A researcher in medicine sent TENK a request for a statement concerning an RCR violation report he/she made to a university. According to the researcher, his/ her research contribution was not sufficiently taken into consideration in a medical research project and the publication based on it. The rector’s decision stated that the case did not show research misconduct nor any such disregard that an investigation proper in terms of the RCR process should be started.
TENK, however, took note in its statement that the preliminary inquiry revealed such practices that were not irreproachable in terms of research integrity. According to TENK, the project leader, at his/her sole discretion, should not have removed the authors from the list on the grounds that the journal, to have the research published, accepts only a specific number of writers. In these types of cases, all of those whose contribution to the study reaches authorship must come to an agreement on procedures, and in borderline cases, other researchers must be included, even if there is doubt whether they have reached the threshold of authorship.
The university’s preliminary inquiry did not include any outside specialist who could have assessed, on the basis of the article under dispute and statements of the parties, whether the researcher who requested the statement had given such contribution to the article sufficient to constitute authorship. In difficult cases concerning authorship, it is normally crucial to use an unbiased specialist who not only understands the academic content of the publication but also how it relates to other studies published for the same project.
For these reasons, TENK noted that on the basis of the preliminary inquiry, no one can rule out the possibility that the exclusion of the requestor from the list of authors was a violation of responsible conduct of research. In conclusion, TENK attested that the university must begin an investigation proper on the matter under the RCR process to determine authorship.