I follow the blog Retraction Watch.Blogposts are about publications which are for one reason or another retracted, often due to problems with research data or plagiarism. A while back they hade a post on “what is plagiarism” which was an interesting read. The blog post led to a discussion on what is ethically and morally correct. The question in the blog was about whether nor not you can use someone else’s unpublished text and base your own article on that.
Right now a speciall issue on scientific misconduct in publising is being planned by mdpi.com, Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute.It is a platform where a number of open access journals are published and many of them have been publishing for a long time. They write in call for papers that a the number of publications being retracted due to research data misconduct or plagiarism is rising. The special issue will deal with questions such as if retractions are a valid proxy for research misconduct, about research data and research ethics and how research misconduct could be measured objectively. Last day to submit manuscript is February 28 2014. Call for papers lists also guidelines for authors. It will be an interesting number!
Pieta Eklund