RCR Program: Pathways & Pitfalls: Considerations in Publishing & Research Integrity

Speaker: Scott Lapinski, Associate Director, Publishing & Data Services, Countway Library, Harvard Medical School

Description:

With the proliferation of online journals and a variety of business models adopted by major publishers, today’s authors must navigate an ever-complicated landscape of scholarly communication. Whether “consumers of” or “contributors to” the published record, researchers must consider aspects of a journal’s legitimacy, publishing ethics, impact factors, licensing options, and article processing fees. With academic integrity under constant scrutiny and hypersensitive AI plagiarism tools readily available for editors (or adversaries) to unleash upon an author’s work, it is vitally important to understand how to navigate today’s scholarly communication landscape.

This session will highlight several themes that intersect with academic publishing workflows and research integrity, including:

– Journal selection/evaluation (prior to manuscript submission)

– COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics)

– Understanding journal impact factors

– Discoverability (and academic database inclusion)

– Avoiding sham (predatory) journals

– Considerations regarding author publishing charges (APCs)

– Licensing & sharing scholarship (Open Science/Open Data requirements)

– Post-Publication Peer Review

– Retractions