2022 World Conference on Research Integrity: SAGE’s approach to research integrity and preserving trust
By Louise Skelding Tattle, Associate Director, Research, and Chair of SAGE’s Research Integrity Group
SAGE sees the core principles of research integrity as being transparency, openness, equitability, and inclusivity. As publishers we are committed to upholding the highest ethical standards across the whole publication process by:
Ensuring the submission and peer review process is constructive, meaningful, and free from bias.
Responding to any ethical issues that arise during the publication process in a timely, transparent, and thorough manner.
Publishing research that was carried out in accordance with appropriate ethical standards, and is based on sound science, evidence-based debate; that recognizes academic freedom and not personal agenda.
Applying the highest ethical standards to investigating post-publication issues and taking appropriate corrective action to uphold the integrity of the academic record.
Maintaining the integrity of the academic record
It’s important not to conflate misconduct with honest error and to remember that correcting the record where errors have been found is an important part of scholarly communication. As noted by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) in their retraction guidelines, ‘Unreliable content or data may result from honest error, naïve mistakes, or research misconduct. The main purpose of retraction is to correct the literature and ensure its integrity rather than to punish the authors.’
Correcting the literature where problems or errors have been found in either the final article or during the publishing process is an important part of preserving trust for our editors, authors, reviewers, and readers.
Protecting the academic record from bogus research
Trust matters, and eroding trust leads to a lack of confidence in and support for what you’re trying to achieve. Adhering to high standards of ethical and publishing practices is key to instilling confidence in research output. With the pressure to publish comes the temptation to subvert the publishing process in order to get that tenure, or that grant, or that promotion. Modern systems have transformed journal publishing allowing for increased speed, greater international collaboration, and greater visibility of the published article. However, these systems, like any other, are at risk of manipulation. The increase in incidences of coordinated misconduct has been well documented and like other publishers, SAGE is employing a range of tools and techniques to address this.
SAGE’s Research Integrity Group, a global cross-departmental taskforce made up of experts from across the organization, is responsible for monitoring research integrity trends and developing our publication ethics and inclusivity policies, guidelines and workflows to help reduce the risk of bogus research entering the academic record. Tightening up policies and processes and adding in checks throughout the submission, peer review and production processes all help safeguard against attempts to get bogus research published.
For more on SAGE’s ethical publishing policies and practices, read our resources for editors, authors and reviewers.
WCRI 2022: Fostering Research Integrity in an Unequal World
We are proud to sponsor the 7th World Conference on Research Integrity, with its focus on research integrity in relation to inequality. The mission of SAGE and our journals program is to build bridges to knowledge, which means enabling people from all backgrounds to contribute to scholarship, and working to ensure our publishing processes are unencumbered by bias and prejudice. We regard research integrity as inextricably linked with diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility, and we are committed to ensuring our work on maintaining the academic record is informed by an awareness of systemic injustices and power imbalances. This is a work in progress, you can read more in our latest update: DEI at SAGE Journals: Reflections on our pledge a year in.
About the Author
Louise Skelding Tattle is Associate Director, Research, and Chair of SAGE’s Research Integrity Group. She also leads the Content stream of the Diversity in Publishing Taskforce, the main aim of which is to ensure that the content published in SAGE journals is ethical, diverse, inclusive, and free from bias.