Taylor & Francis Online Users Receive Earlier Notification About Ethics Concerns
NISO Member News
London, UK | September 25. 2024
Readers will get earlier notification when there are concerns about the publishing ethics or research integrity of a journal article, through a new Taylor & Francis Online feature. A temporary message will appear on selected papers under investigation, enabling site users to exercise appropriate caution when considering the research presented.
The Taylor & Francis Publishing Ethics & Research Integrity team investigates hundreds of research articles each year for a range of suspected issues, including data falsification, plagiarism, fake authorship, and paper mills. Each investigation is carried out thoroughly, impartially and with care, following Committee on Publishing Ethics guidelines and Taylor & Francis’ investigation principles. These investigations necessarily take time, which means it can be several months before any required corrections or retractions are published on the site.
The new ‘under investigation’ alert can now be added to an article during that process, when there are significant concerns about the academic integrity of an article. This will be particularly valuable in cases with a risk of harm, such as when medical decisions could be made based on the research article under investigation.
Dr Sabina Alam, Director of Publishing Ethics & Integrity at Taylor & Francis, explained the benefits of this new feature: “For many years we’ve had the option to add a formal ‘expression of concern’ to an article before an ethics investigation has concluded. However, since these remain on the scholarly record permanently, they can only really be used when an investigation has established very strong grounds for concern, typically several months after we first identify a potential problem.”
Alam added “This new ‘under investigation’ notification will keep readers informed earlier in the process and enable us to remove the message once the investigation has been completed, whatever conclusion it comes to.”
The alert messages will also direct readers to a new guide to the ethics investigation process, including details about expert review, institutional involvement and the opportunities given to authors to respond to concerns. The Publishing Ethics & Research Integrity team’s work is a key priority for Taylor & Francis, investing considerable resources in technology, training and investigation in order to protect the integrity of the scholarly record.
About This Organization
About Taylor & Francis
Taylor & Francis supports diverse communities of experts, researchers and knowledge makers around the world to accelerate and maximize the impact of their work. We are a leader in our field, publish across all disciplines and have one of the largest Humanities and Social Sciences portfolios. Our expertise, built on an academic publishing heritage of over 200 years, advances trusted knowledge that fosters human progress.
Our 2,500+ people, based in a global network of offices in more than 15 countries, use their skills and the latest technology to curate, validate and share impactful advanced, emergent and applied knowledge. Under the Taylor & Francis, Routledge and F1000 imprints, we publish 2,700 journals, 8,000 new books each year and partner with more than 700 scholarly societies.
Taylor & Francis is proud to be a Global Certified Accessible™ publisher and to have achieved CarbonNeutral® certification for our operations and print publications in accordance with The CarbonNeutral Protocol.