Ethics in any area of business or society is important and always being addressed, one way or the other. In academia, research and publishing, ethics feels like a moving target with the advancements of technology changing so much. This topic came to us from The Scholarly Kitchen in their article, “Guest Post — Unethical Practices in Research and Publishing: Evidence from Russia.”
News coming out of Russia highlights the concern that many have around the questionable practices or deceptive efforts in scholarly publishing. Thousands of Russian scholars received the welcome news that their articles were accepted for publication in international journals. However, many of the papers were published in predatory or hijacked journals with poor or even no peer review. A list of deceptive journals created by the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2020 tracked deceptive and dishonest behaviors including purchased author credentials, plagiarism and false claims of peer review.
Many of the journals on this list were dropped from Scopus and Web of Science by the end of 2020.
Some of this unethical behavior was made possible by changes in policies because of the pressure to publish for so many.
Melody K. Smith
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