the responsibility of writing without engaging in any plagiarism and self-plagirism
The editors and reviewers have the responsibility to carefully scrutinize and evaluate the papers before accepting for publication. The publishers use high quality softwares such as iThenticate to check for text overlap. On the other hand, supervisors and mentors have a responsibility to teach their students about these unethical practices. Based on my limited experience in academia, sometimes universities and mentors are so much focused on building their own reputation that they pay limited attention to effective training of students regarding publication process. Most of the graduate students are well versed with the course content and the strategies to write papers, but they are not equipped with the knowledge of unethical practices such as publication in predatory journals, salami slicing, duplicate publications. Unfortunately, some academics themselves publish in predatory journals and engage in these unethical practices so it is even difficult for them to teach their students effectively.
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