Thousands of research studies violate journal policies on collaborations between editors and authors
Over 10,000 peer-reviewed papers from two publishers breach journal policies about past collaborations between handling editors and authors, a new analysis has found. The work — presented October 15 at the 26th ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries in Frisco, Texas — examined how often research studies published by journals run by the Public Library … Continue reading Thousands of…
A tool called EditorCheck has uncovered over 10,000 peer-reviewed papers from two publishers that violate journal policies regarding collaborations between handling editors and authors. The tool, developed by computer scientist Jules Di Scala and his colleagues, examines metadata files of published papers to identify breaches of conflicts of interest policies.
PLOS requires a five-year gap between handling editors and authors, while MDPI's limit is three years. The analysis found more than 8,000 PLOS papers and 2,500 MDPI papers that breached these policies. EditorCheck identifies violations but recommends journals investigate the most problematic cases. PLOS has taken action by reassigning flagged articles, while MPDI expressed interest in reviewing the study's database.
Experts suggest publishers should label studies with disclaimers documenting past collaborations and provide more transparency by releasing handling editors' identities.
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