Whither research integrity? Plagiarism, self-plagiarism and coercive citation in an age of research assessment

This extended editorial asks whether peer-review is continuing to operate effectively in policing research misconduct in the academic world. It explores the mounting problems encountered by editors of journals such as Research Policy (RP) in dealing with research misconduct. Misconduct can take a variety of forms. Among the most serious are plagiarism and data fabrication or falsification, although fortunately these still seem to be relatively rare. More common are problems involving redundant publication and self-plagiarism, where the boundary between acceptable behaviour (attempting to exploit the results of one's research as fully and widely as possible) and unacceptable behaviour (in particular, misleading the reader as to the originality of one's publications) is rather indistinct and open to interpretation. With the aid of a number of case-studies, this editorial tries to set out clearly where RP Editors regard that boundary as lying. It also notes with concern a new form of misconduct among certain journal editors, who attempt to engineer an increase in their journal's ‘impact factor’ through a practice of ‘coercive citation’. Such problems with research integrity would appear to be unintended, and certainly undesirable, consequences of the growing trend to quantify research performance through various indicators.