DARU Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences (2020) 28:359–369

https://doi.org/10.1007/s40199-020-00332-1

REVIEW ARTICLE

A review of the current concerns about misconduct in medical

sciences publications and the consequences
Taraneh Mousavi 1 & Mohammad Abdollahi 1

Received: 17 December 2019 / Accepted: 31 January 2020 / Published online: 19 February 2020
# Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

Abstract
Background In the new era of publication, scientific misconduct has become a focus of concern including extreme variability of
plagiarism, falsification, fabrication, authorship issues, peer review manipulation, etc. Along with, overarching theme of
“retraction” and “predatory journals” have emphasized the importance of studying related infrastructures.
Methods Information used in this review was provided through accessing various databases as Google Scholar, Web of Science,
Scopus, PubMed, Nature Index, Publication Ethics and Retraction Watch. Original researches, expert opinions, comments, letters,
editorials, books mostly published between 2010 and 2020 were gathered and categorized into three sections of “Common types of
misconduct”,” Reasons behind scientific misconduct” and “Consequences”. Within each part, remarkable examples from the past
10 years cited in Retraction Watch are indicated. At last, possible solution on combating misconduct are suggested.
Results The number of publications are on the dramatic rise fostering a competition under which scholars are pushed to publish
more. Consequently, due to several reasons including poor linguistic and illustration skills, not adequate evaluation, limited
experience, etc. researchers might tend toward misbehavior endangering the health facts and ultimately, eroding country, journal/
publisher, and perpetrator’s creditability. The reported incident seems to be enhanced by the emergence of predatory with
publishing about 8 times more papers in 2014 than which is in 2010. So that today, 65.3% of paper retraction is solely attributing
to misconduct, with plagiarism at the forefront. As well, authorship issues and peer-review manipulation are found to have
significant contribution besides further types of misconduct in this duration.
Conclusion Given the expansion of the academic competitive environment and with the increase in research misconduct, the role
of any regulatory sector, including universities, journals/publishers, government, etc. in preventing this phenomenon must be
fully focused and fundamental alternation should be implemented in this regard.

Keywords Misconduct . Medical sciences . Publications . Consequences

Introduction increments, more than other factors, is attributable to the sig-

Over the past decade, the total documentation of solely 233
top global countries contained in Scopus database has in-
creased from 2,771,765 in 2010 to approximately 4 million
in 2018 according to SCImago Institutions Rankings (SIR) [1]
. Along with, a trend of “hyper authorship” or “mass author-
ship”, writing articles with more than 1000 co-authors, have
increased about 2-fold over five past years [2]. These
* Mohammad Abdollahi
Mohammad@TUMS.Ac.Ir
1
Toxicology & Diseases Group, Pharmaceutical Sciences Research
Center (PSRC), The Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (TIPS), and
Department of Toxicology & Pharmacology, School of Pharmacy,
Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran
nificant rise in the number of universities, researchers and
accordingly fostering a hypercompetitive environment in
which publishing more articles or having higher metrics are
told to be the only way of being successful. While it can be
said that such atmosphere is beneficial for science growth, one
must always keep in mind what are the detrimental conse-
quences if there is improper academic evaluation; for instance
easier entrance exam, inadequate supervision on professors
performance, and paying more attention to personal desires
including gaining scholarships, grants, carrier promotion,
fame, and monetary benefits [3, 4]. Going one step further,
the undue attention to bibliometric used globally fosters this
atmosphere within exerting unintended effects from negligible
academic bullying (insulting, mistreating, embracing, humili-
ating) to more notably holding a place in employing or
360
promoting professors because of higher metrics indices or
pushing students to publish more articles deprived of practical
application [5, 6]. Indeed, today’s development of such ques-
tionable criteria may be rooted from lower academic levels
where the precedence over average/scores for decision mak-
ing or rewarding, teach students to cheat or make teachers to
not anymore focus on the final goal of improving students’
knowledge [7]. So, it is not surprising then that lack of re-
searcher’s knowledge from early stages, coupled with high
academic pressure and innate desire to be outrank ultimately
become a bullet firing research integrity and resultantly
exerting detrimental effects of unethical principles so called
“scientific misconduct” or “research fraudulence”. Existence
of scientific misconduct in the field of medical sciences has
shown to inflict very severe blows to the individual and public
health; highlighting the immediate need of solution finding.
Thus, to help out meeting this challenge, this article begins
with giving the definition and more recent types of research
misconduct at the current, followed by providing a complete
explanation on both reasons and consequences through re-
markable examples and lastly offering possible solutions by
addressing globally accepted guidelines. As far as we know,
there is no similar study in the past decade with categorizing
the contributory factors and outcomes in a detailed way. This
is the first study in its kind focusing on the most recent top
cases of misconduct, all can be served as a lesson for current
researchers and be valuable to secure the future of research
integrity.
Methods
Information used in this review was provided through
accessing various databases as Google Scholar, Web of
Science, Scopus, PubMed, Nature Index, Publication Ethics
and Retraction Watch. Searched terms mostly include
“Scientific Misconduct”, “Misconduct in Research”, “Types
of Misconduct in Research”, “Consequences of Scientific
Misconduct”, “Global Burden of Publications and
Misconduct” and many others. Original researches, expert
opinions, comments, letters, editorials, books mostly pub-
lished between 2010 and 2020 were also gathered and
addressed.
Misconduct and common types
Scientific misconduct is a growing phenomenon defined as
“fabrication, falsification or plagiarism in proposing,
performing or reviewing research or in reporting research”
according to the US Office of Research Integrity. By the other
terms, the types of misconduct are, but not limited to, “FFP”
standing for fabrication (reporting non-observed results),
DARU J Pharm Sci (2020) 28:359–369
falsification (manipulating data or material) and plagiarism
(the act of utilizing someone else’s statement, idea, methods
or results without permission) [8, 9] including salami-slicing,
picture manipulation, self-plagiarism and text recycling; all
defined in Table 1. As an example, in 2019, plagiarism detec-
tion company disclosed that of about 4 million Russian-
language studies, 70,000 were republished from 2 to 17 times,
mostly owing to self-plagiarism [10].
More broadly, other types of misconduct i.e. authorship
issues mainly “Guest Authorship”,“Gift Authorship” and
“Ghost Authorship” and peer review manipulation have un-
dergone a substantial expansion in developing and sanctioned
countries possibly due the to restriction in publication [8]. In
2015, Springer Nature retracted 58 papers all containing au-
thorship issues and peer review manipulation and 70% of
which were due to plagiarism. The same experiment by
BioMed Central revealed that peer-review manipulation
accounted for 57%, plagiarism for 93% and authorship ma-
nipulation was a reason for all of retractions [11]. In the re-
spect of authorship issues, ghost authorship is indicated in two
different ways; first, senior researchers list those who had little
or no cooperation with main author, like cases reported from
the South Korea who write the name of the school-aged chil-
dren as co-authors to increase the chance of university admis-
sions [3, 12, 13]. Second, removing one’s name from the list
of authors despite being contributed [14]. Guest authorship is
also about fraudsters who abuse the name of famous research-
er as co-author or corresponding author with the aim of in-
creasing the chance of publication while the researcher has
had no contribution [15]. As a report, a group of researchers
did fake submission through using the prominent Dutch econ-
omist to ease acceptance. Interestingly, after questioning the
editors, his name was removed in manuscript revision, saying
he no longer wants to be among the author, however this
attempt failed and the article was retracted due to the issue
of guest authorship [16].
Compromising of peer-review integrity is of another type
that has been coming to the fore in recent years. In 2012, a
group of researchers used fake Elsevier Editorial System
(EES) account, created a positive report from a fictional
well-known referee hence mislead the editor [17]. Similar to
this, a researcher lost 24 of his paper solely due to using fake
email address and doing his own peer-review [18]. In 2015,
BioMed Central (BMC) also removed 43 papers for fake re-
views, mostly conducted by third party agencies providing
fabricated details of potential peer-reviewers [19].
Unfortunately, greed for fame causes some peer reviewer to
reject manuscript, steal and republish them under their own
name. For instance, a submitted manuscript to Multimedia
Tools and Applications (MTAP) that was under review for about
13 months with final rejection, was thoroughly plagiarized and
republished days after by reviewer of the rejected manuscript,
which is about peer review manipulation [20].
DARU J Pharm Sci (2020) 28:359–369 361

Table 1 Most common types of research misconduct

Types of Scientific Misconduct Definition [9, 22]

Fabrication Forging/Dry-labbing Not only producing data but also including the description of non-performed ex-
periment
Issues on references Using fake or unrelated references
Falsification Trimming Removing data irregularity to make it more convincible
Cooking/Suppression Just reporting supporting outcomes to the hypothesis
Plagiarism Cloning Copying one’s else work word by word and submitting it
Ctrl-c Copying text from single source without any changes
Find-replace Just changing key words/phrases
Remix Rephrasing and combining sentences from multiple source
Recycle Borrowing generously from the writer’s previous work without citation.
Citation cartel Group of researchers/colleagues usually in the same field who cite each other’s
works overly collegial reasons or to achieve higher metrics
Hybrid Combining and copying cited sources without providing citations
Mash-up Mixing copied material from multiple sources
Eror-404 Citing to non-existent or inaccurate sources
Aggregator Paper contains no original work however the citation is proper
Retweet Containing to much text from the original however the citation is proper
Picture/Figure manipulation Combining images, cropping non-related parts, changing brightness or contrast,
fully copying an image
Shotgunning Simultaneous submission of the same research article to multiple journals
Salami slicing Publishing many single research articles in order to improve metrics although
they all could be combined in one larger study
Templating Fully copying structure, format and phrases from another published article
Authorship Issues Gift Authorship Including one’s name for future counter-gift e.g. increasing collaboration
Guest Authorship Abusing the name of famous researcher to increase the chance of publishing in
top journals
Ghost Authorship -Including one’s name who has few/no collaboration
-Removing one’s name from the list of authors despite being contributed
Coercion Authorship Superiors request including their name if the article is originated through their
department
Peer Review Issues and Bias (gender/ regional discrimination)
Manipulation Providing dishonest review comments
Stealing rejected papers and republishing them
Using fake referee’s report or third party to obtain a favorable review

Bias, gender discrimination in particular, is another today’s
issue on peer review process affecting submissions by female
as corresponding author/first author to be more rejected even
without providing peer review; which is revealed by the insti-
tute of physic (IOP) and the journal eLife, although it is hard to
believe. One more analysis in 2018 by Royal Society of
Chemistry (RSC) also demonstrated that 25.6% and 34.2%
of all rejected papers without peer review are one’s submitted
by women as corresponding author or first author in
respect [21]. Of note, in the current era with political
issues, regional bias exists as well which makes some
peer reviewers to not handle manuscript from sanctioned
countries. This concern will be more discussed in the following
section.
Reasons behind scientific misconduct
Main reasons: “Publish or Perish” and “A Gap
in Knowledge”
Today we face with the avalanche of admissions to university,
growing number of researchers and resultantly the added pres-
sure on academic environment, all strongly emphasize the
contribution of the traditional culture of “publish or perish”
in misconduct. Publish or Perish means there is a high pres-
sure on scholars desiring for success to publish more articles
in a very short duration otherwise there is no place for them in
the academic competitive environment. One influential factor
in this extent is the importance of articles quantity and metrics
362
rather than quality in nowadays research which has made pub-
lishing compulsory. For instance, sometimes we see somebody
publishes several articles just in a month or students aiming to
secure their position/improve their CVs, rather than paying atten-
tion to effective learning, waste more time writing worthlessness
articles [5]. Then, what could be the reason and outcomes of
these except that one has violated authorship issues or will em-
ploy misconduct? [23, 24]
Besides the culture of Publish or Perish, there is another rea-
son behind scientific misconduct with the rapid advent which is
the issue of “A Gap in Knowledge” appearing either in the shape
of lacking linguistic, illustration or scientific skills.
On the other terms, some researchers, mostly undergradu-
ates, often insist on authoring more papers so as to add a line
to their CVs and obtain scholarships. However, in some cases,
they may generally lack enough scientific and lingual infor-
mation which could be later problematic and cause misinter-
pretation [8]. The recent incident occurs more in developing
countries including China, Malaysia, Mexico, Taiwan, and
Pakistan according to reports [8, 25]. As a main reason, non-
native-English-speaking authors are contributing who might
misunderstand the subject, thus either declare mistaken per-
ception or copy the statements without having permission or
including references. Moreover, the challenge of “linguistic
interference” and/or “poor illustration skills” that are rooted
from not passing the relevant courses, place major restriction
on authors asked to write review articles or editorials by way
of expressing the similar idea in different words [26]. By the
same token, the abuse of the language differences, may end in
additional fraudulence where a researcher translate non-
English texts (for example especially Chinese) into English
and republish under his/her own names [4].
Other reasons
Senior researchers
The reasons behind scientific misconduct are not limited to
reported factors as it can attribute to masters whom themselves
carry out unreliable studies and/or persuade others into it.
In this respect, the matter of “bias” causes some supervisors to
compare their student’s results with prior successful ones and lay
the blame if they are not encouraging enough. Thus the intention
to publish more along with fear of blame, make academics start
data alternation and selectively report the supporting outcomes
which is referred to as “cooking” or “suppression” [9]. Here,
authorship issues, guest authorship in particular, may also be
raised when supervisors don’t devote adequate energy and time
to the work under their direction and set early researchers to do it
alone [23]. Aside from, high pressure in academic environment
may lead masters to get more exhausted, frustrated and greedy
for carrier promotion and research grants accompanied by higher
metrics (i.e. number of articles, citations, etc.). The lack of proper
DARU J Pharm Sci (2020) 28:359–369
monitoring or available working reports, then, let masters easily
employ academic bullying like insulting, mistreating, embracing
and humiliating, altogether result in a sense of fear particularly
among undergraduates and push them toward unethical princi-
ples to gain satisfactory outcomes [6]. Quite the reverse, there are
supervisors who find punishing and exposing offenses contrary
to ethical values and always offer fraudsters forgiveness. This
exemplary behavior, rooting from the cultural belief, not allows
the wrongdoer to learn from his/her mistake, hence one may
continue doing unethical principles [23].
Journals
Digital publishing is of another aspect of provoking miscon-
duct where profitable individuals take every opportunities and
start predatory printing to set researchers (esp. undergradu-
ates) up [4]. These fraudsters, at the expense of the authors
(called article processing charges, or APCs) print articles in
fake journals without necessary proper checking the quality
and not providing edition services [4, 27–30]. A study in 2017
suggested that some journals are willing to include the names
of researchers seeking for a carrier promotion in manuscript
revisions for a fee and by paying more, researchers can even
be introduced as a journal editor [31, 32]. Nevertheless, a very
recent research on 250 predatory journals implied that al-
though the amount of papers published in predatory journals
have increased about 8 times within 2010 to 2014, they seem
to barely question the accuracy of research. Forasmuch as
59.6% of papers published in such journals have no citation
and just around 2.8% cited more than 11 times limited to 32
citation at most [33].
Along with fake publication, fraudsters sometimes start
naming their journals under the deceptive titles like “interna-
tional” or “world” [4] or manipulating journal impact factor
(IF) through exploiting excessive “self-citation” or planned
citations from sister journals [9, 34]. As well, some invalid
journals only publish articles containing positive outcomes
[27] or that are in the title of “novel” so that researchers are
forced to report negative data and employ suppression. Taking
collectively, after a short while, obscure journals will reach to
an upper position, even around 18 ranks [9], and get a lot of
attention despite including nonscientific content.
Political issues and sanctions
Last but not least, the influence of strict political sanctions on
science and technology progress is the other concern that must
be specifically focused nowadays. With looking back through
the history, in 1965, boycott on South Africa affected almost
57% of academics destroying the chance of manuscript sub-
mission, global collaboration, and access to database [35].
Similarly, an almost-total financial and trade sanctions to the
Iraqi republic during 1990–2003 posed many problems for
DARU J Pharm Sci (2020) 28:359–369
providing drugs, medical equipment, accessing to medical
journals, and textbooks and more importantly it prevented
diplomas and graduates form continuing their education [36,
37]. Aforesaid conditions made by the US against Iran, dras-
tically affect science for instance through limiting the collab-
oration of scientists in two countries [23, 38, 39] that may
drive some unexperienced researchers to be trapped by pred-
atory journals [40].
Sometimes, publishers/editors/reviewers may disapprove
handling articles from sanctioned countries and review the
author rather than the article. Albeit, such discrimination is
banned as the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) em-
phasized “Editorial decisions should not be affected by the
origins of the manuscript, including the nationality, ethnicity,
political beliefs, race, or religion of the authors. Decisions to
edit and publish should not be determined by the policies of
governments or other agencies outside of the journal itself.”
[41]. Fortunately, some journals strongly decided to not allow
the political matters affecting their scientific condition, so they
continued usual collaboration with scientists in a very positive
way [37, 40]. For instance, The Lancet declared “We are dis-
appointed that some publishers have created the impression
that work from Iran should be discriminated against. This
attitude is contrary to the spirit and values of global science.
We are currently working to deepen our relationship with
Iranian medical and public health scientists, and we look
forward to publishing the results of that collaboration, which,
we hope, will include Iran’s Ministry of Health” [37] (Fig. 1).
Consequences
The point here is, although unethical implication is valuable
for pushy researchers and self-interested journals, it can lead
to far-reaching consequences whether on public health or on
liable individual.
Effects on public health
The fact is when those working as a public health providers
including nurses, pharmacists, doctors, dentists or some uni-
versity masters, rather referring to more up-to-date articles
than reading old textbooks, they gradually incorporate these
new methods, medications and materials into treatment proto-
cols. Then, if ambition or financial gain are prioritized and the
patient is considered merely as a “customer”, both researchers
[42] and even the world’s largest companies [26, 43] may
endanger patients’ life and damage doctors’ confidence [27]
through the act of processing worthless information and data
alternation. For instance, the antidiabetic drug branded
Avandia was abruptly withdrawn from markets in 2010 due
to life-threatening side effects. A decade earlier in 1999, its
severe cardiotoxicity was reported but the manufacturer
363
refuted that claim and continued selling the drug [43–45]. In
another published report, a sharp rise to the prevalence of
measles, mumps, and rubella happened during 2002 due to a
false assertion rooted from uncontrolled project design and
small sample size (n = 12). In 1998, a group indicated that
MMR vaccine may have severe adverse effects and cause
autism in children hence prohibited doctors and parents from
using this medicine [9, 42, 46, 47]. However, one of the au-
thors later explained that at most 2 subjects had the reported
autism-like symptoms whilst the article reported more
supporting results about 8 out of 12 subjects [47].
Endangering public health can also be ascribed to the lack
of oversight of the manufacturer and physician association.
Based on the Rhee and Rhos recent study conducted through
linking Medicare & Medicaid Services 2014–2016 Part D
prescribing data to Open Payments data, manufacturer of the
3 branded Gabapentinoid allocated about $11.5 million funds
(gifts, educational supports, travel costs, etc.) for 14.4% of all
physicians prescribing any brand of this medicine despite it is
proved to express safety concerns [48, 49].
Effects on perpetrator
Apart from social impact, employing misconduct, no matter
what the kind is, generally threats both perpetrator’s credit and
country reputation through introducing financial penalties
[50], resulting in lengthy suspension from education [51]
and work [52] and even throwing offender into prison [53]
all just owing to “paper retraction”. Plethora of articles partic-
ularly ones in the field of medical sciences are now not ac-
cepted or blocked/retracted mostly due to the intentional mis-
conduct instead of unintentional errors [9]. According to one
descriptive study on 4,284,945 publications indexed in
PubMed from January 1st, 2013- December 31st, 2016,
1082 of articles (at the rate of 2.5 per 10,000 publication) were
retracted whereas 707 of retractions were solely due to an
intentional misconduct (65.3%) [54]. Another comprehensive
review by Nature publishing group confirmed the 10-fold rise
in the number of retracted articles during 1977 and 2010 [55].
These statistics are emphasized once the number of authors
increases. Put differently, articles with equal or more than 7
authors accounted for 33.3% of all retractions in the course of
2013 to 2016, highlighting the importance of “multiple au-
thorship” in promoting dishonesty [12, 54]. Also, considering
the share of each type of fraud in retraction, both aforesaid
reports pointed to the plagiarism’s first place followed by fal-
sification/fabrication, peer-review process, authors, and jour-
nal issues, respectively as you can see the recent most prom-
inent examples of them in Table 2.
What is important here is that due to lack of proper tools,
there is always a difficulty in recognizing whether misconduct
is conducted deliberately or deceptively which prolongs the
time of decision, leads to misinformation for long period of
364
Fig. 1 The general overview on scientific misconduct including divisions and the main contributory reasons
time and the net effect is often inaction [69]. Even if the article
is finally retracted, some journals refuse to reveal it, however
they should put a watermark on it, according to COPE. Such
shirking makes retracted articles to be cited over and over
again while other researchers are not aware of the retraction,
thus rapidly spread the false and misleading results; such as
what happened on the case of Wakefield’s article. In 1998
Wakefield et al. reported the inaccurate results of the relation
between MMR and autism in children found in 2010.
According to references, this group did an uncontrolled exper-
iment and eventually the paper was retracted after 12 years.
Nonetheless, many researchers made reference to this study
prior to retraction; byword, in 2002 another article entitled
“Vaccine and Autism” was published in the Journal of
Laboratory Medicine with emphasizing on the harmfulness
of vaccination and referencing to that 1998 paper.
Interestingly, although Wakefield’s article was pulled in
2010, editors of Lab Medicine did not retrieve it until 2018,
when they first withdrew the article but later made the paper
available with watermark [70, 71]. Indeed, excepting these not
so minor conditions, there are also heavier fines worldwide.
At the reported case of drug Avandia, US authorities
punished the manufacturer to pay $3bn; the highest settlement
in pharmaceutical industry. Likewise, in 2009, another com-
pany got $2.3bn reprimand since it promoted the off-label use
of four drugs branded Bextra, Geodon, Zyvox, Lyrica [4, 72].
It should also be kept in mind that, handling each research
misconduct at the institutional level in the U.S carries a cost
of approximately $525,000 and all cases annually costs over
$110 million. Looking in more detail, during 1992 and 2012,
DARU J Pharm Sci (2020) 28:359–369
$58 M funding from National Institute of Health had been
dedicated to solely 291 misconduct-based retracted articles;
each accounted for about $400,000 [7].
Discussion
Taken as a whole, the need for combating against research
fraud remains unmet; the best way of which is to highly em-
phasize on quality-in-research rather than quantity. As an ap-
proach toward this, more research institutions, researchers,
funding agencies, scientific communities and journals should
stop decision-making based on metrics and adopt the San
Francisco Declaration of Research Assessment (DORA), an
aggregation provided in 2013 that invites all to reduce evalu-
ation and consideration solely based on metrics.
Numerous infrastructures from academic institutions to
government should also retain research integrity by way of
providing specific policies and establishing additional regula-
tory agencies in countries with high rate of misconduct, China
and USA included.
Among these, institutions and journals have an inseparable
and reciprocal relationship that is not seriously considered in
many regions. Universities and journals should have proper
collaboration, fully answer relevant questions in the come up
misconduct cases and not let wrong stuff get used to people’s
lives and health.
In this extent, Universities are the only structures to watch
academic environment plus creating healthy competition,
making careful faculty’s evaluation and improving student’s
Table 2 The recent most important retractions due to scientific misconduct and their consequences

Title of article Published Published Source Types of Misconduct and Description Consequences Citation Year of
Year based on Retraction/
Web of References
Science

Non-coding RNAome of RPE cells 2018 Scientific Reports Data Fabrication The article was retracted. 5 2019
under oxidative stress suggests Researchers used an RNA-seq data set which was neither [56]
unknown regulative aspects of produced in their laboratory nor was accessible publicly.
Retinitis pigmentosa
etiopathogenesis
DARU J Pharm Sci (2020) 28:359–369

Image-based reversible data hiding 2018 Multimedia Tools Plagiarism The article was retracted. 0 2018
algorithm toward big and Applications The author waited about 13 months for journal (MTAP) [20, 57]
multimedia data decision and finally the paper was rejected. Days after
rejection, the same journal, publish the plagiarized version of
the rejected article with different authors.
A new technique for extra 2016 Journal of Surgical Case Misinterpretation The article was retracted. 3 2019
peritoneal repair of inguinal Research The researchers reported the inaccurate and misleading clinical [58]
hernia information about patients. More than 500 of 1882 cases of
hernia were hydrocele of tunica vaginalis and didn’t have
hernia.
Genetic Variants in DNA 2015 PLoS One Falsification It affected two grant 4 2018
Double-Strand Break Repair The researcher claimed that the blood samples used in the study process and two [59, 60]
Genes and Risk of Salivary collected from 98 different subjects however all samples are papers.
Gland Carcinoma: A just duplication of her own blood.
Case-Control Study
Primary Prevention of 2013 New England Bias and Falsification The article was retracted. 2311 2018
Cardiovascular Disease with a Journal of The article was retracted due to the uncontrolled design of study [61, 62]
Mediterranean Diet Medicine i.e. the randomization was not systematic. However, later in
2018 this article was corrected and republished in which the
author mentioned the results n soften language instead.
Integrative genomics identifies 2013 Nature Falsification and Fabrication It affected two published 102 2015
APOE e4 effectors in Figures, data and sample numbers were manipulated and not papers. [63, 64]
Alzheimer’s disease accurate in ELISA.
Myostatin is a novel tumoral factor 2012 Journal of Biological Falsification The fradulent author lost 63 2016
that induces cancer cachexia Chemistry Data falsification of Western Blot by the first author. his PhD. [51, 65]
Eliciting broadly neutralizing 2012 Retrovirology Falsification and fabrication 57 months sentence, 1 2015
antibodies against HIV-1 that Intentionally spiking rabbit sera with antibodies and report Repay more than $7 [50, 66]
target gp41 MPER falsified data to develop a vaccine against HIV-1, also Million to the US NIH
presented results in 7 national and international symposia, 3 three years of
grants application and many progress reports. supervised release after
prison.
A Pleiotropically Acting 2009 Cell Press Fabrication and Image Manipulation The article was retracted. 652 2015
MicroRNA, miR-31, Inhibits Combining data from different individual tests and report them [67, 68]
Breast Cancer Metastasis as one controlled experiment and figures don’t accurately
represent the original data.
Ileal-lymphoid-nodular 1998 The Lancet Several types of misconduct It might have influenced 1318 2010
hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, the outbreak of Measles, [46, 47]
365
366 DARU J Pharm Sci (2020) 28:359–369

References
Retraction/
scientific knowledge. They should always keep in mind that
Year of there are many parameters other than publication that can be

The table referred to 10 top retractions within past decade. All data were collected randomly through accessing Retraction Watch, Nature, The Lancet and other reported data bases and journals
additionally measured for the qualifying students to graduate.
Thus, students should not be placed in the severe condition of
pressure to publish for graduation as this might cause some to
look for misconduct acts.
based on
Citation

Science
Web of

Journal editors and peer-reviewers must carry out

close investigation into articles, thoroughly follow the
guidelines and flowcharts of specially the COPE and
Mumps and Rubella in

not put any limitation on articles submitted by sanc-

doctors refused to use
both UK and USA as

tioned countries. Retracted papers should be clearly

many parents and

MMR vaccine.

marked, not removed and the journal ought to provide

Consequences

a “blacklist” of fraudsters who frequently employ mis-

conduct. Documentation with multiple co-authors re-
quires close inspection of each contributor details and
could be published on the condition of fulfilling author-
ship criteria. To avoid manipulation of peer review sys-
just 6 of 12 samples had all the reported symptoms whereas
nature of conclusion. Later, one of the authors claimed that

tem it is better for journals to turn off the automated

intentionally using the selected samples and speculative

system in which authors can provide the contact infor-

mation of potential reviewers, as BMC did. Instead,
The small sample size (n = 12) uncontrolled design,

authors can suggest potential reviewers in their cover

1998 article falsified this number to 8 of 12.

letter. More procedures which institutions and journals

are in charge for are available in Table 3.
Types of Misconduct and Description

In line with external factors, scholars and researchers

themselves should be able to step up their language
(esp. English) or illustration skills and attend advanced
courses, hence overcome the tendency of duplication
and plagiarism. Also to avoid losing their authorship
right and developing issues like ghost or guest author-
ship, scholars are better to reach an agreement with
other authors at the start of the work and quickly report
dereliction to the relevant institution or journal, if there
is any.
More considerable, authors should spot predatory journals
Published Source

via thoroughly checking journal’s contact information, articles

issues, and membership in prestigious indexing databases
such as Web of Science and scientific committees, editorial
board, and peer-review process. Albeit, relying on just these
items are insufficient since predatory journals may find a way
to be listed in the COPE or similar agencies to appear valid.
Published

Therefore, in this case, more than the author’s role, in-charge

agencies of publication ethics should invite all people to fight
Year

against predatory journals, either in the form of creating more

forums, meetings and educational campaigns or by providing
a consensual definition of predatory and its destructive effects
and pervasive developmental

which is absolutely essential. Providing black list journals is

not recommended while a white list of journals could better
disorder in children
Table 2 (continued)

help scholars of each universities. In view of top officials,

legal retributions ranging from cutting grants to limiting aca-
Title of article

demic and carrier promotion should be brought on any minor

misconduct. Government should also set sufficient research
budget, provide laboratory equipment and confine university
admissions.
DARU J Pharm Sci (2020) 28:359–369 367

Table 3 Role of institutions and journals as first barriers to overcome scientific misconduct [45]

Institutions (e.g. Universities) Journals and Peer Reviewers

Appointing a research integrity officer (or Developing research integrity Publishing the contact details and Informing institution after suspecting a
office) who doesn’t have any conflicts of courses in the university affiliation of their editor-in-chief, misconduct case with providing
interest and providing related contact curriculum editorial boards and journal enough evidence and properly
information on the institution’s website answering their questions

Establishing polices about spotting scientificProperly answering journal Establishing policies on Publishing Expressions of Concern in
misconduct and further punishments questions or requirements in investigation and further actions some cases to inform reader of ongoing
the case of spotting about misconduct cases and investigation that may affect the
misconduct closely inspecting details of all validity and reliability of the study
co-authors
Refusing to qualify students/masters based on Announcing all the affected Following the COPE flowcharts and Providing the full information of retracted
metrics e.g. number of publications journals which published guidelines papers
related articles based on the
retracted/corrected paper
Rechecking previous studies of a researcher Holding language and In the case of plagiarism and Stopping IF manipulation and producing
who was detected to employ misconduct illustration skills courses redundant publication, several journals under deceptive titles
journals should collaborate and
share the related information
Making checklists for authors about different Turning of the automated system in
kind of misconduct to be sure that none of which authors can provide the
them is employed. contact information of potential
reviewers.

Conclusion References

To sum up, there is an ever increasing incidence of scientific 1.
misconduct all around the world with plagiarism, authorship
2.
issues and peer review manipulation at the front mainly due to
the excess pressure on academic environment and paying
much attention to metrics that leaves a gap in knowledge.
The importance of predatory journals and political issues i.e.
severe sanctions, especially in the current era of publication 3.
are also among other critical factors that should not be missed.
But what is really perturbing is that misconduct regardless
what the type or reason is, could significantly impact on com- 4.
munity and preparatory by the means of imposing major fi-
nancial or jail punishments, violating preparatory/journal
credit within paper retraction, getting suspension from 5.
education/work and more noticeably causing many deaths.
Thus, it is of high priority for both infrastructures and re-
6.
searchers to seek for a fundamental solution to eradicate this
phenomenon before impairing society anymore.
7.
Authors’ contribution MA conceived and supervised whole study from
idea to writing. TM contributed in the search, drafting the article, and
designing the figures. 8.
Funding This article is the outcome of an in-house financially non-
supported study. 9.
Compliance with ethical standards
10.
Conflict of interest Authors declare no conflict interest. The correspond-
ing author of this article with regards to his position as the Editor-in-Chief of
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