Policy Updates - ORCiD, CRediT, email, OpenData

Amongst the growing concerns of the global publishing community about gift authorship, paper mills, AI-generated papers, compromised review processes, fake data, infiltration of fraudulent journals in major databases, we at ESNBU would like to tighten our Policies so that we can maintain our editorial integrity.

The updates (effective from 1 January 2024) concern three major areas: Author identification and verification, Authorship, and Openness.

TL;DR

• Mandatory ORCiD with publicly available data for ALL authors - Author identity and affiliation verification
  
• CRediT Contributor Roles Statement by ALL authors submitted individually via an institutional email address - Reducing the risk of authorship disputes
  
• Institutional e-mail address for NEW authors - Author identity and affiliation verification. Exceptions will be made for independent scholars only who are not affiliated with an institution at the time of submission, and authors who have already published with us and who we already know.
  
• Mandatory OpenData - data that is integral to the paper must be made available as Open Data(sets) in such a way as to enable readers to replicate, verify and build upon the conclusions published in the paper. Our first recommendation for an OA repository is Zenodo. It's funded and operated by CERN and OpenAIRE, and supported by the EU's Horizon2020 Programme.
  

We understand that some of these might seem very strict and somehow limiting, but the changing ecosystem demands that we evolve. We are lucky to be a small team, closely overseeing most of the editorial processes. However, the combination of paper mills and AI, fake data and phantom authors are growing concerns and pose a real threat to our small journal. Hopefully, tightening our policies in these ways will protect our hard-earned reputation.

1. Mandatory ORCiD with publicly available data for ALL authors and co-authors

ESNBU was a very early adopter of this identifier. Originally, authors were advised to get one, later we required the main author only.

a) ORCID is now mandatory for ALL contributors
Why? - ORCiD has become widely recognized and used. All databases require this PID when we submit our metadata. If we don't, our indicators fall.

b) the ORCiD profile must be populated with publicly available data, at least the author's current affiliation.
Why? - A few authors have displayed just their name and ID, not enough for an author to be verified.

2. CRediT Contributor Roles Statement by ALL authors submitted individually

ESNBU was also an early adopter of the CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy), which we introduced with the intention of increasing the transparency of our workflow and recognizing individual author contributions. So far, the corresponding authors have been responsible for submitting the CRediT author statement.

Why? - Recent issues have made us look at ways of reducing the risk of authorship disputes, so we are now changing over to the submission of a CRediT Author Statement from each and all authors individually, agreeing on the allocated roles from the CRediT Taxonomy. These statements must be received from the authors' institutional emails.

3. Institutional e-mail for NEW authors

Authors' identities must be verifiable through their institutional e-mail. (Google Scholar does that, as well as other services. Besides, nowadays, most research institutions and universities provide reliable, functioning e-mail services). ESNBU requires that new authors provide a verified, institutional email upon submission. While the published article may display the email preferred by the author, some of the communication with the authors must be carried out through their institutional email. Exceptions will be made for independent scholars only who are not affiliated with an institution at the time of submission, and authors who have already published with us and who we already know.

Why? - Author identity verification. Also, prevention. Public/Commercial email addresses render identification of fraud authors much more difficult, if not impossible, and this security gap is aggressively exploited by paper mills. So, this policy update should be seen as a deterrent measure for paper mills and fake authors and reviewers, and not a limitation for legitimate scholars.

4. OpenData - mandatory

ESNBU was an early adopter of the FAIR principles and advised authors on the benefits of Open Data. Until now it was only a recommendation. We now have made it mandatory (exceptions will apply). So, data that is integral to the paper must be made available as Open Data(sets) in such a way as to enable readers to replicate, verify and build upon the conclusions published in the paper. (Our first recommendation for an OA repository is Zenodo, funded by CERN, and supported by OpenAIRE and the EU's Horizon2020 Programme.)

Why? - ESNBU is striving to become even more 'open'. On the other hand, more cases are being reported of fake datasets generated by AI to support a particular hypothesis, resulting in fabricated articles which distort legitimate findings.

Last Update: Tue, 9 Jan 2024 17:04:55 CEST