How Far Goes the Un-ethic of the Authors Who Submit the Articles to the Journals, Or, Better to Say, Their “Scientific Insolence”?

1. BACKGROUND

The author of this text is a long-time editor of several indexed journals and is well versed in the problems of journal editing in all phases of publication processing: from the submission of the articles on the official journal’s website, their text editing, reviewing, formatting to the final stage, or sending the PDF formatting of articles for authors review, and correction of errors in the text and return of such corrected article to the Editorial Board and final processing (proofreading) until publication on the website and in the www.bibliomned.org system.

Even so far, it has happened that some of the authors create a problem when the authors withhold the return of the article or send it to the Editor and requesting the retraction of the article, thereby withholding the final processing of the article for its publication (printing) and sending it to index databases (PMC, Scopus, etc.). This significantly produces different consequences (of technical, material, stressful nature, etc.).

The culmination of the above has just reached its acmes because even the June issue of the journal Acta Informatica Medica, with 14 formatted articles, by 4 authors (attached below), has delayed the implementation of the procedures mentioned above and caused indescribable problems for the Editorial Board, which was the reason for disclosing in this way unethicality, and even rudeness, of the authors of these 4 articles. The communication with them lasted about 20 days. It went so far that, in the end, it was reduced to insults unworthy of the rating of highly educated and academically high-ranking professionals in biomedical sciences holding essential positions in the academic community and these authors’ roles in the educational or scientific process.

The author of this article pointed out similar problems in several of his publications, guided by editorial experience and trials and vicissitudes of a different nature, and defined such actions as unethical and unbecoming of those who research and make scientific contributions in their fields and question the veracity and intentions of what they do and want to contribute to the scientific and academic community with their research results. Earlier, I introduced the terms False Science and Money Science into scientific practice and scientific editing because publishing articles, even books, and monographs, became just a dry need to satisfy the wishes and intentions of advancing in a scientific or academic career.

2. THE MOST COMMON REASONS FOR THIS BEHAVIOR OF THE AUTHOR WHO SUBMITTED PAPERS TO THE JOURNALS

The The most common reasons for this behavior of the author are:

1. In more than 95 percent of articles submitted by the DBMS system, the authors did not follow the Instructions for authors, BOMRAD Form for article preparation, COPE IJCME, and other guidelines;

2. In more than 97 percent of the articles, the authors did not correctly cite references, even those authors whose works were previously published in our journals;

3. Not a single article, out of the thousands that I have edited, has been proofread and linguistically edited; many of them are almost semi-literate and required serious language revisions during final processing;

4. Listing co-authors in articles has become a severe nuisance. Over 80 percent of authors write co-authors who have no professional or scientific connection with the article’s content, nor do they work in the institutions where the research was conducted and its results presented. A particular problem is the addition of family members as co-authors, even though they have no or minimal technical relations with the submitted article. Authors defend themselves as they are forced to because they cover material costs to cover the requested publication fees;

5. In more than 95 percent of articles, authors do not fulfill the APC (Article Processing Charge) obligations that publishers require to guarantee that papers will not be withdrawn because it is an established practice that some authors submit the same article to several journals. However, the COPE Guidelines indicate that authors are not allowed to do so and cannot submit the article to other journals until they receive a written rejection (retraction letter) that their paper will not be published in the primarily submitted journal. COPE considers such a procedure unethical and places authors and co-authors on a “blacklist”.

Figure 1-4. Screenshot of the 4 first pages of formatted papers from the issue of Acta Informatica Medica sent to authors for confirmation.

Figure 5 and 6. Screenshot of two submitted papers of the authors who asked its withdraw from the formatted issue of Acta Informatica Medica journal.

3. THE INFLUENCE FOR OTHER REASONS FOR UN-ETHICAL AUTHOR’S BEHAVIOR

One of the key reasons for the “earmarking” of certain publishers and the journals they publish, calling them “predators”, was the way of taking APC in the so-called clean in advance amount, which crippled many, mostly small publishers, in every way, because many authors ran away from such publishers (who are not only publishers of the journals but also have other services that they provide and thus their other work activities were impaired and thus produced significant financial difficulties. Because of the above, many publishers resented and asked Geoffrey Beall to withdraw their names from his so-called “Bell’s list of predators”. Many authors abused this by referring to Beall and his unofficial list accepted by what kind of scientific institutions as an obligation and standard that is scientifically unfounded.

The Bologna concept (model) of education significantly helped to intensify what was described above – “scientific stormtroopers and fake scientists” used the Bologna concept of education to a great extent and produced articles from projects and research, which is over 60 percent are just waste studies and socially useless, which is one of the key reasons why article authors behave this way. Someone has to deal with this problem seriously.

The editor has introduced the practice of sending PDF formatted articles in the form of Contents as a GROUP to all authors and asking for their consent for correction and permission for publication. In this way, transparency is achieved, but also the possibility to have in the argumentation how it went on and how the articles were processed before publication.

Attached are several texts from 55 e-mails exchanged with the authors, proof of the above facts. From the correspondence, I extracted several exciting views and opinions of authors and co-authors about their decisions to withdraw articles from the formatted journal issue. They are very illustrative and do not need a comment. One thing is sure: the behavior of the authors and co-authors of the articles is not only unethical but also rude. It is reprehensible - even of a criminal-legal nature because the associates who work on editing the journal’s issues are financially damaged or stolen. They can be asked a question: can they go to the store and get necessary necessities and items without paying for them, whether it is food, clothing, medicine in the pharmacy, or any other thing that has its price-for-use value? And the helpful value for the authors is that by publishing the article, they can apply for some academic or scientific requirements - applications for master’s degrees, doctorates, elections to academic and scientific positions, etc. And that is paid.

Nowhere does it say you get free article publication in a journal? Beall’s categorization of APC does not make sense. I believe he has edited a single indexed journal in his life and does not know or know very little about the problems apostrophized here..

4. TITLES OF FORMATTED PAPERS IN THE CURRENT ISSUE OF ACTA INFORMATICA MEDICA WHICH TO BE RETRACTED (WITH AUTHOR’S STATEMENTS)

What are the 4 articles whose authors are the subject of this title and the text related to its title:

* The Correlation Between Cyp2r1 Rs10741657 and Cyp27b1 Rs10877012 Gene Polymorphism with the Incidence of Latent Tuberculosis Infection on Pregnant Mothers with Vitamin D Deficiency in Medan, North Sumatera

Fathia Meirina

* Serum Periostin Levels in Acute Myocardial Infarction Patients: a 3-month Follow-up Study

Nguyen Trung Tin, Huynh Van Minh, Doan Chi Thang, Phan Thi Minh Phuong

* Reliability, Validity, and Responsiveness of the Arabic Version of the Upper Limb Functional Index

Yousef Abdulkarim Albahrani, Ali Muteb Alshami

* Atypical Case Twin-to-Twin Transfusion Syndrome Managed by Fetoscopic Laser Photocoagulation and Amniopatch, Single-Center Experience in Indonesia: a Case Report

Dudy Aldiansyah, Binarwan Halim, Edwin Martin Asroel, Mohammad Fahdy, Hanudse Hartono, Thomson

D.A. I submitted an article by title Atypical Case Twin-to-Twin Transfusion Syndrome Managed by Fetoscopic Laser Photocoagulation and Amniopatch, SIngle-Center Experience in Indonesia; a Case Report in your journal, but there was no news and no update from you. Therefore, I decided to submit it to another journal, and now it is already reviewed and will publish as soon as possible. Still, at the same time, my article will be published in your journal, too; I’m so sorry, but I want to withdraw my article to prevent plagiarism. Please don’t publish my article. It was already submitted and reviewed elsewhere; please remove my article and replace it with another person’s article.

Y.A.M.A. I doubled recheck myself, and it shows as follows. I was confused between your valued journal and the other “Acta Biomedica” journal in the rejection decision. On the other hand, I checked my account in your journal and have received no response from you, neither an acceptance nor rejection. Up to this moment, the manuscript status is “waiting for Editor’s first view”. A screenshot is attached on Aug 4, 2023. In addition, I sent an email requesting to withdraw my paper more than three months after the submission. The submission date was on Feb 20, 2023, followed by a reminder on March 29, 2023, and a withdrawing email on May 5, 2023, but I have no response. This request was because your valued journal does not accept current articles, as stated in the platform. All the emails were attached. Please accept my appreciation for your valued decision, and I request you to take the full picture of the situation described above.

N.T.T. Thank you for your email. We have not received any email since June 17, 2023, when I sent you the manuscript. Could you please send the PDF again? We will pay the APC immediately.

F.M. Why is no status change for an editorial manager on your Acta Medica Informatica official website? The status of my article is still ‘waiting for the editor’s view.

5. CONCLUSION

Finally, there is the key unethicality of the author in various variants of plagiarism, and I have written and published many articles about this that are cited in scientific databases and platforms. Still, these aspects of unethicality I have mentioned here have not been openly described and disclosed in this way in written form. Many people know this but don’t have the courage to face it openly and help reduce their frequency as much as possible. As a European Association of Science Editing member in 2013 at the General Assembly in Tallinn, I hinted at what I have described now. Still, nothing, in particular, has gone further in terms of any of the working groups taking steps to resolve them. I proposed to the EASE members to establish variables and criteria for evaluating and recognizing types and levels of plagiarism and other unethical behaviors and establish a Body responsible for avoiding and punishing authors with appropriate measures besides COPE and its Guidelines.

Authors contribution:

The author were involved in all steops of preparation this text, including final proofreading.

Conflict of interest:

None declared.

Financial support and sponsorship:

Nil.