A survey of biomedical journals to detect editorial bias and nepotistic behavior

Alongside the growing concerns regarding predatory journal growth, other questionable editorial practices have gained visibility recently. Among them, we explored the usefulness of the Percentage of Papers by the Most Prolific author (PPMP) and the Gini index (level of inequality in the distribution of authorship among authors) as tools to identify journals that may show favoritism in accepting articles by specific authors. We examined whether the PPMP, complemented by the Gini index, could be useful for identifying cases of potential editorial bias, using all articles in a sample of 5,468 biomedical journals indexed in the National Library of Medicine. For articles published between 2015 and 2019, the median PPMP was 2.9%, and 5% of journal exhibited a PPMP of 10.6% or more. Among the journals with the highest PPMP or Gini index values, where a few authors were responsible for a disproportionate number of publications, a random sample was manually examined, revealing that the most prolific author was part of the editorial board in 60 cases (61%). The papers by the most prolific authors were more likely to be accepted for publication within 3 weeks of their submission. Results of analysis on a subset of articles, excluding nonresearch articles, were consistent with those of the principal analysis. In most journals, publications are distributed across a large number of authors. Our results reveal a subset of journals where a few authors, often members of the editorial board, were responsible for a disproportionate number of publications. To enhance trust in their practices, journals need to be transparent about their editorial and peer review practices.

Getting Published in Top Journals: Is the Deck Stacked Against You?

We examine the challenges of publishing in top academic journals. We introduce a new data set summarizing 30 years of articles at the three top finance journals. We quantify the issue by first examining the number of articles and authors per year at each journal then comment on the impact of repeat authors and institutional affiliation. Our results show that a small number of academics and institutions dominate the available publishing space in these journals. We then shift the focus to the potential impact of choice of research area on publication success by investigating trends in the coverage of behavioral finance in these journals. Our results suggest an editorial bias against this arguably important field of study.

‘Nepotistic journals’: a survey of biomedical journals

ContextConvergent analyses in different disciplines support the use of the Percentage of Papers by the Most Prolific author (PPMP) as a red flag to identify journals that can be suspected of questionable editorial practices. We examined whether this index, complemented by the Gini index, could be useful for identifying cases of potential editorial bias, using a large sample of biomedical journals.MethodsWe extracted metadata for all biomedical journals referenced in the National Library of Medicine, with any attributed Broad Subject Terms, and at least 50 authored (i.e. by at least one author) articles between 2015 and 2019, identifying the most prolific author (i.e. the person who signed the most papers in each particular journal). We calculated the PPMP and the 2015-2019 Gini index for the distribution of articles across authors. When the relevant information was reported, we also computed the median publication lag (time between submission and acceptance) for articles authored by any of the most prolific authors and that for articles not authored by prolific authors. For outlier journals, defined as a PPMP or Gini index above the 95th percentile of their respective distributions, a random sample of 100 journals was selected and described in relation to status on the editorial board for the most prolific author.Results5 468 journals that published 4 986 335 papers between 2015 and 2019 were analysed. The PPMP 95th percentile was 10.6% (median 2.9%). The Gini index 95th percentile was 0.355 (median 0.183). Correlation between the two indices was 0.35 (95CI 0.33 to 0.37). Information on publication lag was available for 2 743 journals. We found that 277 journals (10.2%) had a median time lag to publication for articles by the most prolific author(s) that was shorter than 3 weeks, versus 51 (1.9%) journals with articles not authored by prolific author(s). Among the random sample of outlier journals, 98 provided information about their editorial board. Among these 98, the most prolific author was part of the editorial board in 60 cases (61%), among whom 25 (26% of the 98) were editors-in-chief.DiscussionIn most journals publications are distributed across a large number of authors. Our results reveal a subset of journals where a few authors, often members of the editorial board, were responsible for a disproportionate number of publications. The papers by these authors were more likely to be accepted for publication within 3 weeks of their submission. To enhance trust in their practices, journals need to be transparent about their editorial and peer review practices.

Culture wars, libraries and the BBC

PurposePublic libraries and public service broadcasters are threatened by political developments in the UK and USA. They are targets in a divisive culture war waged by ideological organisations that disseminate misleading and false information about social and political matters on line, on screen and in print. The purpose of this paper is to alert information professionals to this issue and suggests that, although they should not engage in this war, they must be prepared to use their professional expertise to identify and correct unreliable material. Further, they should cooperate with other true information organisations to expose the fallacious sources that endanger democracy.Design/methodology/approachThe authors analysed material from academic texts and papers, professional journals, serious contemporary journalism, political manifestoes, Internet blogs and items from the BBC sound archive to illustrate the history, size and nature of the problem and to suggest how it might be dealt with. This documentary analysis was based on the belief that information professionals are not the only people examining and concerned about this issue. It therefore included material from a wide range of other disciplines, including psychology, medicine and politics.FindingsThere is evidence that populist movements from the political right dislike information organisations and have historically, through misinformation and misrepresentation, persuaded working class citizens that they are being exploited by an elite. Public libraries and the BBC are highly trusted organisations, but much of the British public goes to sources it trusts least, such as tabloid newspapers, for information on politics and society. Librarians and BBC broadcasters demonstrated their value during the COVID-19 pandemic, but they need to engage with other professional groups to fully understand what is happening and counteract the threats it presents to our democracy.Originality/valueThe paper deals with a significant current issue that needs to be considered urgently by practitioners, academics and policy makers. It includes practical examples and suggestions demonstrating how information workers have and can help their users identify and use trusted and accurate information sources and perhaps be made aware of editorial bias.

Supporting the call for improving the code of publication ethics to incorporate editorial decisions regarding the causation of harm by publication

It is argued that editors have a moral responsibility to reject submissions that they felt publication of which may cause harm. However, Ploeg and others suggest that there may exist better alternatives to rejection. He also called for the code of publication ethics to incorporate acknowledgement of the moral responsibility for the effects of publishing, define benefits and harms of publishing, and specify a range of actions an editor may take. This letter highlights a recent such rejection ostensibly made on the basis of harm, but could easily be construed as editorial bias, and supports the call for improving the code of publication ethics to guide editors and secure consistency in decisions.

Large scale analysis of violent death count in daily newspapers to quantify bias and censorship

Editorial bias and censorship can be quantified studying how the occurrence of the word ‘killed’ (‘morti’ in Italian) changes over time and reported location. To this purpose, we have analyzed the complete online archives of the major US newspaper (The New York Times - NYT) and the three major Italian ones (Il Corriere della Sera - CDS, La Repubblica - REP, La Stampa - STA). After 1960 we find a common trend of decreasing coverage given to violent events in all three Italian newspapers (NYT is more stable), opposite to the growing perceived threat of violence in Italy. In all Italian newspapers we also find that the female/male ratio is about 30% and roughly constant over the years, with only La Repubblica showing an increase of reporting of female deaths of about 3% /year . Even accounting for the lower female casualty rate, especially in work-related accidents, this hints to the presence of some gender bias in the reporting of violent deaths. Historically, we show evidence of censorship in Italian newspapers during WW1 and Italian Fascist regime and estimate that in the period 1923-1943 ’ 57,000 articles (75%) featuring domestic deaths were censored in Italy. We also find that the number of casualties is often (up to 26%) artificially increased to the next multiple of 5 or 10 to emphasize the importance of the article. The only exception to this editorial practice is found in domestic articles by Italian newspapers during the Fascist regime, another effect of censorship trying to downplay domestic casualties. Furthermore, we find that in all newspapers, the distribution Nk of the number of articles involving k persons killed is described by a power law Nk =A*k^(-γ) for 2≤k≤1E6. The value of γ decreases in wartime and increases in peacetime and reflecting how the state of belligerence of a country is being reported. In foreign events, editorial bias results in a break of the power law for 2≤k≤10 resulting in up to 100% articles missing in comparison to what would be expected by a pure power law distribution, which describes the distribution of all domestic articles. The suppression of low casualties articles grows with geographical distance from the publishing nation with a rate higher by a factor 5 in the Italian newspapers than in NYT and by a factor 2 - 4 when considering only countries in Europe (for the Italian newspapers) or America (for NYT), sign that the geographical distance plays a strong role when reporting among countries that share common social traits. These techniques can be be applied in a wider context, e.g. toward specific ethnic groups and contribute to quantitatively assess the freedom of press in a given country.

Is an Algorithm the Answer? Wattpad Books’s Challenge to Publishing Infrastructures

This article explores Wattpad’s algorithmically defined publishing arm, Wattpad Books, and its claims to be a neutral and unbiased alternative to traditional publishing selection processes. Removing editorial bias with an algorithmic selector, however, does not eliminate bias entirely; rather, it shifts bias from editors to the creators of the algorithm. Wattpad Books thus presents a new and insidious bias in publishing, claiming a neutrality in its data-driven proprietary processes that it does not have.

The Response of the Late Victorian Feminist Press to Same-Sex Desire Controversies

Molly Youngkin’s essay investigates the heterosexism of a fin de siècle feminist newspaper, the Women’s Penny Paper (1894–99, later retitled the Women’s Herald and the Woman’s Signal), highlighting its treatment of three controversies: the Oscar Wilde trials, the death of poet Amy Levy, and the emergence of Sappho as a model of lesbian new womanhood. When the paper did address these controversies it ‘reshaped narratives about this [same-sex] desire to fit its own heterosexist agenda,’ responded in a disapproving way, or avoided a discussion of sexuality entirely (p. 543). The overall effect of this editorial bias was to pursue an ‘overarching agenda of advocating for heterosexual women’ and to reinforce social purity debates about ‘the effects of men’s sexual practices on heterosexual women and their families’ (p. 544). These feminist papers thus constructed the ‘other’ in ways that upheld restrictive conventions of race and sexuality while claiming to be vehicles of progressive thought.