Giving all your data the credit they deserve, especially when they are negative, isn’t always an easy thing to do. 

In addition, ALLEA points to the responsibility of researchers, research institutions and organisations to acknowledge data as legitimate and citable products of research. Giving all your data the credit they deserve, isn’t always an easy thing to do.

For researchers

In most cases researchers start their research based on a hypothesis or theory. If for any reason, the results of the research don’t confirm or match the theory, this is often considered a ‘failure’, or at least a setback. In some cases, it might even be seen as a personal failure, as the person seems ‘unable to deliver’, or contain the fear of being associated with flawed or poorly designed research. However, it’s important to stress that negative results aren’t ‘bad’ results; they can be obtained through sound and rigorous work and they help us move forward in research. Simply because we can learn from them, we avoid unnecessary repeating of things that don’t work, leading to waste in time, money (e.g. public funds). Claiming the value of your negative results requires a positive mindset to convince those remaining sceptic or ignorant and it demands some creativity to ‘sell’ your story. Luckily, researchers can benefit from a general tendency in research towards upgrading negative research results.

For research leaders, supervisors

As young researchers enter the field, they are often focused on getting the ‘right’ results, achieving success but not so much on how to deal with negative results, or worse, failure. This aspect should be present in the professional guidance. Leading by example is key for all aspects of the supervisor role but in particular when it comes to negative results. Respecting their value, staying true to well-designed plans, thinking about ways to formulate and link negative results to meaningful stories should be part of that role.

For representatives of journals or any other kind of communication

Because of the impact on science, there is a growing tendency towards respecting all research outcomes and upgrading the importance of negative results, with initiatives/journals such as Journals of Negative Results in Biomedicine, PLOS ONE, and The All Results Journals that encourage researchers to publish their negative results.

For funders

Even funders mainly reward researchers who can report on a ‘positive’ story. This may come from a well-meant conviction to keep investigating in what works. Negative results however move the field forward just as much.

The aim of publications is to make new research outcomes known. That is why researchers are expected to publish their research in a timely manner, and not to withhold research results. Authors also have to be aware, that apart from a few exceptions, the same work should not be published multiple times. Exceptions to this good practice include the use of preprints and subsequent formal publication in a journal discussed earlier in this module, the publication of important content in a number of journals to reach a bigger audience, or translations of the work. For instance, new insights in the 19th-century history of Belgium, can first be published in an international journal in English and later be translated to be published in a local historical journal in Flemish as long as both journals are informed, have agreed and the later pubblication refers to the firs. Authors should always be transparent and honest regarding the novelty of their work.

Below you can find some illustrations of unacceptable and questionable practices related to the novelty of the work.

Although this goes against the commonly accepted paradigm of only making research results publicly available after they have been peer-reviewed, the use of preprints has some advantages compared to the traditional publication pathway. Already common practice in fields as physics and mathematics, the preprint practice is now also accepted in a variety of other fields, in part facilitated by a reduced resistance by traditional publishers, the availability of discipline-specific preprint platforms and the increased support of funders.

Advantages of preprints

Preprints provide researchers with the opportunity to share their findings in a much faster way, allowing to inform peers and colleagues of the work and the results, thereby avoiding being dependent on the review process which can harper timely dissemination.

Moreover, given the open access character of the publication, authors that publish preprints have the possibility to receive broader feedback on the work as this will not be limited to the typical 2-3 reviewers that are assigned to review a paper in traditional peer review. This community-driven feedback can be used to revise the work before submitting the work to a traditional journal. Getting the work out in the open, might also facilitate getting in touch with other researchers working on the topic, potentially leading to collaborations and further improvement of the paper.

In addition, as most preprints are assigned a DOI (Digital Object Identifier), the research can be cited and credit for the work can be claimed. The work thus becomes part of the scholarly record, meaning authors do not have to fear that their work will be scooped as the preprint can be shown to demonstrate who was first.

Finally, preprints may provide a dissemination route for research that encounters problems to be published in a traditional way. Examples are publications with negative data or research that is deemed of low priority because not innovative enough (e.g. replication studies). Just because journals are not interested this does not mean that the results are not relevant to the research community. Here preprints may provide a way out, preventing the money and time spent on the research to go to waste.

Can I still submit to a traditional journal?

Just because it is available as a preprint in many cases does not prevent the work subsequently to be submitted to, reviewed by and finally published in a traditional journal. However, when doing this authors should be aware of potential copyright restrictions and are advised to acknowledge the existence of the first version upon submission of the work for peer review. In addition, upon acceptance and publication of the work in a traditional journal, a clear link should be made between the preprint and the journal version of the work, this to illustrate the evolution of the research and to direct readers towards the final, peer-reviewed version of the work which will receive a different DOI than the preprint.

Where to publish preprints?

Some examples of well know disciplinary preprint servers are:

• SocArXiv (social sciences)
• PsyArXiv (psychology)
• medRxiv (health sciences)
• ChemRxiv (chemistry)
• arXiv (focus on, but not limited to physics and mathematics)
• bioRxiv (biological sciences)

OSF Preprints is designed for any researchers in any field to share their work.

Peer review is at the core of the traditional publication system. It is designed to assess the quality and validity of new research work, to provide suggestions for further improvement before publication, and to make sure that invalid or low quality articles are not published.

Reviewers should be aware of their ethical responsibilities when reviewing studies submitted by their peers. Below you can find some guidelines on how to behave when asked to review a manuscript.

ACCEPTING TO REVIEW:

• In most cases, review invitations contain the title, the author list and the abstract of the study. Ideally, a reviewer is working in the same discipline as the topic of the paper. Are you the right person to review the manuscript? Consider declining the invitation if the topic is too far outside of your expertise.
• When in doubt, contact the editor and discuss your concerns. This allows the editor to determine whether you would have the required expertise, and will also allow to invite an additional reviewer to complement the area that is not covered by the current reviewers. It is not because a specific part of the manuscript is outside your expertise, that you cannot give input on the rest of the study.
• Decline to review if you would have a competing interest that could interfere with the objective evaluation of the manuscript, such as a financial conflict of interest (COI), a close personal relationship or present/recent collaboration with one or more of the authors.
• Although useful for their own work, reviewers should decline to review work directly related to their own research. The information in the manuscript should not be used to benefit your own work. Finally, please also decline to review papers coming from your direct environment (same department or even same host institution).
• Upon declining to review, try to make suggestions for alternative reviewers.
• Check the journal’s policies and guidelines to understand what is expected with regards to the review of manuscripts.

BE RELIABLE

• Most journals expect their reviewers to provide feedback within a limited time period. Reviewers should not accept to review a paper if they won’t be able to do this within the allotted timeframe. In case unforeseen issues arise, preventing you from reviewing in time, the editor of the journal should be informed.
• Similarly, decline and accept review invitations in a timely fashion.
• Editors often rely on the profile of the reviewers as available in the database of the journal to select potential reviewers. Please make sure your profile is up to date by checking your keywords and preferred research topics.

CONFIDENTIALITY

• Manuscripts under review are confidential documents until they are made public upon publication. Depending on the journal, the accompanying reviewer reports might remain confidential, even after publication of the accepted manuscript.
• Reviewers should contact the editor before involving other parties in the review process (for example a student or a co-worker) and the names of these additional reviewers should be provided in the confidential comments to the editors. This will also assist the editor in identifying potentially interesting new reviewers to be invited for future reviews.
• Reviewers should never contact the authors directly. All communication should be arranged via the journal.

BE OBJECTIVE, CONSTRUCTIVE AND RESPONSIBLE WHILE REVIEWING

• Manuscripts should be judged without bias towards the authors, both in positive and negative sense.
• The primary role of a reviewer is to advise the journal and to make sure flawed manuscripts are withheld or corrected before being made available for the scientific field.
• Reviews should be written in clear language and be helpful to both the editors and the author. Be respectful and keep a professional stance when providing comments. Reviewers should not hide behind their anonymity to provide rude reviews and personal criticism. Provide constructive critiques, as this will help the author to focus on the problems in the proposed work, instead of giving the feeling that the comments are the result of a personal vendetta.
• Report ethical issues such as potentially undisclosed conflicts of interests, the lack of ethical approval or concerns on the experimental protocol in human or animal studies. In addition, suspicions of misconduct, such as fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism or other questionable research practices should be reported to and disclosed with the editor.

Upon finalising you research project, the traditional ultimate step is to make the work available to the research community by publishing it, for instance in a journal. Given the extensive time spent on your research, and the potential implications for your career, authors should carefully select a proper place for their work. With thousands of journals listed in the main bibliographical databases such as Web of Science and PubMed, or local initiatives such as the Flemish Academic Bibliography for the Social Sciences and Humanities (VABB-SHW), researchers can become overwhelmed by the possibilities. Moreover, as journals are not always indexed in the most frequently used databases, the number of journals to choose from is almost unlimited. Therefore, when assessing potential journals to publish your work, critical factors to look into are the reputation and the quality of a journal and its publisher, together with the scope of the journal.

The scope of the journal is important as it can impact who will get to read your work. Although you might have the most interesting/important paper ever, if it doesn’t get published in a place where it gets appropriate visibility, your work might not get picked up. This of course doesn’t mean that you should not publish your work in journals that have a broad scope. Nevertheless, try to identify the profile of the readers of the journal. Is your work relevant to them?

When it comes to the reputation of the journal, authors are encouraged to look further than the journal impact factor and instead assess the quality of the journal and the papers previously published by the journal and its publisher. Does the journal appear trustworthy and does it have policies in place to make sure that the submitted research is evaluated according to the internationally accepted principles? For example, does the journal provide clear instructions to authors and is a solid peer review system in place?

Predators in publishing

Some general recommendations

• Think. Check. Submit. provides a checklist to help you identify the right journal for your research.
• Does VABB-SSHW list the journal?
• Is the journal a member of COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics)? Members adhere to the Core practices.
• Does a learned society sponsor the journal?
• Is the publisher or journal one of the signatories of the Transparency & Openness Initiative
• Have (many of) your trusted peers published in this journal?

Predatory conferences

Open access refers to the practice of making peer-reviewed scholarly research and literature freely available online to anyone interested. Open means anyone can freely access, use, modify, and share for any purpose, subject, and at most, to requirements that preserve provenance and openness. It does not affect authors’ freedom to choose where to publish or the right not to publish.

There are two major ways to make publications open access:

• Self-archiving:
  Depositing a publication in an open repository and making it available, allows you to make a publication available in open access, regardless of the platform in which your publication originally has been published. The repository can be subject specific, e.g. arXiv; linked to an institution, e.g. each Flemish university hosts an open repository; or can be a general one, like e.g. Zenodo. Most publishers allow self-archiving in repositories. However, conditions may apply to which version you can make available, the author’s final peer-reviewed manuscript or author’s accepted manuscript – AAM, a version which is peer-reviewed but does not show the publisher’s layout, or the publisher’s version. An embargo period might be in place (usually 6 months for STEM and 12 months for SSH). Sherpa/Romeo, the database of publishers’ policies on copyright and self-archiving, can be used to determine the open access policy of journals and/or publishers. Moreover, the Belgian law allows authors to make scholarly peer-reviewed articles available in open access, in the final peer-reviewed manuscript and after an embargo period (Art. XI.196 §2/1).
• Publishing scholarly works in an open access journal
  Open access journals provide direct open access upon publication. To find a qualitative open access journal, you can consult the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ). The DOAJ reviews open access journals before acceptance in the directory. You can browse the open access journals by subject or by publisher. Some open access journals require authors to pay a fee, the so-called article processing charge (APC).

No matter where you choose to publish, always remember to upload your publications to your local/institutional open access repository.

Why is open access to publications important?

The main advantage of making research open access is often summed up in two words: visibility and impact. Open access articles are much more widely read than those which are not freely available on the internet. Webwide availability leads to increased use, which in turn, raises citation rates, a fact that has been empirically supported by several studies (OACA, Open Access Citation Advantage). Open access also underpins the idea that everyone should be able to consult research outcomes, whether a (young) researcher, a professional in the form of a concerned citizen, without having to pay an extra fee. And this is certainly the case for research funded with public funds.

The fact that the public sector has to fund research three times is often criticised: firstly, the scholars and scientists carrying out research and submitting their findings for publication are often paid by the public sector. Secondly, the submitted manuscripts are peer-reviewed by colleagues who are also mainly funded by public means. And thirdly, when the articles are published they must be purchased from the publishers by publicly-funded libraries and institutes. Taking these reasons into account, more and more funders opt to require open access to publications resulting from research they funded, to ensure the wider dissemination of research outcomes.

What if you don’t choose for open access?

When researchers don’t choose open access for their publications it can result in a lack of visibility: only readers with access to journals whose content isn’t open are able to read that content. This means many possible interested parties don’t know about your research. It can also result in a lack of funding: many funders mandate open access to publications and are inclined to take measures if you don’t.

Learning how to write in an academic way is a skill. It requires knowledge of some basic rules and a lot of practice. This doesn’t happen overnight.

For all knowledge a researcher uses in new academic work, a correct reference to the original has to be made, whether this is text, images, document structure, online information, etc. This requires an in-text citation and a full reference in the bibliography. Information flows need to be traceable for readers, at all times. If this is not properly done, it can be considered plagiarism.

How information from original sources is being processed can differ and therefore requires a different approach.

With quotations an author wants to use the exact words, copied directly from a source, without any change. This identical use of original knowledge requires additional care in correct referencing: quotations must appear in a noticeable format, e.g. with quotations marks, italic font, … and they need to be cited with in-text citations but also accompanied by the reference page. Also a full reference in the bibliography is required.

It is advised to use quotations when:

• You want to add the power of an author’s words to support your argument
• You want to disagree with an author’s argument
• You want to highlight particularly eloquent or powerful phrases or passages
• You are comparing and contrasting specific points of view
• You want to note the important research that precedes your own.

Source text: The writing center – When to summarize, paraphrase, and quote.

In all other cases you have to use paraphrase. You will then generate new content using or being influenced by ideas from other authors, but you have to write them down in your own words. The general rules for referencing apply (in-text + full reference).

Reference styles

There are many reference styles, often depending on the discipline or journal you write for. In order to know what style to use, ask your research leader, supervisor, colleague, … what style is most common for your discipline, or check author’s guidelines on the journal’s website.

The best-known systems are:

• APA – 7th ed. (American Psychological Association)
• Chicago – 17th ed. (used for footnotes)
• MLA – 8th ed. (Modern Language Association)
• Harvard
• Vancouver (Mainly used in biomedicine)

To manage your references in general, over time and over single articles, you can use a reference manager such as Endnote (Clarivate Analytics) (via your university research platform), Zotero (free) or Mendeley (Elsevier).

Besides author names, publications contain author affiliations, providing more information on the university/faculty/department where each of the authors is affiliated with. An author can have multiple affiliations, for example in case where he or she is affiliated with multiple entities within the same university, or alternatively when someone is appointed at multiple institutions.

When listing affiliations, it is important to note that these should reflect where the research has taken place. Although it is tempting to include as many affiliations as possible, researchers should be aware that an affiliation should only be claimed if the actual work and research underlying the publication have been performed at the institution(s) listed in the affiliation.

So why is a correct author affiliation important?

In addition to help identifying authors (in case of multiple researchers having the same name) and giving recognition to the host institution, it also assigns responsibility to the institutions involved as it directs the readers of the work to ‘who to contact’ in case of questions and/or problems with the research, for example with regards to ethics and research integrity of the work. In addition, correct affiliations are of key importance for identifying potential (financial) conflicts of interests.

Who is an author? Criteria for authorship

Authorship is an explicit way to give credit to everyone who made a significant contribution to the work. In turn, this implies that it can be expected that all authors are fully accountable for all aspects of the work, unless otherwise specified.  

As with authorship, it is important to reach clear agreements on the authorship order. According to the ALLEA code, all authors should agree on the sequence of authorship. Any form of listing is possible, if in line with the principles of research integrity and the policies that apply. As an author, you should also be able to explain the system of and the reasoning behind the agreed author order. 

Like science itself, standards for attributing authorship may also evolve, e.g. as prevailing practices within a discipline change over time. The research context itself is also a determining factor. For example, it can become difficult (but not impossible) to correctly attribute authorship in the case of (large) collaborations, increasing specialisation, an increasing degree of inter- and transdisciplinary research, etc.  

Nonetheless, the basic principles listed in the ALLEA code must be followed as they constitute the minimum standard for all researchers, in all disciplines and to all forms of output. This means that: 

• All those designated as authors should meet all criteria for authorship, and all who meet the criteria should be identified as authors.  
• Those who do not meet all criteria should be acknowledged, e.g. in a separate list in the acknowledgements or a footnote.  
• In addition to being accountable for the parts of the work done, an author should be able to identify which co-authors are responsible for specific other parts of the work.  
• Finally, authors should have confidence in the integrity of the contributions of their co-authors.  

  Besides the ALLEA code as leading framework, authorship guidelines are drawn up by many other stakeholders in science e.g. funders, journals, etc. Examples include the guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), originally developed for the (bio)medical field, but now also followed by many other fields, and the guidelines of the American Psychological Association Journals (APA). Please note that also journals and/or your host institution may have developed their own authorship policies.  It is therefore necessary to always check them as early as possible. This is especially appropriate in the case of (international) collaboration.

Authorship order

In addition to being included as an author (or not), the order of authors is also determined by specific agreements. According to the ALLEA code, all authors should agree on the sequence of authorship.  

Different systems can be used for this, not infrequently depending on the discipline. Alphabetical order or degree of contribution/collaboration are the most well-known protocols for ordering authors, but should not be seen as an absolute way to determine who contributed most to the study. Any form of listing is possible, if in line with the principles of research integrity and the policies that apply.  

As an author, you should also be able to explain the system of and the reasoning behind the agreed author order. 

It is advised for researchers to indicate the system used and the decisions derived from it, e.g. in the footnote of the contribution. In this way, readers/evaluators can correctly appreciate the listing (and thus the underlying contribution).

Good academic practices on authorship

To avoid authorship issues, good communication between the researchers involved in the project is key. Authorship disputes are one of, if not the biggest, drivers for conflict between researchers.  

Some good academic practices to avoid authorship issues:  

• Do not postpone agreement about authorship – authorship should not be decided on when getting a manuscript ready for submission. Instead, expectations about authorship should be discussed as early as possible when drafting the article format, in a transparent way and preferably in writing throughout the project.  
• As authorship contributions might change over the course of the research/article, this might also impact whether a researcher can remain an author and/or whether additional researchers have to be added to the list of authors. Be transparent regarding necessary changes in authorship and have these changes approved by all authors.  
• Be consistent when awarding authorship and use the same criteria for all involved and across all publications.  
• There is more than one way to reward contributions to articles. Contributors who don’t meet the authorship criteria can e.g. be mentioned in the acknowledgements or in an expression of gratitude in the notes or at the beginning of the article text.  
• Inform all authors and, if necessary, contributors before submitting a manuscript and have the last version of the manuscript approved by all contributors.  

In order to increase transparency, many universities and journals recommend or even compel authors to disclose the contribution of each of the authors in the form of an authorship contribution disclosure and to publish this information together with or in the paper.

Specifying contributions can take different forms: a written statement in one’s own words, the so-called ‘author(ship) contribution statement’, whether or not in a predetermined format; use of ‘digital badges’ where each contribution corresponds to a specific colored badge, e.g. a red badge for writing the first draft. The most well-known example is a pre-established classification of different (traditional and other) roles in a “Contributor Roles Taxonomy” (e.g. CRediT). This high-level taxonomy consists of 14 roles (Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal Analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Software, Supervision, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft and Writing – review & editing) which can be used to uniformly describe each contributor’s role in the research. 

When one of the authors leaves the institution

The timeframe for getting articles published doesn’t always match a researcher’s current academic affiliation. Sometimes researchers leave before a project or article is finalized. In this case, it is important to take additional arrangements to settle contributions to an article and accompanying rewards. In all cases, the work done by a researcher should be acknowledged correctly whether that person is still employed at the time of publication or not.  

Additional arrangements concern:   

• Is the researcher leaving able/willing to follow-up on the article?   
• What if (minor or major) changes have to be made after peer review?  
• What if additional research practices have to be made e.g. extra calculations?  
• What is the possible effect to authorship contribution/order?  
• What if the paper is not accepted, how will follow-up be discussed, e.g. when the article will be submitted to a different journal?  
• How will decisions be made in these changes?  
• …  

Even though publication of an article can take some time, up-to-date contact details of the person leaving are still necessary. It is important to inform that person about content-related and practical changes, as well as publication progress, at all times.  

In addition to the presentation of categorical and non-categorical data, special care should be taken when presenting digital images to illustrate different experimental conditions. Images have to be considered as data and are more than a simple illustration accompanying the summary statistics. Inconsistencies in the image (e.g. the use of the same image to illustrate different experimental conditions) or selective modification of images may severely decrease the confidence of your peers in your work and may warrant a correction or even a retraction of the publication. This is especially relevant in the field of biomedical and biological sciences, relying on a number of specific technologies (microscopy, western blotting, fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS), …) to illustrate the results.

Good academic practices when working with and presenting images

Some general good practices when working with and presenting images are:

• Modifications such as adjustments of contrast, brightness and/or color balance might be acceptable but only if the adjustments are done on the entire image and do not influence a proper perception of the data.
• Researchers should be able to trace back and motivate the adjustments.
• Selective modification of an image, for example to remove or emphasize specific features is generally not acceptable even if the modification is performed to remove an unrelated imperfection (e.g. remove a hair, fingerprint, etc.).
• Upon combining multiple images into a single field, this should be obvious from the presentation of the image and the text of the figure legend. For example, splicing of bands in case of a Western blot may be acceptable in some cases, but only if properly acknowledged.
• Always have the original, unaltered images available and only make modifications on a copy of the original image.
• Be prepared to make the raw image files available to the reviewers and/or readers of your work, for example by providing these as supplementary data or using an online data repository.
• As many issues arise by the accidental selection of the wrong image, proper data management is a key element in the prevention of mistakes.
• While generating figures, check and double check whether the correct images have been selected. With this in mind, the use of placeholder images is discouraged.

The example below illustrates a case in which the same blot image is used 2 times to illustrate 2 different experimental conditions: