Humans ; Peer Review

No abstract available.
Dentistry ; Endodontics ; Peer Review

No abstract available.
Dentistry ; Endodontics ; Peer Review

Inappropriate authorship and other fraudulent publication strategies are pervasive. Here, I deal with contribution disclosures, authorship disputes versus plagiarism among collaborators, kin co-authorship, gender bias, authorship trade, and fake peer review (FPR). In contrast to underserved authorship and other ubiquitous malpractices, authorship trade and FPR appear to concentrate in some Asian countries that exhibit a mixed academic pattern of rapid growth and poor ethics. It seems that strong pressures to publish coupled with the incessantly growing number of publications entail a lower quality of published science in part attributable to a poor, compromised or even absent (in predatory journals) peer review. In this regard, the commitment of Publons to strengthen this fundamental process and ultimately ensure the quality and integrity of the published articles is laudable. Because the many recommendations for adherence to authorship guidelines and rules of honest and transparent research reporting have been rather ineffective, strong deterrents should be established to end manipulated peer review, undeserved authorship, and related fakeries.
Asian Continental Ancestry Group ; Authorship* ; Dissent and Disputes ; Ethics ; Humans ; Peer Review* ; Plagiarism ; Publications ; Research Report ; Sexism

Scholarly article writing and publishing in international peer-reviewed journals can become an overwhelming task for many medical, nursing, and healthcare professionals in a university setting, especially in countries whose native language is not English. To help improve their scientific writing skills and publishing capacity, a university-based editing system and writing programs can be developed as educational platforms. These are delivered by a team of specialist editors composed of tenured faculty members who have a strong medical background and extensive experience in teaching courses on medical research, editing, writing, and publishing. For the editing system, the specialist editors provide comprehensive editing, personalized consultation, full editorial support after peer review, guidance with online submissions/resubmissions, and detailed editorial review at different stages of the manuscript writing. In addition, the specialist editors can develop writing programs such as medical writing and editing internships, academic courses in medical writing or research study designs and reporting standards, special interactive lectures and sessions on predatory publishing, seminars on updated editorial guidance of global editorial associations, academic visits on medical writing and editing, medical writing mentoring program, networking programs in scholarly communication, and publication resources in medical writing and scholarly publishing. These editing system and writing programs can serve as integrated platforms for improving scientific writing skills and publishing capacity by providing continuing education in medical writing, editing, publishing, and publication ethics.
Delivery of Health Care ; Education, Continuing ; Ethics ; Humans ; Internship and Residency ; Lectures ; Medical Writing ; Mentors ; Nursing ; Peer Review ; Publications ; Specialization ; Writing*

No abstract available.
Peer Review ; Plastics ; Surgery, Plastic

Access to Information ; Biomedical Research ; Editorial Policies ; Ethics, Research ; Humans ; Internet ; Journal Impact Factor ; Open Access Publishing ; Peer Review ; Periodicals as Topic ; Singapore

PURPOSE: The quality assurance (QA) chart rounds are multidisciplinary meetings to review radiation therapy (RT) treatment plans. This study focus on describing the changes in RT management based on QA round reviews in a single institution. MATERIALS AND METHODS: After 9 full years of implementation, a retrospective review of all patients whose charts passed through departmental QA chart rounds from 2007 to 2015. The reviewed cases were presented for RT plan review; subcategorized based on decision in QA rounds into: approved, minor modifications or major modifications. Major modification defined as any substantial change which required patient re-simulation orre-planning prior to commencement of RT. Minor modification included treatment plan changes which didn’t necessarily require RT re-planning. RESULTS: Overall 7,149 RT treatment plans for different anatomical sites were reviewed at QA rounds. From these treatment plans, 6,654 (93%) were approved, 144 (2%) required minor modifications, while 351 (5%) required major modifications. Major modification included changes in: selected RT dose (96/351, 27%), target volume definition (127/351, 36%), organs-at-risk contouring (10/351, 3%), dose volume objectives/constraints criteria (90/351, 26%), and intent of treatment (28/351, 8%). The RT plans which required major modification according to the tumor subtype were as follows: head and neck (104/904, 12%), thoracic (12/199, 6%), gastrointestinal (33/687,5%), skin (5/106, 5%), genitourinary (16/359, 4%), breast (104/2387, 4%), central nervous system (36/846, 4%), sarcoma (11/277, 4%), pediatric (7/251, 3%), lymphoma (10/423, 2%), gynecological tumors (2/359, 1%), and others (11/351, 3%). CONCLUSION: Multi-disciplinary standardized QA chart rounds provide a comprehensive and an influential method on RT plans and/ or treatment decisions.
Breast ; Central Nervous System ; Head ; Humans ; Jordan ; Lymphoma ; Methods ; Neck ; Peer Review ; Radiotherapy ; Retrospective Studies ; Sarcoma ; Skin

The Open Access Initiative is gaining momentum due to the worldwide availability of advanced digital tools, online publishing platforms, and systems for tracking academic contributions. Several declarations and initiatives, including Plan S, have already laid a foundation for moving away from subscription to full and immediate open-access publishing. The global initiatives imply targeting journals satisfying the upgraded quality and visibility criteria. To meet these criteria, a comprehensive approach to Open Access is recommended. This article overviews the essential components of the comprehensive approach, increasing transparency, adherence to ethical standards, and diversification of evaluation metrics. With the increasing volume of quality open-access journals, their indexing with free databases and search engines is becoming increasingly important. The Directory of Open Access Journals and PubMed Central currently free searches of open-access sources. These services, however, cannot fully satisfy the increasing demands of the users, and attempts are underway to upgrade the indexing and archiving of open-access sources in China, Japan, Korea, Russia, and elsewhere. The wide use of identifiers is essential for transparency of scholarly communications. Peer reviewers are now offered credits from Publons. These credits are transferrable to their Open Researcher and Contributor iDs. Various social media channels are increasingly used by scholars to comment on articles. All these comments are tracked by related metric systems, such as Altmetrics. Combined with traditional citation evaluations, the alternative metrics can help timely identify and promote publications influencing education, research, and practice.
Abstracting and Indexing as Topic ; Access to Information ; Bibliography as Topic ; China ; Education ; Japan ; Korea ; Metric System ; Open Access Publishing ; Peer Review ; Periodicals as Topic ; Russia ; Search Engine ; Social Media

Scientific hypotheses are essential for progress in rapidly developing academic disciplines. Proposing new ideas and hypotheses require thorough analyses of evidence-based data and predictions of the implications. One of the main concerns relates to the ethical implications of the generated hypotheses. The authors may need to outline potential benefits and limitations of their suggestions and target widely visible publication outlets to ignite discussion by experts and start testing the hypotheses. Not many publication outlets are currently welcoming hypotheses and unconventional ideas that may open gates to criticism and conservative remarks. A few scholarly journals guide the authors on how to structure hypotheses. Reflecting on general and specific issues around the subject matter is often recommended for drafting a well-structured hypothesis article. An analysis of influential hypotheses, presented in this article, particularly Strachan's hygiene hypothesis with global implications in the field of immunology and allergy, points to the need for properly interpreting and testing new suggestions. Envisaging the ethical implications of the hypotheses should be considered both by authors and journal editors during the writing and publishing process.
Allergy and Immunology ; Databases, Bibliographic ; Ethics, Research ; Hygiene Hypothesis ; Peer Review ; Publications ; Writing