SHARING OF RESEARCH RESULTS

Task 1.Read the article “Sharing of Research Results”, devoted to young scientists. Solve some ethic problems:

1. Is it still a problem for modern scientists to announce their discoveries?

2. What are the usual practices to disseminate research results?

3. Find the principle rules a young scientist should follow to make their discoveries available to others and keep their priority of the results got. Discuss your findings with your partners in the group.

In the 17th century, many scientists kept new findings secret so that others could not claim the results as their own. Prominent figures of the time, including Isaac Newton, often avoided announcing their discoveries for fear that someone else would claim priority.

The solution to the problem of making new discoveries available to others while assuring their authors credit was worked out by Henry Oldenburg, the secretary of the Royal Society of London. He won over scientists by guaranteeing both rapid publication in the society’s Philosophical Transactions and the official support of the society if the author’s priority was questioned. Oldenburg also pioneered the practice of sending submitted manuscripts to experts who could judge their quality. Out of these arrangements emerged both the modern scientific journal and the practice of peer review.

Various publication practices, such as the standard scope of a manuscript and authorship criteria, vary from field to field, and digital technologies are creating new forms of publication. Nevertheless, publication in a peer-reviewed journal remains the most important way of disseminating a complete set of research results. The importance of publication accounts for the fact that the first to publish a view or finding—not the first to discover it—tends to get most of the credit for the discovery.

Once results are published, they can be freely used by other researchers to extend knowledge. But until the results are so widely known and familiar that they have become common knowledge, people who use them are obliged to recognize the discoverer by means of citations. In this way, researchers are rewarded by the recognition of their peers for making results public.

It may be tempting to adopt a useful idea from an article, manuscript, or even a casual conversation without giving credit to the originator of that idea. But researchers have an obligation to be scrupulously honest with themselves and with others regarding the use of others’ ideas. This allows readers to locate the original source the author has used to justify a conclusion, and to find more detailed information about how earlier work was done and how the current work differs. Researchers also are expected to treat the information in a manuscript submitted to a journal to be considered for publication or a grant proposal submitted to an agency for funding as confidential.

Proper citation, too, is essential to the value of a reference. When analyzed carefully, many citation lists in published papers contain numerous errors. Beyond incorrect spellings, titles, years, and page numbers, citations may not be relevant to the current work or may not support the points made in the paper. Authors may try to inflate the importance of a new paper by including a reference to previously published work but failing to clearly discuss the connection between their new results and those reported in the previous study. Practices such as responsible peer review are thus important tools to prevent these problems.

To the extent that these new communication methods speed and broaden the dissemination and verification of results, they strengthen research. Science also benefits when more individuals have greater access to raw data for use in their own work. However, if these new ways of disseminating research results bypass traditional quality control mechanisms, they risk weakening conventions that have served science well. In particular, peer review offers a valuable way of evaluating and improving the quality of scientific papers. Methods of communication that do not incorporate peer review or a comparable vetting process could reduce the reliability of scientific information.

There are several reasons why researchers should refrain from making results public before those results have been peer reviewed. If a researcher publicizes a preliminary result that is later shown to be inaccurate or incorrect, considerable effort by researchers can be wasted and public trust in the scientific community can be undermined.

If research results are made available to other researchers or to the public before publication in a journal, researchers need to use some kind of peer review process that may compensate for the lack of the formal journal process. Moreover, researchers should be cautious about posting anything (such as raw data or figures) to a publicly accessible Web site if they plan to publish the material in a peer-reviewed journal. Some journals consider disclosure of information on a website to be “prior publication,” which could disqualify the investigator from subsequently publishing the data more formally.

Publication practices are susceptible to abuse. For example, researchers may be tempted to publish virtually the same research results in two different places, although most journals and professional societies explicitly prohibit this practice. They also may publish their results in “least publishable units”—papers that are just detailed enough to be published but do not give the full story of the research project described. These practices waste the resources and time of editors, reviewers, and readers and impose costs on the scientific enterprise. They also can be counterproductive if a researcher gains a reputation for publishing shoddy or incomplete work. Reflecting the importance of quality, some institutions and federal agencies have adopted policies that limit the number of papers that will be

considered when an individual is evaluated for employment, promotion, or funding.

(Adapted from On Being a Scientist: Third Edition http://www.nap.edu/catalog/12192.html)

Task 2.Study the case. Suggest your solution to the problem. Prove your answer.