In this episode of SSP’s Early Career Development Podcast, hosts Meredith Adinolfi (Cell Press) and Sara Grimme (Digital Science) chat with Rafal Marszalek, the Chief Editor at Nature’s largest journal, Scientific Reports. They dive into what the buzzwords of ‘publication ethics’ and ‘research integrity’ really mean in the context of scholarly publishing, and the differences between the concepts. Listeners will hear how both have changed over the last several decades, and what managing them means in the current publishing landscape. 

Rafal shares his career trajectory from research in analytical and biological chemistry, receiving his PhD in single-cell proteomics at Imperial College London, to moving into publishing as an editor at Genome Biology before joining Scientific Reports in 2016. The journal is regarded as the largest in the world, making it a helpful context for discussing research integrity and publishing ethics.  

Rafal broadly defines both terms, cites some accepted principles of research integrity, and describes some of the misconduct scholarly publishers have been seeing violate these principles, such as falsification, manipulation of authorship, and corruption of the publication process. Though some of this misconduct seems to be on the rise, Rafal reminds listeners there are also additional tools increasing visibility and identification of violations of integrity and ethics. He then goes into the implications of misinformation beyond what some listeners may have considered, and tackles a question he considers one of the biggest “sticking points” of the research integrity question: who is responsible for mitigation?  

The episode concludes with a discussion of shared responsibility around research integrity across the industry, as well as the role of AI. Rafal underscores the importance of education and training in research institutions as well as publishers, and outlines some of the mitigation strategies being used at Scientific Reports. 

Also featured in this episode are resources for getting started in your understanding of research integrity in scholarly publishing, listed below. Rafal encourages early career professionals to add these to their news sources for the industry, as well as to investigate case studies of misconduct to understand best practices and lessons learned.  

Resources from this Episode: 

• World Conferences on Research Integrity Guidance Statement– principles and professional responsibilities that are fundamental to the integrity of research wherever it is undertaken 

• Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE)– getting started in publication ethics 

• Journalology– from James Butcher, a newsletter to help editors and publishing professionals keep up to date with scholarly publishing 

• Scalene– from Chris Leonard, a newsletter documenting the changing nature of interactions between humans, the peer review process, and AI 

Background on this podcast series

SSP’s Career Development Committee launched this podcast series in 2019 to offer advice and discussion on how early career publishing professionals can add to their skill sets, develop networks, and take advantage of new opportunities. The series presents interviews and insights from experienced professionals on how to navigate one’s career in a diverse and ever-changing landscape of scholarly communications. If you have any feedback for the hosts, creators, or for future episodes, please email info@sspnet.org