Publishing scholarly articles in traditional and newly-launched journals is a responsible task, requiring diligence from authors, reviewers, editors, and publishers. The current generation of scientific authors has ample opportunities for publicizing their research. However, they have to selectively target journals and publish in compliance with the established norms of publishing ethics. Over the past few years, numerous illegitimate or predatory journals have emerged in most fields of science. By exploiting gold Open Access publishing, these journals paved the way for low-quality articles that threatened to change the landscape of evidence-based science. Authors, reviewers, editors, established publishers, and learned associations should be informed about predatory publishing practices and contribute to the trustworthiness of scholarly publications. In line with this, there have been several attempts to distinguish legitimate and illegitimate journals by blacklisting unethical journals (the Jeffrey Beall's list), issuing a statement on transparency and best publishing practices (the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association's and other global organizations' draft document), and tightening the indexing criteria by the Directory of Open Access Journals. None of these measures alone turned to be sufficient. All stakeholders of science communication should be aware of multiple facets of unethical practices and publish well-checked and evidence-based articles.
Communication ; Disclosure/*ethics ; *Ethics, Research ; Fraud/*ethics ; Information Dissemination/*ethics ; Medical Writing ; Periodicals as Topic/ethics ; Publishing/*ethics ; Science/*ethics

Clinical Trials as Topic ; Humans ; Information Dissemination ; ethics ; methods ; International Cooperation

Citations to scholarly items are building bricks for multidisciplinary science communication. Citation analyses are currently influencing individual career advancement and ranking of academic and research institutions worldwide. This article overviews the involvement of scientific authors, reviewers, editors, publishers, indexers, and learned associations in the citing and referencing to preserve the integrity of science communication. Authors are responsible for thorough bibliographic searches to select relevant references for their articles, comprehend main points, and cite them in an ethical way. Reviewers and editors may perform additional searches and recommend missing essential references. Publishers, in turn, are in a position to instruct their authors over the citations and references, provide tools for validation of references, and open access to bibliographies. Publicly available reference lists bear important information about the novelty and relatedness of the scholarly items with the published literature. Few editorial associations have dealt with the issue of citations and properly managed references. As a prime example, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) issued in December 2014 an updated set of recommendations on the need for citing primary literature and avoiding unethical references, which are applicable to the global scientific community. With the exponential growth of literature and related references, it is critically important to define functions of all stakeholders of science communication in curbing the issue of irrational and unethical citations and thereby improve the quality and indexability of scholarly journals.
Authorship/standards ; *Bibliography as Topic ; *Editorial Policies ; Information Dissemination/ethics ; Peer Review, Research/ethics/*standards ; Periodicals as Topic/ethics/*standards ; Publishing/ethics/*standards ; Quality Control ; Science/ethics/standards ; Writing/*standards

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to explore ethical problems that cause moral distress in nurses and affects the quality of care provided by community mental health nurses working in community mental health settings. METHODS: Three focus group interviews were held with 14 nurses working in 3 community mental health centers in Korea. Qualitative descriptive methods and qualitative content analysis were used. RESULTS: Data analysis found 5 domains (decision making, communication, resources, safety, advocacy), 9 categories (personal information sharing issues, ethical insensibility, collisions between principles and practice, institutions unprepared in ethical problems, ethical dilemma in interactions with clients, problems with the evaluation system, problems with the budget structure, problems with the lack of safety measure, and problems with role limitation as a professional) and 11 subcategories. CONCLUSION: Results of this study suggest a) a need for further research on identifying ethical conflicts arising in community mental health fields, and b) on what nurses actually do when they deal with ethical conflicts, c) efforts to develop ethics support programs such as ethics education, training and reflection meetings to enhance nurses' ethical sensitivity, d) consideration of a supportive environment and culture that prioritizes ethical concerns in practitioners as well as administrators.
Administrative Personnel ; Budgets ; Community Mental Health Centers ; Education ; Ethics ; Focus Groups ; Humans ; Information Dissemination ; Korea* ; Mental Health Services ; Mental Health* ; Nursing ; Qualitative Research ; Statistics as Topic

Unlike the classical genetic study which dealt with the mendelian inheritances of relatively small number of patients, the genetic epidemiology study needs the large scaled genetic data base. The main ethical and legal problems of these kinds of studies are research design, informed consent, long term follow-up of research subjects, data sharing and benefit sharing. Classically, the informed consent was an important right but if these kinds of large scaled and long period studies were involved, the newly developing rights should be more stressed. The bioethics and biosafety act and governmental regulations for the genetic study and gene bank also shows those considerations. In EU, the general consent is considered acceptable if the approval of all future projects is fulfilled by a research ethics committee and the participants' right to withdraw samples at any times. In U.S.A., strict restriction is required for future experiments, but if the research involves no more than minimal risk to the subject, the waiver or alternation will not affect adversely the rights and welfare of subjects and the research could not be practicably carried out without the waiver or alteration, the specific future consents could be exempted. Long term follow up of research patients is needed to provide the newly developed information which would be helpful for the patients. Data sharing is needed to prevent the exclusive possession of genetic information. Benefit sharing is the newly coming up debates on how to manage the conflicts of interests between tissue-donors and scientific researchers. The context and inventory of human rights for the research is changing and still under construction.
Bioethics* ; Databases, Genetic ; Epidemiology ; Ethics Committees, Research ; Follow-Up Studies ; Human Rights ; Humans ; Information Dissemination ; Informed Consent ; Molecular Epidemiology* ; Privacy* ; Research Design ; Research Subjects ; Social Control, Formal ; Wills