Culture of research integrity: we are promoters

Abstract

The Brazilian Journal in Health Promotion, compelled by the need of a culture which encourages integrity in research, wants to emphasize its concern, not only with the content of its publications, but also with the ethical aspects involving the submission and publication of manuscripts. By doing so, it intends to raise the discussion of best practices in scientific research, highlighting the importance of such reinforcement since the early stages of the researchers’ career. Bad ethical conducts occur as a result of growing demands of intellectual production and, consequently, the pressure upon researchers affiliated to graduate programs that use the indicators, mainly the international ones(1). The proliferation of such unethical conducts is also influenced by the existing “reward system”, in which the researcher is evaluated for its productivity. The first global event on integrity in research took place in 2007 in Lisbon(2) and sought to sensitize the scientific community and editors to the importance of promoting responsible conduct in research. In 2010, the second world conference was held in Singapore(3). From that conference emerged the “Singapore Statement on integrity in research”, bringing as integrity principles: honesty, responsibility, respect and professional impartiality, and good research management(3). In 2013, the third edition took place in Montreal, having as big thematic line the investigations that cross boundaries and the international partnerships(4). Following the example of those international movements, Brazil was also mobilized. This concern, however, is recent, and took shape after series of publications on this subject prepared by the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP)(5) and the publication of the Report of the Research Integrity Committee of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq)(6). In parallel to those publications, two important events took place in the years 2011 and 2012 in Brazil, which addressed actions for the promotion of scientific integrity, guiding researchers and Brazilian institutions, the I and II BRISPE (Brazilian Meeting on Research Integrity, Science and Publication Ethics)(7). In 2015, Brazil will host the “4th Annual Conference on Research Integrity” (4thWorld Conference on Research Integrity) in Rio de Janeiro, that will explore the“excellence in scientific research in its different systems”. In addition to these national movements, we highlight the importance of having scientific journals discuss their editorial policies with the scientific community, thus exercising the role of educator regarding the good practices in research and preventing misconducts, such as plagiarism, self-plagiarism, fraud, improper authorship, among others. Among those, plagiarism is gaining prominence on the international scene because of the increasing number of reports of such misconduct. In Brazil, the situation is worrying, being its proportion pointed out by renowned researcher in the field, when stated that “Brazil is among the twenty countries with the highest plagiarism and redundancy (self-plagiarism) occurrence index, which was evidenced by means of a sample of articles published in PubMed between 2008 and 2012” (8,p.1). In the guidelines of CNPq(6), it is considered plagiarism: “... presentation, as if it were of your own authorship, results or conclusions previously reached by another author, as well as full texts or a substantial part of foreign texts without the concerns that are detailed in the Guidelines.” In line with these movements, the Brazilian Association of Scientific Editors (ABEC - Associação Brasileira de Editores Científicos) promotes events and releases texts of renowned researchers in order to maintain constant debate about the quality and consolidation of publications/journals in the country, following the international standards of publishing and ethics. Ultimately, misconducts in research are subject of interest of the scientific journals, which must implement mechanisms to identify and discourage fraudulent practices in research and stimulate their integrity. Motivated by such desire, the Brazilian Journal of Health Promotion establishes, in 2015, a policy of manuscripts submission/evaluation that will involve, in addition to the inclusion of two mandatory documents, namely the project approval opinion by the ethics committee for research involving humans or animals, and the written statement of authorship, the use of antiplagiarism program in all manuscripts submitted for analysis, and thus, aims to educate authors and proliferate the idea that the published articles are in line with global ethics and integrity.