ECEIA25, Day 3

 Day 1 - Day 2  - Day 3 - Day 4

 Day 3!

The keynote this morning is from Jihad Makhoul from the American University of Beirut on "The Landschape of Applied Research Ethics in the Middle East and North African Region". She was also unable to get a flight, so she is presenting by Zoom.

She first introduces us to the MENA region with around 20+ countries that vary in economic prosperity, political systems, etc., with high levels of social and political fragmentation. Due to the conflicts in the region, there has been much mass migration within the area.

Although there has been an increase in funding available, there was very little research available on research integrity. So her group decided to map existing capabilities and training initiatives, to explore the role of social and structural determinants, and to identify the gaps in the research.

The research ran from 2020-2023, so due to COVID-19 they had to conduct much of the research at a distance. 

he group conducted 25 one-on-one reviews, 85 persons participated in focus groups, and they had 117 respondents to an online survey with 45 multiple choice questions available in various languages.

91% stated that they work in an institution requiring ethics approval, but only 72% actually follow ethical research practice and only 67% received training in research ethics. Only 46% were very confident that they would be able to solve ethical dilemmas.

Many researchers completed their PhDs abroad, and noted that it was there that they were trained in research integrity, not at the MENA institutions. Many stated that there were no specific guidelines for pharma-funded research.

There are barriers to research on all levels including recurring academic misconduct, no access to peer-reviewed journals, no time to conduct research, multiple approvals needed by Research Ethics committees.

National barriers included marginalization of social science research, the state discouraging research, and uncooperative governments including censorship of findings.

Some of the issues:
* Colonialization of knowledge and knowledge production. Western researchers come to the region, research, but then publish in Western journals that are not availble in the region being investigated.
* There is some assumption of "universal values" that are applicablein all contexts. This denies relativism, pluralism and contextural variations. In MENA collectivism (the influence of the family or clan) is more important than individualism. Research happens within social networks.
* There are many challenges and dificiencies at an individual level, as well as deficiencies in the research climate (censorship, state control, violation of academic freedom, etc.)

What should we do? Train researchers, continuing education, integrate research ethics in the curriculum starting early, strengthen mentorship. 

Sorry for the long interruption, first I was on a panel about GenAI in academia and then after lunch I gave my talk about a puzzling case of plagiarism documented by the VroniPlag Wiki group (https://vroniplag.fandom.com/de/wiki/San).

Now following me is Madhura Amdekar from CrossRef, speaking about "Metadata as trust signals: leveraging scholarly infrastructure for research integrity".

CrossRef stores a good bit of metadata about scholarly publications. They are also now storing relationship data, for example linking pre-prints to published versions of papers or retractions to the published version.

There is an API for accessing the system and various services offered to the 22,000 members of CrossRef.

Next up is David Tovey from the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology speaking about "Methodological aspects of research Integrity and culture: our perspective as journal editors"

A problem in medical journals is that the evidence spoken about in evidence-based medicine is changing. In particular, systematic reviews have major shortfalls. There has been a huge increase in retractions, cases are not identified by traditional publishing processes, and the processes take far too long.

Now moving from punitive based approach to scientific misconduct to prevention of problematic studies. He offers a number of recommendations for inclusive, rigorous, transparent and objective dealing with publication decisions.

In summary there is need for a twin track approach: detection AND prevention. And not describe every article published as "groundbreaking" ;)

They also have to deal with the use of GenAI, even for the letters to the editors...

Last talk in this session is from Mariya Chankova, Ivanka Sakareva on "Perceptions about academic integrity breaches of newly enrolled doctoral students at a Bulgarian university"

Their project is funded by the Bulgarian Science Fund and focuses on academic integrity, academic plagiarism and the problems posed by GenAI. This research focused on the perceptions of newly enrolled doctoral students about academic integrity. The problem is sthat compliance with Bulgarian law on awarding PhDs are hard to comprehend, even for PhD students.

They had 69 participants in a workshop, 43 people took part in a survey. They were asked 12 questions about academic integrity, the rate of correct answers was only 84%.

Most problems were identified in the areas of how to approach using one's own texts (self-plagiarism), the use of online sources, and the correct use and acknowledgment of AI tools.

In conclusion there needs to be more materials available for doctoral students about academic integrity, then need training on using generative AI tools. They also need a support online network. 

To close out the day I am attending a workshop led by Sarah Elaine Eaton and Irene Glendinning on "Pragmatic approaches to designing and maintaining institutional integrity policies"

It's a workshop and I'll have to actually do some work, so no toots more today!

Not a toot, but in the evening we had our gala dinner at Norrlands Nation where the ENAI awards were presented. I can only find the link on Facebook, hope to be able to update to a web  page soon.