Applied Strategy – Practitioner Articel
Publication Ethics In HIR
HEALTH Information Research – March 18, 2012
www.e-hir.org
Publication Ethics In HIR
HEALTH Information Research – March 18, 2012
www.e-hir.org
This article purpose is to shed light on the fact there are some ethical concerns regarding some of the research reported in the Healthcare Research Information Journal (HIR). The journal bases its reviews and articles on Korean medical reviews and reports.
The guiding trigger for the article which spotlighted the need to put an ethical light on articles submitted to the journal was a scandal reported in the field of stem cell research. The published research study reported fictitious facts and showed an ethical concern about the donation of human oocytes, information that the research data was based on. According to another article relating to the research, Science Express Report: Patient Specific Embroyonic Stem Cells Derived from Human SCNT Blastocysts; published in May 2005 concerning the cells, “the cells used was derived by transfer of the donor’s cumulus cell nucleus .. but the cells were grown in a mouse feeder with likely xenograft contamination.” The scandal details of the origin of the cells raised ethical research reporting questions in scientific Korea and throughout the world.
Apparently, the absent Korean substandard Institutional Review Board, IRB felt as though too much scrutiny into research practice and reporting would put a damper on creativity and medical breakthroughs. However, the scandal reveled there was an ethical need to oversee research which caused them to raise the power of IRB and create the “Good Publication Practice Guidelines for Medical Journals” in 2008 and through that Healthcare Research Information (HIR) board decided to further scrutinize researchers articles presented to them for publication.
Research articles with hopes of being published in HIR will now be submitted for review on a much higher level. Each article submitted will be reviewed by an anonymous three person peer review board selected by the editor, there will a review regarding content to weed out redundant or like studies and the author will have to provide the IRB approval. In addition, any article concerning human or animal subject will have to submit their declaration compliance. HIR also revamp their author guidelines to mirror those in other American journals such as Journal of American Medical Informatics Association.
These new guidelines are necessary to create an environment of credibility for peer reviewed articles published by HIR or any other publication. When scientist, researchers or students are seeking support for their studies they will and should expect any article selected in a peer reviewed publication will be based on ethical behavior and findings reported would be able to be duplicated. Also the adoption of new ethical policy and applied strategy will increase HIR sales by producing a journal that has high quality, is ethical and findings are grounded in truth.
I think the new requirements were much needed. When doing research, we rely on the information to be correct. Stem cell research is very interesting and popluar amoung people and for their to be a scandal within the research is quite concerning.
ReplyDeleteThe new requirements are definitely a step in the right direction. Misleading information has the potential to harm others who are in need of that information in this situation. It's a win-win situation for HIR and everyone who reads the journals as HIR will profit financially and the people who read the journals will have a source that is of good credibility.
ReplyDeleteResearch is something that is heavily depended on, especially in the medical community. Large amounts of money is put into research, so quite naturally people are going to want to be the one to be recognized when a new development is discovered. That makes some people resort to unethical decisions when doing research or reporting research. It is true that the closer scrutiny of the article will make the writer uncomfortable, but it will protect ones who will benefit from the research development or findings. Some cures or breakthroughs in medicine that are later found out to be harmful to people may be the results of conducting research too fast but reporting longer observations and things like that. So closer scrutiny is important. Having a review board will help things to stay fair and unbiased, so someone with a truly honest research article will have a fair chance of it being published and the people that will benefit from its findings will be protected as well.
ReplyDeleteI agree with MR Pennie that research is very expensive. I think it was a good idea for the new requirements. This will eliminate some unethical issues that may arise. As Daniel states, it would be wrong to have misleasding information as expensive as research costs.
ReplyDeleteThanks guys for your comments. Yes research is expensive. Reported research should be scrutinized to ensure it was ethically gathered and the data collected is ethically reported. Other scientist duplicate research studies as a starting point aimed at offering additional finding in that field. If the research data is flawed, the addtional studies based on it will be also be flawed. It is good as you all indicated, that there be levels of scrunity built into any studies that is reported.
ReplyDeleteIt is very important for any information given to the public, especially scientific data, to be accurate and true. Giving out false information can severely damage any future studies or decisions made based off incorrect data. I believe those articles should have been reviewed from the beginning and never allowed to be released. It is good that there are anonymous three party reviewers making sure false and redundant information is not being released.
ReplyDelete