Resource of the Week #59: The Newly Updated CSE White Paper

Hello again. A few days ago I returned from the Council of Science Editors (CSE) annual meeting.

At the CSE meeting, I learned of some good resources. I’ll now feature one of them as our Resource of the Week.

This resource is a newly updated version of CSE’s White Paper on Promoting Integrity in Scientific Journal Publications.

The CSE White Paper, which provides guidance on publication ethics, first was written in 2006. An updated version appeared in 2009. The CSE board of directors approved the second updated version less than 2 months ago.

The new version is about 80 pages long. Much of it deals with the roles and responsibilities of editors, authors, and peer reviewers. Another large section discusses identifying research misconduct and provides guidelines to follow if misconducted is suspected.

Changes in the new version, in addition to general updating, include

• addition of a section on citation manipulation (pressure by journals to cite their articles in order to increase citation rates)
• “updated information on international models for responding to research conduct”
• new examples of published corrections and retractions

Perhaps some future weeks I’ll feature other resources mentioned at the CSE meeting.

Until the next post— Barbara