Other research

Research point

The project aims to examine the relationship between scholars’ self-reported publication pressure and their self-reported ethical misconduct in research. We study scholars (representing various disciplines) and members of the management, such as dean, director, etc. in Poland. We already found that the most popular ethical misconduct was honorary authorship in Poland.
The majority of researchers (71%) reported that they definitely had not violated ethical standards in the past, but 51% of the participants were aware of their colleagues’ ethical misconduct. Participants reported a significantly higher level of dishonesty among others compared to their ethical misconduct. Individuals observing strong publication pressure in their colleagues were also aware of their colleagues’ practices violating ethical standards. A small positive correlation between perceived publication pressure and intention to engage in ethical misconduct in the future was found. Only 3% of the participants stated that the current system of evaluating their research work was fully satisfactory. More than half of the management (52%) were aware of researchers’ dishonest practices, the most frequent one of these being honorary authorship. As many as 71% of the participants observe publication pressure in their subordinates.