Citation Violations

The age-old problem of attribution in science—in other words, the practice of citation—has resurfaced with a vengeance in a couple of recent fracases.

What's new about these cases is that they're being played out online in full gory detail and in real time. For the first time, large sections of the community can get involved in judging the evidence for themselves, and in having their say. It's very illuminating.

At the theoretical level, the assignment of credit for previous research is straightforward: When writing a paper, authors should cite any highly relevant publications that have a bearing on the research being written up. But this comforting rule of thumb isn't necessarily followed. From disregarding the wealth of "old" scientific observations to omitting mention of competitors' latest results, citation practice has always been a source of tension in science, as it probably is in every other professional pursuit. Eugene Garfield, Editor Emeritus of The Scientist, has written extensively on the topic, coining the terms "bibliographic negligence" in 2002, and "citation amnesia" a decade earlier.

The first of the recent cases that I want to highlight surfaced late last year, when a collection of researchers accused the authors of a Cell paper of "improper citation, disregard for antecedent research, and shoddy experimentation." The work was on cell-cell communication in the organization of epithelia. Our story on the subject¹ generated 37 comments from concerned readers.

When the controversy emerged, Cell flatly refused to fully engage with the complainants, inviting them instead to post a comment on the journal's Web site. For the record, I've been an editor at Science and Nature, and have the highest respect for the skills and dedication of that cadre. But it's high time that journal editors joined the rest of us in openly discussing and learning from serious disputes. Their ongoing censorship² is helping no one, and they are running the risk of making themselves irrelevant through nonparticipation.

In the second case, researcher Neil Greenspan, writing on our Web site,³ describes how the perceived novelty and importance of a specific study were significantly enhanced by omission of prior work. The subject matter of the paper, published in Science, is the development of an antibody with two specificities. While not disputing the validity or interest of the study, Greenspan takes issue with a portrayal of the work that "unfairly damage(s) investigators whose work and ideas are not cited or taken into account." At the time of writing, Science had not responded to his criticism.

These recent examples raised a number of old questions: How widespread is foul play in citation practice? Is there a "best practice" and, if so, how should it be implemented? To help answer these questions, we've posted an online survey here. It's anonymous and the accumulated results are immediately available to participants, so if you want a snapshot of where we stand in relation to citation practice, check it out.

We need a code of practice for citation, which journals should adopt explicitly. Gene Garfield called for this many years ago, suggesting that authors sign a pledge or oath that they have done a minimal search of the literature and that to the best of their knowledge there is no other relevant work. This is, in fact, the oath one signs when filing for a US patent.

Judging by the amount of publicity for fraud and greed in science, standards appear to be in freefall. I am not sure that I buy it. I think that the openness gifted us by the Internet is revealing the lax standards that have been in place all the time. The purifying glare of publicity may actually help us get our house in order—I wish that the editors of research journals would get this.

rgallagher@the-scientist.com

The 2000 Nobel prize in Chemistry went for "The discovery and development of conductive Organic polymers". This was based upon work originating in a 1977 paper.

Unfortunately, high conductivity in similar polyacetylene class organic semiconductors had been reported at least three times before. By chance, the last of these was our report of a high-conductivity "ON" state in a conductive organic polymer. (Science, vol 183, 853-855 (1974) ).

One report from 1964 even used a rather similar compound (iodine-doped polypyrrole) to the Nobel winners iodine-doped polyacetylene. None of these papers were cited by the eventual winners.

See: LINK for the details and cites.

Also see: Historical Background (or there is nothing new under the Sun), Inzelt,G. "Conducting Polymers", (2008),chapter 8,p265-269.

This case also shows how citation amnesia can be inadvertant. Being both sinners and sinned against, we also were unaware of and did not cite our two predecessors.

Peter H. Proctor, PhD,MD

I distinctly remember as if it were yesterday, this was in the eighties, the words of my master's thesis examiner that the ratio of what one publishes and the amount of work done should be 1:4. This is not to say that only 25% of the work should be publication-worthy. Contextually, this affects all aspects of publications and I daresay impacts what is cited and not cited whether unintentionally so or otherwise.

I like the patent reference Richard. Patents have professional examiners who are quite decently paid for their reviews. Patent examiners are specifically trained to find previous work; it's the core of what they do. They also make sure that you are saying what you mean.

Perhaps it is time for us to set up a two tiered publication system. In the first tier would be publications that were first submitted to professional examiners for a fee. That application could be similar to the way the patent office does it. It would include a list of relevant publications and supporting materials.

The second tier would be submitted directly to the journal. The incentive for passing it through paid, professional reviewers could be to take first position in the queue over other papers.

Those examiners would be charged with making sure literature search was acceptable, the paper was saying something meaningful, the author(s) knew what was original to them and what wasn't, the math worked, etcetera. After passing this examination, then the paper could be submitted to a journal for review by volunteers in the field.

Additionally, the same body, let's call it the "Office of Scientific Examination" could be petitioned with evidence and if the evidence justified it, a paper could be invalidated. That would mean withdrawing it, noting this in the online indexing databases and replacing the online journal copy with a notice that it had been invalidated with a pointer to the case file. Perhaps a short abstract of the ruling could replace the abstract of the paper.

The office would be something like an appeals court, fee based. The petitioners would first need to contact the journal directly, unless the paper was over 5 years old.

I think this would be quite salutary for science publishing. The biggest problem I can see is that the patent office doesn't review things quickly. I'm not sure what to do about that.

We are in a difficult period, but it should get better. When all journals were paper journals, it was much harder to do literature search. (Agonizing in fact.) Much depended on the encyclopedic memories of certain faculty.

With the advent of papers going online, there has been a period of "lost works", because it was comparatively difficult to find them, except by reference in later papers. This is improving.

But there is another problem. I am continually struck by the greater clarity of older papers. A few are difficult to understand because they are so dense, but overall they are much more readable and clear.

Quite simply, I think a significant part of this problem, aside from the obviously deliberate cases, is that many papers are gobbledegook. This is deliberate in order to get rubbish past reviewers. Combine that with rotten literature search and what do you have?

We have ignored for decades the environmentalists whom we have seen primarily as anti-development forces rather than conscience keepers. We regarded pollution as a necessary evil than as an unaffordable evil. We are where we are because we do not assign full significance to an error which we condone because it creates unpleasantness if we are to face the truth.
While Gallaghar's musings are fair, they are clearly far from enough. Citations practices are not a salvo for personal ego.It is time that we recognize the damage created for the system by treating with indifference or genteel admonitions.
I do not believe that editoral malpractices, which form the root of the malpractices since they stonewall any query and thereby protect the guilty, can be controlled by gentle reminders. There must be a threat perception. The real damage is in the gaining ground that one can get away. Internet is no answer since blogs are meant to divert attention from the printed text which alone survives. How long do we remember a grumpy guy?
On the otherhand, one extreme solution may be to abolish citations altogether once the citations can be assembled by internet!!
The essential thing is to retain credibility and prevent theft of ideas. I tend to differ from the view Gallaghar that this is of minor occurence. In fact direct fraud is probably less common than theft and usurping others' ideas.It is possible to get a metric on this using the net.We make a racket about plagiarism and fraud since we cannot address to the main issue of intellectual honesty subverted by editorial malpractices managed by commerical and other inward looking entities.

Journal editors:
You all have specific questions for reviewers- is this novel, is it well written, is it appropriate for this journal, etc.

Why not ask for a review of the references: "Are citations to previous work fair and complete?"

As a biological science researcher (in agronomy,crop breeding and crop physiology)I have suffered personally from citation violation and omission, by later researchers, of my orginal research on the discovery of the C4 photosynthetic syndrome made early 1960's (see El-Sharkawy, M. A., Hesketh, J. D.: Citation Classic-Photosynthesis among species in relation to characteristics of leaf anatomy and CO2 diffusion resistances.- Curr. Cont./Agr. Biol. Environ. 27:14.1986.(Online LINK This research was a breakthrough in identifying physiologically, anatomically and agronomically plant species with different CO2 fixation mechanisms,i.e. the so-called C3 and C4 plants. The majority of the mainstream plant physiologists-biochemists photosynthetic researchers, who missed these discoveries and also had previously missed the original biochemical work done at the university of California, Berkely,in late 1940's to early 1950's,by Melvin Calvin and his colleagues, have overlooked our achievements made before them and rarely cited it in their numerous subsequent publications, reviews and books. Despite their neglect, our research won a CITATION CLASSIC by ISI, 1986, and was highly cited in literature(see Steiner,J. L., Hatfield, J. L.: Winds of change: a century of agroclimate research.- Agron.J. 100:S-132-S-152,2008. (doi:10.2134/agronj2006.0372c). This misconduct doesn not reflect well on the history of science nor is a good example for teaching young science students.Scientists must adhere to scientific method and ethics. I am currently writing a review dealing with this issue in order to correct the scientific records and to alert scientific journals, professional societies, and scientific institutions to seriously take the necessary measures against this misconduct in future research and publishing. Tax-payer money should not be wasted on public-funded research institutions whose workers are involved in such unethical behavior.

My publication, "new concepts in the control of muscle contraction" will eventually be ignored by paper submitters. It was all blocked from appearing in "real" journals by the establishment who do not like to admit they have been wrong for 40-50 years. It has ISBN but that will take yonks to be recognized. Does not appear in medline!!!!!!! So what is this rubbish about correct citation got to do with anything. The protection of the establishments grant holding priority has to be a protected! It is on a par with this evenings off-shore bank account increase for the semi-final referee, but on a much smaller financial scale.

We work with research organizations, individual researchers and publishers to help combat the citation problems. iThenticate is used to compare documents to our database to verify authenticity, check for possible previous publication, and search for possible misuse by others. After comparison, a report is generated that shows significant matches in the text of your content with the database content.

Professional, scientific, medical, and technical journals and publishers use our service as part of their editorial process. Those publishers include: Nature publications, AAAS, Elsevier, IEEE, LWW, Springer, and Wiley.

In the past year, we have seen many of the research journals choose to include our technology in their editorial process.

-Jeff Lorton jlorton@ithenticate.com

I serve on the editorial boards of a number of journals and in my opinion, this is much the responsibiity of the editor, the selected peer-reviewers as well as ultimately the author of the typescript. In the increasingly competitive world of publication, displaced novelty of published work and the increasing practice of scientific hype by University Medical Schools showcasing "novel" data and published work, the practice of citation amnesia or deliberate ommission of prior work in the field is scientific misconduct. Editors of journals and peer-reviewers for a specified journal should share a vested interest in sustaining the integrity of sound scientific reporting, and take a more careful approach to sustain the reputation of a journal for whom they represent. Editors, peer-reviewers and ultimately the authors have a collective duty and obligation to survey the references cited and ensure that appropriate and relevant work is given credit. Despite numerous essays such as the one published herein, as well as other learned editorials highlighting the practice of citation avoidance, it continues as a problem until such a time that such malpractice is confronted formally and with consequences.

One should not ignore one other confounding issue. Journals are forveer facing the problem of space allocation for published work and the increasing costs of publication processing. The authors are therefore faced with the issue of balancing a well written paper containing the data, discussion and appropriate conclusions with the relevant lists of cited works. Clearly if citation ignorance or amnesia is to be challenged, more journal space will need to be occupied by increasingly lengthier bibliographies of prior published work.

Shoddy inquiry at any stage of the process does a disservice to the field of inquiry - confusing and obfuscating where it should be clarifying.