Ethical Issues in Biomedical Publication

As research funding has become scarcer and competition fiercer, with links between scientific discovery and commercial applications increasingly tighter and more lucrative, allegations of misconduct have also increased. Universities and research institutions, notably the NIH, have created offices of scientific integrity and mandated educational programmes to investigate such allegations and to train researchers in the highest standards of sound, ethical scientific research. Focusing on publication ethics as an essential aspect of responsible scientific conduct, this volume examines a variety of troublesome issues, including authorship, peer review, repetitive publication, conflict of interest and electronic publishing. The contributors include the editors of distinguished journals (among them, past or present editors of "Academic Medicine", "Annals of Internal Medicine", "British Medical Journal", "JAMA" and the "Lancet"), academics, a university administrator and a lawyer. Chapters address specific ethical issues and offer recommendations for preventing or solving problems associated with them.The result is a book that should serve as a standard reference for biomedical researchers, authors, editors and teachers of research ethics.