Ethics Requirement Score: new tool for evaluating ethics in publications

Santos, Lígia Gabrielle dos; Fonseca, Ana Carolina da Costa e; Bica, Claudia Giuliano

doi:10.1590/S1679-45082014AO3001

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Sumário

ORIGINAL ARTICLE • Einstein (São Paulo) 12 (4) • Oct-Dec 2014 • https://doi.org/10.1590/S1679-45082014AO3001 copy

Ethics Requirement Score: new tool for evaluating ethics in publications

Authorship SCIMAGO INSTITUTIONS RANKINGS

Objective

To analyze ethical standards considered by health-related scientific journals, and to prepare the Ethics Requirement Score, a bibliometric index to be applied to scientific healthcare journals in order to evaluate criteria for ethics in scientific publication.

Methods

Journals related to healthcare selected by the Journal of Citation Reports™ 2010 database were considered as experimental units. Parameters related to publication ethics were analyzed for each journal. These parameters were acquired by analyzing the author’s guidelines or instructions in each journal website. The parameters considered were approval by an Internal Review Board, Declaration of Helsinki or Resolution 196/96, recommendations on plagiarism, need for application of Informed Consent Forms with the volunteers, declaration of confidentiality of patients, record in the database for clinical trials (if applicable), conflict of interest disclosure, and funding sources statement. Each item was analyzed considering their presence or absence.

Result

The foreign journals had a significantly higher Impact Factor than the Brazilian journals, however, no significant results were observed in relation to the Ethics Requirement Score. There was no correlation between the Ethics Requirement Score and the Impact Factor.

Conclusion

Although the Impact Factor of foreigner journals was considerably higher than that of the Brazilian publications, the results showed that the Impact Factor has no correlation with the proposed score. This allows us to state that the ethical requirements for publication in biomedical journals are not related to the comprehensiveness or scope of the journal.

Ethics; Research; ethics; Impact factor; Scientific and technical publications

Approval by CEP	Require approval by a CEP, as per the Declaration of Helsinki, published in 1964
Declaration of Helsinki and/or Resolution 196/96	Mention some of these documents that regulate ethics in research
Recommendations alerting about plagiarism	Contain an item recommended by the author as to plagiarism
ICF	Require that signing of an ICF be applied to all research subjects, as per the Declaration of Helsinki published in 1964
Confidentiality of patients and data	Contain an item recommending confidentiality about the data from the subjects involved in the research and their data
Recording in databases for clinical trials	Contain recommendations of a register of clinical trials in a database
Declaration of conflicts of interests	Contain orientation in reference to the interests of the said study
Declaration of funding	Contain orientation that makes clear the financial sources of the said study
ICMJE/COPE	Refer to the ICMJE or the COPE, which are related to ethics in scientific publications

	Impact Factor			ERS
	n	Mean	SD	Mean	SD
Foreign	37	29.84	13.69	3.97	2.05
National	37	0.76	0.42	3.32	1.78
Review	19	27.31	8.42	2.53	1.35
Original	54	11.32	18.09	4.09	1.93
Foreign and review	19	27.31	8.42	2.53	1.35
Foreign and original	18	32.51	17.03	5.50	1.42
National and review	0	0	0	0	0
National and original	37	1.28	0.59	3.32	1.76

Total	74

	Foreign	National	p value	Review	Original	p value
Declaration of Helsinki or Resolution 196/96	3	16	0.001	1	18	0.036
CEP	17	25	0.073	1	41	<0.001
Plagiarism	17	2	<0.001	9	10	0.031
ICF	19	12	0.187	1	30	<0.001
Confidentiality of the patients and data	5	2	0.449	1	6	0.771
Clinical study basis	12	12	1.000	1	23	0.007
Conflict of interests	34	26	0.059	17	43	0.538
Funding sources	36	25	0.004	18	43	0.243
ICMJE/COPE	7	18	0.011	0	25	<0.001

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[1] Corresponding author: Lígia Gabrielle dos Santos – Department of Health Information and Education, Rua Sarmento Leite, 245 – Centro – Zip code: 90050-170 – Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil Phone: (55 51) 3303-9000 – E-mail:ligia.biomed@gmail.com