Science topic
Ethical Review - Science topic
A formal process of examination of patient care or research proposals for conformity with ethical standards. The review is usually conducted by an organized clinical or research ethics committee (CLINICAL ETHICS COMMITTEES or RESEARCH ETHICS COMMITTEES), sometimes by a subset of such a committee, an ad hoc group, or an individual ethicist (ETHICISTS).
Questions related to Ethical Review
What, in your opinion, is a reliable, objective, professional and thus really contributing to the effective development of science reviewing of scientific papers, diploma theses, dissertations containing the results of scientific research, text proposals sent to the editorial office for publication as scientific publications, including scientific articles, scientific monographs, etc.?
The reviewing of scientific articles by scientists specialised in a particular field of knowledge, conducted in the editorial process, is essential for maintaining a high level of scientific publications and for the development of scientific journals. However, there are times when it can be problematic and cumbersome for scientists who work in narrow, specific specialisations, fields, scientific disciplines.
On the one hand, it is widely accepted that the evaluation of a scientific paper during the peer review process should take into account and usually does take into account at least a dozen factors concerning both substantive issues, research, reference to the literature, timeliness of research results, correctness of inference, editorial quality, effects on the development of science, etc. The assessment of a scientific work during peer review should be carried out objectively, independently, fairly, according to a high level of assessment standards. Therefore, editorial activity, proofreading, editorial correction, scientific reviews, etc. should be carried out according to the applicable standards in order to maintain a certain level of scientific quality of published scientific work.
On the other hand, on the discussion forum of this Research Gate portal, many questions arise regarding the issue of objectivity and fairness in reviewing scientific papers. Yes, the processes of reviewing scientific texts proposed for publication is a serious issue. The issue of the level of objectivity and independence of reviewing scientific papers can influence the direction of science in narrow specialisations and scientific disciplines. The significant variation in the standards of reviewing processes, editorial processes, etc. between different editors of journals and other types of scientific publications is an important factor in considering the issue of the level of objectivity and the problems that arise in this regard. In order for the editorial and reviewing process to be fully objective and independent, among other things, institutional affiliation should not influence the editors' decision to publish a scientific paper and the assessment in the review of the text, manuscript by the reviewers. Unfortunately, however, it sometimes happens that institutional affiliation is taken into account in such situations.
An important element of maintaining a certain level of objectivity in the reviewing process of scientific papers is the application of the model of more than one review in the editorial boards of scientific journals and editorial boards of book publications and monographs, i.e. the standard of min. Two reviews written independently by other researchers and scientists operating in a given discipline of knowledge and/or who are recognised experts in a given issue. Consequently, the multi-review model is important as it should contribute to the improvement of scientific texts. The double (two reviews) review process for scientific papers raises the issue of the objectivity of the review process and is an important element of the editorial process. In some editorial boards of scientific journals and editorial boards of book publications and monographs, the model of 3 reviews is also applied, in which the third review plays an auxiliary and sometimes a decisive role in relation to the previous two reviews written, in which significantly different assessments appeared, different points of view on the given issue described in the reviewed scientific work.
In addition, there are other factors that are important for researchers and scientists, such as the length of the review process of submitted text proposals for publication and the period after which they receive a response from the editorial office. Sometimes the review and editorial processes take a long time. This is determined by various factors. During the SARS-CoV-2 (Covid-19) coronavirus pandemic, organising conferences in a traditional, desktop format and post-referral publication processes were difficult. An important issue is the communication standards in place in a given scientific publication editorial board. These standards can also vary widely, as some editorial offices write back with an e-mail response regarding the results of an evaluation, a review conducted, an editorial correction or feedback confirming receipt of a text, etc., within a period of several days or so after the text has been sent to the editorial office publishing a particular scientific text. However, there are also editors who write back with a response much later. For scientists and researchers, waiting a long time for a reply can be problematic in a situation where they are continuing their research in a particular field of knowledge, they are receiving new, new research results and the field or scientific discipline in which they are conducting research is developing rapidly.
The issues of the length of the review process, the process of editing a manuscript proposal submitted for publication, the issue of communication between the editorial office and the manuscript author may also be related to the acceptance by authors of journals that are not highly ranked in terms of recognition, reputation, Impact Factor, etc. If journals with a high Impact Factor are difficult to access due to the long review process and high publication costs, some researchers and scientists who want to publish their research results quickly publish in journals without Impact Factor. In addition, some journals without Impact Factor have other positive features, such as the inclusion of published articles in many scientific publication indexing databases and all this under the open access formula without any payment.
In the context of the issue at hand, the editorial requirements set by the editors of scientific journals for the preparation of articles and other texts for publication are also relevant. On the one hand, the standards of reviewing and editorial requirements sometimes vary widely between journals. On the other hand, meeting all editorial requirements in full may limit the issue of innovation in terms of the research conducted and its description and presentation in scientific publications. This is a complex issue that affects many scientific fields, the research conducted and the description of its results in specific types of scientific publications written according to the editorial standards of specific editors and scientific publishers.
Another issue of discussion in the context of the reviewing process of scientific texts is the progressive digitisation of documents. This process should encourage remote communication via e.g. email, and should assist in the editorial process concerning preparatory work prior to the publication of scientific texts. The issue of the progressive digitisation of documents and their increasingly automated digital processing is linked to the use of new ICT information technologies and Industry 4.0, including artificial intelligence, e.g. technology similar to ChatGPT to improve computerised applications and Internet-connected anti-plagiarism platforms used to verify texts during the process of reviewing scientific texts. I wrote about this issue in one of the previously formulated questions on my discussion forum of this Research Gate portal.
Counting on your opinions, on getting to know your personal opinion, on an honest approach to the discussion of scientific issues and not the ready-made answers generated in ChatGPT, I deliberately used the phrase "in your opinion" in the question.
In view of the above, I address the following question to the esteemed community of scientists and researchers:
What, in your opinion, consists in a reliable, objective, professional and thus really contributing to the effective development of science reviewing of scientific works, theses, dissertations containing the results of scientific research, text proposals sent to the editorial office for publication as scientific publications, including scientific articles, scientific monographs, etc.?
In your opinion, what is a reliable, objective, professional review of scientific papers, theses, etc.?
What do you think about this topic?
What is your opinion on this subject?
Please respond,
I invite you all to discuss,
Thank you very much,
Best wishes,
Dariusz Prokopowicz
The above text is entirely my own work written by me based on my research.
In writing this text, I did not use other sources or automatic text generation systems.
Copyright by Dariusz Prokopowicz

According to the following points, describe your opinion:
- Economic Impact: Productivity
- Social Impact: Healthcare
- Ethical and Moral Considerations
- Legal and Governance Issues: Regulation
- Technological Advancements: Innovation
- Cybersecurity
- Environmental Impact: Sustainability
- Cultural and Creative Fields
- Global Dynamics: Geopolitics
- Digital Divide
This topic has generated a lot discussion on the ethical implications of using language models like ChatGPT in academic settings. It drives us to consider potential biases, accuracy issues, and professionalism in academia while employing such technology. Furthermore, it encourages the investigation of alternate ways or complementary approaches that can improve academic success while resolving concerns about the incorporation of ChatGPT.
By considering the use of ChatGPT as a catalyst, and given the controversy surrounding their role, what are the potential benefits and drawbacks of introducing ChatGPT or similar language models into the academic product creation process? and does it assist the academic researcher in producing an efficient and engaging academic output, or does it cause the researcher to lose their ability to communicate ideas clearly and concisely and conveying arguments in a logical and convincing manner?
I submitted a paper to Springer which was rejected, but the preprint was generated before editorial check.
After rejection, I submitted the same paper to Emerald which was accepted after critical modifications. I later received a message of Copyright Infringement from Emerald because the preprint of the rejected paper appears on Researchsquare.
Should preprint of rejected papers be a copyright infringement?
Since many scientists do not like the current review process, which sometimes is biased.
This weekend, I decided to accept an invitation to review a paper by a new journal called Qeios. It is a journal without an editor, but I learnt that it is controlled by AI rather than traditional humans as journal editors/editorial assistants. It also supports Open Science and open review methods.
It appears that Qeios utilises AI to find out the best reviewers from databases across the world. This gets new people to review, and these people are always related to the topic, and are mostly experts! This is an example of AI being harnessed for good!
As an author, I have not published here but as a reviewer, it is my first review feedback that has been posted or reviews in #Qeios journal.
From my initial finding, these Qeios papers are basically preprints, which means that the authors can receive about 10 comments to improve the quality of the submission. That does not mean it will be accepted for final publication.
Although, the paper also gets a DOI, then it gets indexed on google scholar! You can find my first review for the journal online, at https://www.qeios.com/read/CLC992 for the paper's preprint which has DOI: https://doi.org/10.32388/CLC992
Their papers can be searched on Google and some scholars as well as academic experts have already endorsed #Qeios papers. What about you? Will you publish in it? Will you review for the journal?Does it look like it will overtake traditional journals? What are their advantages and disadvantages?
On August 18, 2022, a blog post by Clarivate indicated that Publons has been fused into Web of Science (WoS): "Publons™ has joined the Web of Science™"
Access to the Publons website now redirects to a WoS page, so that:
is now
Clarivate claims that all information (and supposedly data) has been integrated into WoS, but is that true if the public can no longer access the "publons.com" URL?
I have some questions for debate:
1) Will the Publons URL cease to exist?
2) Will WoS introduce paid services or paid access to access what was previously freely and publicly available information at Publons?
3) How will Clarivate reward reviewers?
4) Will the Publons brand be phased out, including things like the Publons Academy, Publons Peer Reviewer Award, etc?
I'm not entirely certain how this "Start a discussion" feature works, but I'll give it a shot anyways.
I can't be the only one experiencing a co-author paraphrasing all my work so that person can maintain complete control over the publishing process. Some have said this issue happens often at the graduate level but never at the undergraduate level. I'm a non-traditional 40-something year old student who has extensive experience with civil rights and so I'm particularly sensitive to people trying to pull a fast-one on me.
In this case, the professor glitched a few times which had me researching copyrights and IP laws a long time ago. However, I waited until after graduation to raise the issue because the university has a history of retaliation when people express concerns of possible civil rights violations. The corruption runs deep at this particular institution, which bases most of its decisions on their intentional lack of policies and procedures addressing fundamental rights such as free speech and intellectual property. In other words, they remain silent on key issues in order to have as much lateral discretion as possible when making critical decisions even when those decisions are inconsistent with both laws and ethics and could potentially ruin a student's entire academic career.
One of the biggest red flags I noticed early on was the professor neglected to go over the section in our textbook that addresses authorship order and publishing rights in the chapter titled "Research Ethics."
I think my mistake was taking for granted that I viewed this entire project as my own because it was based almost entirely on my research into safe consumption sites. The experimental design, methodologies, protocols, and procedures were created by myself during her class in "Research Methods" as graded assignments. It was, and always has been, my original ideas and content from the very beginning; it just never occurred to me that this professor could, or would, even try to scrub me out like this. I trusted this person and considered her a friend and mentor!
Looking back, I cannot remember even a single instance where we had this conversation despite it being a core principle of the American Psychology Association Code of Ethics. The professor is a licensed psychologist and my degree was in psychology so you'd think that would have been something we should have covered at least once. Right?
Has anyone else experienced issues similar to this? How did you handle it? What should I do, or have done, to prevent this from becoming an issue?
In the era of information and reasoning, we are shown several scientific pieces of information either in print form or online globally. Despite the appreciable access to information the originality, novelty, and quality of information are substandard. For example, a large number of researches done in the developing world are either published in reputable journals or on the shelf. However, implementation of these research findings is scarce.
This could be due to data quality or the quality and quantity of the research team involved. The Issues that could affect the quality of research in developing countries include but are not limited to;
· Availability of limited resources to support research projects
· Inadequate time devoted to research projects because people who teach at the university level in developing countries are rarely full-time professors and usually have several jobs.
· The theoretical nature of research methodology in the curriculum, so students become professionals without the practical knowledge of how to do research.
· Limited access to journals, search engines, and databases and high subscription cost that is beyond the reach of the budgets of both individual professionals and university libraries.
· Weak ethical review committee to verify ethical treatment of human subjects.
· Rationing research funds to several colleges and department, which lead to limited competition and an increased chance of doing weak research
· Weak institutional structure and lack of empowerment to research staff
· Poor data management systems and lack of databases
· Availability of poor research guidelines and poor composition of the research team (i.e. failure to involve all relevant expertise in developing proposals and conducting analysis and interpretation of findings)
In the face of the above challenges, using real-world health be a solution to data quality problems? If, what are possible changes using real-world health data in developing countries?
Despite the explicit indications in the "Instructions for Referees/Reviewers" provided by most scientific journals, it seems that rude unprofessional answers from anonymous reviewers are more common than we wish they were. Researchers recently reported that more than half of the authors submitting scientific manuscripts to international journals receive one or more unfair unprofessional reviews. Any Editor knows that unprofessional reviews should be dismissed and the reviewer should be warned about his/her misconduct. Some Editors may even remove the unprofessional reviewers from the list of experts from which they chose reviewers. However, we all know that recruiting reviewers (a voluntary time-consuming, and mostly unrewarded job) is increasingly hard, and Editors often need to invite many experts before one accepts to review, and so Editors seem to be more and more permissive and flexible with reviewers' reports. Within this context, my question is: How would you deal with expert reviewers that send unprofessional reviews? Is there any novel (or more effective than the usual) way to discourage reviewers from sending unfair reports without discouraging experts from accepting editorial invitations to review manuscripts?
These examples should give you a good idea of what unprofessional reviews can include (while reading them, please have in mind that the "authors" are colleagues with proven expertise in their fields):
“The first author is a woman. She should be in the kitchen, not writing papers.”
“The author’s last name sounds Spanish. I didn’t read the manuscript because I’m sure it is full of bad English.”
“Obviously, the authors have no idea what they are talking about”
“…. authors should not be doing science at all.”
“… I don´t care how many papers the authors have published, it is clear to me they are unfit to do good science”
““What the authors have done is an insult to science"
“You should look closely at a career outside of science.”
"[X] tried this in the 1990s and failed and he was more creative than you".
For more details, please read these articles:
Many field-based qualitative studies are exploratory, where researchers build relationships with the study participants and their contexts to explore participants' lived experiences, meanings, and interpretations of social phenomena. To under field-based qualitative research, university ethical review boards demand that researchers answer questions in their research ethics applications. some of such questions require the researcher to know beforehand what will, can, or is likely to happen in the field. However, since researcher-participant relationships are negotiation and an ongoing process, shouldn't certain ethical requirements be an ongoing reflection, where the research responds to how they attend to emergent ethical issues.
Please, share your unique challenges and experiences about university ethical review boards during your field-based qualitative studies to help early-career researchers. Many of the issues around university ethical review processes are not taught in the classroom, so graduate students and early-career researchers are often frustrated when it comes to securing ethical approval for their field-based qualitative research.
The algorithmic management of today comes in the form of AI-based solutions but it still is an algorithm with a binary system intact. What do you think of its usage and its novelty? How can we use AI-based evaluation to measure the efficiency of someone's work?
the technology development is growing up further day to day and mostly based on researches So, is this research development will be more beneficial or harmful to human future?
if we think little forward as AI and subset of it updating machines to next level may cause-effect of losing some human jobs or the technology will go further more to manage all human privacy for security reasons for governments secure sector.
think for moments this research you make the rate of benefit or harm on a human because the aim of science is to help humanity, not opposite it So, there should be some roles or something to develop to prevent it from harming human in future.
Share your opinion or idea or suggest some lab work for a project to do something as mentioned up.
Dear All,
Not so long time before we have received a review from a referee, asking us to introduce 17 (!!!) citations...yes, (nearly) ALL of them had a common co-author...we have have reported it to the Editor of the journal...and some weeks later, we have received another review for a new article, with 12 references, from the same author...and in a journal of the same publishing company (Elsevier).
How can we act against this kind of highly unethical approach? (we are sending a notification for the Editor...but... "come'n", these kind of people should be excluded from the reviewing procedures !!!, but also from publishing in highly rated journals...)
Any suggestion or similar experience?
Should we make it public his name? (but we can afraid if somehow he will receive another article from us...)
Thank you in advance!
Hi,
AI and Robots has got immense opportunities to solve large scale complexities. However, It is rather critical to think about the transparency (ethical practices) in the automation algorithms in sensitive sectors such as health, financial stocks, Automated Cars, etc. For instance, How can one rely on Self driving cars without any doubt, irrespective of its make?? How can we achieve such transparency? Are there any standards implemented to ensure that the automation applications are safe to use??
Recently, the editor of an- free of charge- international journal wasted our time. She woke up after 4 months by our inquiry; "how long it takes to provide us with the first feedback". The reviewers, after 3 working days, answered back, and finally rejected our manuscript. It's not the first time that editors and reviewers do so.
The question, not only from them but from other reviewers, is: have you had been intentionally planned to waste our time due to our nationality and affiliations?
I know many weak published papers -even from known universities and not-sanctioned countries- which I wonder why this is published in journals.
Hello dear Reserachers, Professors,
I'm asking myself and you, for the effects of Covid-19 on publication, reviewing process, and reclassification of priorioties on certain topics; e.g: and with high probability, the first topic will be all reserches treated this virus and relatid subjects...)
How you see this new shift ?
Best Wishes
Our recent article submitted to a leading Elsevier journal resulted in reject decision. Three of the reviewers' out of four recommended the article after major revision, while one reviewer simply wrote 'reject due to no innovation'. In this case, what could be the review reports of the three reviewers who have recommended for acceptance after revision? Is it scientifically right?
This question is based on the following facts (publish or perish):
"Do you feel overwhelmed by the number of research papers in your field?
Do you wonder if you’re missing key ideas that could be critical for your research program? Does it feel like the deluge is only getting worse?
You’re not imagining things. According to research from the University of Ottawa, in 2009 we passed the 50 million mark in terms of the total number of science papers published since 1665, and approximately 2.5 million new scientific papers are published each year.
What’s driving this publication explosion?
At its most basic level, we’ve seen a substantial increase in the total number of academic journals. As of 2014 there were approximately 28,100 active scholarly peer-reviewed journals. Add to this the increasing number of predatory or fake scientific journals, which produce high volumes of poor-quality research, and you have a veritable jungle of journals to wade through.
Another key factor is the sheer number of publishing scientists worldwide, which is increasing at a rate of approximately 4-5% per year. In British Columbia and Alberta alone, we’ve seen the conversion of more than seven colleges to universities in the past decade, and with these changes come new pressures on faculty to publish.
This pressure to “publish or perish”—and the increased competition amongst this growing pool of scientists—has resulted in some researchers becoming what’s termed “salami slicers.”
They divide papers into the least publishable unit in order to lengthen their publication list, increase the chances of being cited, and increase the opportunity to publish in journals with a high impact factor. This further contributes to the volume of papers published."
When submitting an article that complements our previous researches, we often face the dilemma of decide how much we should cite our works. Couldn’t the excessive number of self-citations pass a wrong impression for reviewers and editors? In your opinion, what is the limit between the self-citation and the self-promotion?
Does adherence to a good business practices, adherence to ethical and moral principles in business activities be an important factor in the development of effectively developing social market economies?
Please reply
Best wishes

After manuscript acceptance, a quick publication is desired but some journals take as much as a year before publishing accepted manuscript without providing early view option. This can be frustrating after the arduous review process. What are the ethical options for handling delayed publication of accepted manuscripts?
Normally we are writing abstract and conclusion generally. Specifically I expect what are the information we have to include in the abstract and conclusion in the research articles.
Many journals asking four peer reviewers details mandatory while submitting research article.
Dear Researchers,
Recently, I had done a survey regarding the professional requirements and opinions of the folks using survey monkey. I am planning to publish the results. Please let me know whether the IRB/IEC clearence is required for the submission of manuscript for the peer reviews. Please do help me and the study was completely focused on participant's opinion.
I have been working in population health related research for last 20 years. Consent taking has been an important part of research. The study participants feel more comfortable to give verbal consent than written. Even a former Vice Chancellor, study participant of a research' of a University of Nepal said that that he would give 'verbal consent'but not the 'written consent'. On the other hand, many Ethical Review Board make 'written Consent' mandatory. I would like to hear your experiences.
We are planning to conduct a questionnaire-based study among dental students of different dental colleges of Nepal (within a country). Should we obtain ethical clearance from each institution's ethical review board or a clearance from one ethical review board is sufficient?
Is obtaining ethical clearance/approval essential/mandatory for case report, report of cases or case series? Must an ethical approval be sought and obtained prior to writing case report or case series?
A noticed that some journals adopt double-blind reviews, while some others "single" blind reviews: double-blind reviews imply that both the author and the reviewers are blind, while single-blind reviews imply that reviewers are blind and the author is not.
Despite the limits of "blindness" by itself (it is sometime possible to understand who is the author anyway), I find the double-blind review process more fair.
Why therefore do some journals opt for single-blind reviews (authors are visible to the reviewers)? What's your opinion about it?
Open Review on RG gives us the freedom to review any publication on RG. However, so many of us are loaded with work. I don't have summer holidays nor students to help me write my papers. So far, I managed to review only 2 papers on RG, that I felt were within my knowledge and I could give some extra input. Given our commitments and time constraints, how can we make a more active and creative use of the Open Review feature?
And how can we be helpful to other researchers by providing CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK?

Whenever you want to conduct research related with some particular topics such as health or with a sensitive sample (e.g. kids), the previous step is to have an IRB and signed informed consents. Does it also happen with any other behaviour experiment we may want to develop?
The double-blind revision process is a mechanism that in my opinion should be taken into consideration by scientific journals since many times papers are accepted in high impact factor journals not really for the good quality of the work but for the good reputation of the last name. Why does this continue to happen?
The Canadian PRE provides a free online tutuorial and Macquarie University in Australia has a free online course about ethics in research. They are both quite different and targeted to different audiences. Are there other resources that exist (excluding paid courses) for novice or community researchers embarking on the ethical review process.
Can someone suggest a mechanism to screen out unauthenticated mushrooming journals and to assist the researchers to publish their works in appropriate journals.