Science is an activity that has a great impact on the way we think and how we live. It is a very diverse universe, since the way one works in Mathematics or Physics is not the same as in Biomedicine, not to mention disciplines that someone calls Social, Economic or Legal Sciences. But, as a whole, those who identify themselves as scientists adhere to a method and rules that are the basis for the credibility of their results. This is what we call Good Scientific Practices that should be valid at any time and place. The growth of science in Spain highlights the importance of taking them into account.
We already know what issues like this appear in the news when something goes wrong. For example, when there is a case of scientific fraud or conflicts between researchers. Recently, there has been talk of problems in scientific publications, a crucial issue in science, since research does not exist until it is published. In general terms, we can say that the six million scientists that UNESCO has counted exist in the world, they publish annually about two million articles in at least 30,000 or 40,000 international journals, the vast majority of them in English. It has been calculated that these magazines represent a publishing industry that handles about 19 billion dollars annually, which places it between the film and music industries. It is not a trivial business.
Scientific publications have undergone a huge revolution with their digitization and putting them online. From a researcher’s computer, the content of any scientific journal can be accessed without having to go to a library. However, this ease comes at a price. There are journals that you have to subscribe to to have access to them and there are those that are open access, which many public funds favor. However, you have to pay to publish on them. A widely distributed journal may require payment of 3,000 or 5,000 euros to publish an article, something that some research groups cannot afford. This fact has not escaped investors who have seen a business opportunity in scientific journals and the number of these has been growing, but in some cases the quality requirement is lower. To accept an article for publication, journals use the peer review system, which in some cases is significantly simplified.
At the same time, in recent years an entire industry has developed that measures the impact of journals based on the number of times the articles they publish are cited by other researchers. This has led to the emergence of indicators that are supposed to measure the impact of researchers, work groups, research centers and universities. Indicators and classifications have given rise to a race towards publication in journals with the highest possible indexes in which everything seems to count. This ranges from a market of articles that are bought and sold to fictitious authorships and, recently, universities in some countries have been seen paying authors to claim to belong to them. All of this perverts the publication system and constitutes continued fraud. To remedy this, there have been statements calling for abandoning evaluation based on numerical indicators and carrying out qualitative evaluations that allow examining the validity and quality of the work carried out. This implies more review work and greater trust in those involved in it.
In Spain this conflictive situation occurs at a time when the research carried out in our country is increasing both in quantity and quality. The increase in funds that are mostly competitive and, therefore, need evaluation has contributed to this. This is also necessary to attribute the so-called productivity supplements to the salaries of teachers and researchers. For those who manage the Science and University system, the simplest thing is to use indicators and rankings based on publication impact indices. If the money to work or the money received at the end of the month depends on these indicators, it is not surprising that an idolatry has been created towards the impact of the publications and a regrettable picaresque appears.
This occurs when in Spain we do not have a culture of scientific research in which Good Scientific Practices are well rooted, nor procedures for analyzing the deviations that inevitably occur when there is pressure on research and teaching staff. Just this year, the first State Research Ethics Committee was established, which was already provided for in the Science Law of 2011. It is true that institutions like the CSIC already have a Ethics Committee since 2009 he has treated dozens of cases. In Catalonia the Committee for Research Integrity was created four years ago and little by little research centers and universities are equipped with similar bodies. But it is difficult for institutions to analyze possible cases of bad practices and reach disciplinary measures, partly due to corporatist tradition, but also because the rules of the Public Service prevent them from being applied. The procedures of the public administration in our country are not adapted for efficient management of science and contribute to perverting the system. It would be necessary to take actions to ensure that researchers know and adhere to the standards that give their work credibility, since we must all be convinced that only honest, quality science makes sense. And we must be vigilant so that when something happens we have procedures to analyze cases and appropriate measures are taken in a transparent and diligent manner.
Pere Puigdomenech He is an ad honorem research professor at the Higher Scientific Research Council (CSIC) at the Agrigenomics Research Center (CRAG) and former president of the CSIC Ethics Committee
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