搜索结果：Accountability in research

INTRODUCTION: Globally, less safe or least safe abortion among adolescents remains a public health concern. In Ghana, complications from less safe and least safe abortions result in approximately 43,000 facility-based post-abortion care cases annually, contributing significantly to the overall burden of maternal morbidity and mortality. Healthcare workers play a critical role in delivering comprehensive abortion care (CAC) services to address the challenges of less safe and least safe abortion. At the same, there is scanty literature in Ghana on the experiences of these healthcare workers. This study explored the experiences of healthcare workers in providing CAC to adolescents in the New Juaben Municipality in Eastern Region, Ghana. METHODS: A phenomenological qualitative study was conducted. Data were collected from November 2022 to January 2023 among 12 healthcare providers. Prior to data collection, ethical approval was obtained from the Ghana Health Service (GHS) Ethics Review Committee (GHS-ERC: 039/11/22). Participants who had provided CAC services for at least 6 months were purposively sampled. In-depth interviews were conducted and audio-recorded with permission from participants. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and inductive thematic analysis was done using ATLAS. ti. Results were presented using quotes. FINDINGS: Three main themes emerged, namely desire to minimize harm, attitudes and beliefs toward CAC provision for adolescents, and stigma and psychosocial impacts of providing CAC services. First, providers offered CAC to adolescents to reduce maternal morbidity and mortality, viewing their work as life-saving and a way to prevent less safe and least safe abortions and promote contraceptive use. Second, providers’ attitudes and beliefs were shaped by professional duty, personal discomfort, religious and moral dilemmas, and empathy for adolescents’ vulnerability. Third, stigma and psychosocial impacts influenced their experiences. Many faced judgments from colleagues and society, leading to emotional distress and, in some cases, psychological trauma. CONCLUSION: The experiences of healthcare providers in delivering CAC to adolescents in the New Juaben Municipality reflect a complex interplay of professional responsibilities/ obligations, national health policy requirements, personal and religious beliefs, and societal stigma. Addressing these challenges requires coordinated and targeted interventions. These include institutionalizing values clarification and attitude transformation (VCAT) training, integrating cultural competence into provider education, and ensuring legal and ethical accountability that emphasizes patient safety over personal beliefs. Structured mentorship and peer support programs are also essential to reduce emotional burden and sustain provider motivation. Expanding task sharing to include other trained cadres can enhance service continuity and retention. Finally, strengthening public education on safe abortion care is critical to destigmatizing CAC and fostering an environment where providers can deliver adolescent-centered care effectively.

In response to widespread concerns about research integrity, recent years have seen numerous efforts to safeguard against research misconduct and questionable research practices. Research-performing organizations are among the key actors involved in implementing such efforts. However, little is known about the effectiveness of organizational policy initiatives. In this study, we investigate the ability of organizations to change researchers' behavior through the perspective of the researcher. We analyze data from the International Research Integrity Survey (IRIS), a survey of researchers in Europe, Canada, Australia, and the USA. We specifically investigate whether researchers' perceptions of their organizations' research integrity policies relate to the degree to which they engage in questionable research practices. We find that awareness of policies, evaluations of the effectiveness of policies, as well as confidence in their organizations' research integrity policies all relate to lower levels of engagement in questionable research practices. However, we also find that this relationship is highly sensitive to both researchers' research integrity self-confidence and their general attitudes toward research integrity. As such, while findings indicate that organizations' policy efforts can influence researcher behavior, this influence is contingent on researcher acceptance and empowerment.

Open Access (OA) agreements were introduced to remove financial barriers to scientific dissemination and promote equity in knowledge access. As Article Processing Charges (APCs) have shifted from individual researchers to institutions, access to OA publishing has become an institutional asset, unevenly distributed across institutions, countries, and career stages. This article introduces and defines value extraction in OA - the use of access to APC coverage as leverage to obtain authorship or corresponding authorship without proportional intellectual contribution - and examines it as a structurally enabled integrity risk distinct from previously described forms of authorship abuse. We conduct a conceptual and normative analysis of the mechanisms by which OA agreements interact with metric-driven academic evaluation systems and existing research integrity frameworks, identifying governance gaps and distributional inequities produced by these interactions. Value extraction in OA is enabled by the convergence of three factors: centralized APC control within institutions, performance metrics that privilege publication counts and corresponding authorship, and integrity frameworks that treat publishing infrastructure as an ethically neutral background condition. Researchers at less-resourced institutions, early-career researchers, and scholars in the Global South face heightened vulnerability. Existing authorship guidelines fail to address mechanisms in which infrastructural access - rather than hierarchy or prestige - functions as leverage for academic credit. Safeguards are needed at institutional, publisher, and systemic levels, including procedural firewalls between APC decisions and authorship documentation, publisher-level monitoring of authorship patterns, and reform of evaluation frameworks to decouple infrastructural access from academic credit. Future research should investigate the prevalence of value extraction using bibliometric and network-based screening approaches.

Contemporary medical knowledge is generated within two interconnected economies that are often examined separately. First, the publishing market has become increasingly oligopolistic, transforming unpaid academic labour and public funding into substantial profits through subscription models and article processing charges. Second, a parallel clinical research economy has emerged around industry-sponsored trials, where per-patient payments and investigator fees can create a shadow profession that provides both income and prestige to physicians. This article argues that these systems do not merely coexist but mutually reinforce and obscure one another. The normalization of industry-mediated clinical advantages weakens awareness of publisher-mediated extraction, while the opacity of publishing finances renders the incentive structures of clinical trials ethically unremarkable. Using the metaphor of "mud" to describe the gradual internalization of structural distortions, the article examines how silence emerges at the intersection of prestige dependence, organizational conflicts of interest, and the entrepreneurial transformation of academic identity. Finally, it proposes practical individual-, institutional-, and policy-level measures, including greater transparency regarding trial-related income and support for community-governed publishing models, to strengthen ethical visibility and accountability in medical research. This dual layered system sustains silence by making exploitation on one side appear tolerable against the internal comforts of the other.APC driven open access has often expanded, rather than replaced, subscription-based revenue, consolidating oligopolistic power.Transformative agreements can repackage old payment flows under new labels, limiting genuine structural change.Per-patient payments and protocol gatekeeping can turn clinical trials into a shadow profession that concentrates visibility and income.

In this commentary, I integrate Bjørn Hofmann's thorough analysis of polarization in research with two considerations. First, Hofmann defines polarization as characterized by incommensurable positions. This makes his definition too strict, as hardly any disagreement in modern science, including the cases he discusses, is based on genuine incommensurability. Polarization in research is better characterized in terms of perceived incommensurability between opposite groups. This is not a mere terminological issue. In the absence of genuine incommensurability, talking about incommensurability to describe polarized debates only risks exacerbating them. Second, Hofmann reviews several explanations of polarization but includes only value differences in his definition. Because values are ubiquitous in research, the role of values in polarization should be better qualified. Hofmann's current definition risks suggesting that values are a special feature of polarization, rather than a common feature of scientific research. Switching from the incommensurability to the perceived incommensurability criterion would make Hoffman's definition more precise. Better qualifying the role of values in polarization would make it more consistent with the values in science literature and his own analysis. Both tweaks will help forestall possible risks in communication that could hinder attempts to smooth over polarized debates, including those attempts reviewed by Hofmann.

The United States (U.S.) healthcare system consistently underperforms in equity and value compared to peer countries. Socially disadvantaged groups, such as racial and ethnic minorities, refugees, and low-income populations, experience worse access to healthcare and poorer health outcomes. This issue highlights the need for targeted interventions to reduce disparities and improve healthcare quality in both public health and clinical practice. This scoping review aims to map existing literature on interventions that promote healthcare equity and value in the US, focusing on access to healthcare and health outcomes for disadvantaged populations. A scoping review of systematic reviews was conducted to map literature on high-value, equitable healthcare in the U.S. Using the Arksey and O'Malley framework and PRISMA-ScR guidelines, the review focused on systematic reviews of interventions, strategies, and policies promoting healthcare equity and value published between 2018 and 2023 that addressed U.S.-based healthcare. A two-step article selection process and qualitative synthesis of findings were employed. The review synthesized 54 studies, comprising mostly systematic reviews, scoping reviews, and meta-analyses. These studies focused on disadvantaged populations, including racial and ethnic minorities, refugees, and low-income groups. Interventions were categorized into four themes: community engagement and outreach (e.g., use of community health workers), culturally-tailored interventions (e.g., language-concordant care), technology adoption (e.g., digital health tools), and policy reforms (e.g., Medicaid expansion). Findings highlighted the critical role of community health workers and culturally responsive programs in improving access to care and health outcomes for disadvantaged populations. However, most interventions, including these approaches, aim to improve health outcomes measured across whole populations, rather than healthcare gaps between groups within populations. This review underscores the importance of culturally tailored interventions, community engagement and outreach, and policy reforms in addressing equity and value in healthcare. There is a significant gap in research directly tackling healthcare inequities. Future research should focus on system accountability, addressing structural inequities, and developing new care models to enhance equity and value.

In efforts to improve replication rates across sciences, graduate student training can foster an understanding of best practices. One consideration is to identify the psychological underpinnings that motivate early-career researchers to avoid questionable research practices (QRPs) and engage in transparent research behaviors. Recent findings demonstrate efficacy by leveraging identificatory processes, or how researchers identify with ethical science. This study examined whether the extent to which individuals incorporate ethical scientific principles into their identities can motivate disinterest in QRPs. As part of a baseline data collection effort for a systemic ethics training program at a Carnegie R1 institute, graduate students provided initial measures assessing endorsement of scientific values as outlined by the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) and the extent to which those values are part of their identity. They also reported their perceptions of the defensibility of various QRPs, and their willingness to engage in them. Greater endorsement of NASEM values was associated with less endorsement of QRPs. This association was mediated by inclusion of these values in one's own identity. Results provide initial evidence for how institutes can foster psychological profiles of an ethical researcher in developing training modules for graduate students.

Since the term predatory publishing was coined in the early 2010s, a significant research literature has emerged that carries warnings about journals issued by such publishers, while signaling the virtues of mainstream publishing. Three narratives that support the negative framing of predatory journals were identified: (1) they prioritize profit over scholarship; (2) they are assessed using qualitative warning signs rather than robust quality indicators; and (3) they are seldom named in editorial interventions, generating uncertainty about the domain of predatory publishing. Challenges of differentiating between the quality standards of mainstream and other journals are examined by applying a "warning list" of criteria to a grey publisher representative of the boundary between legitimate and illegitimate publishing, then analyzing editorial and production attributes of a cross-section of health science journals, with a range of impact factors, indexed within a bibliometric database. Use of predatory "warning signs" has affected progress with evaluating the relative qualities of mainstream and other journals, and meant that some innovations associated with some non-mainstream journals have been overlooked (e.g. process efficiencies in peer review and the sharing of production process data). Sources of editorial and production practice data for comparing all journals are incomplete and dispersed. More complete quality indicators for all journals that include authors' experiences of publishing need to be openly shared and externally validated. Research funders can influence publishers' behavior by making open access funding contingent upon journals meeting both quality and timeliness indicators for peer review.

Despite the importance of showcasing research achievements and safeguarding research integrity, our understanding of how Chinese universities navigate these potentially competing priorities remains limited. In response, this study investigated 579 Chinese universities on the 2024 Stanford lists of the world's top 2% scientists (WTSs) and operationalized their fulfillment of the dual priorities in terms of institutional visibility (i.e. public institutional responses to the release of the 2024 Stanford lists of WTSs and to the government requirements for safeguarding research integrity) and institutional responsiveness (i.e. promptness in publishing news reports featuring WTSs and releasing annual research integrity reports). In this connection, three types of publicly accessible official documents were analyzed: 1) news reports featuring WTSs, 2) academic integrity webpages, and 3) annual research integrity reports disclosing integrity investigations. Among these universities, 28.5% published news reports featuring WTSs, 52.8% maintained academic integrity webpages, and 16.8% released annual research integrity reports. Furthermore, significant variations were found across four contextual factors: university prestige (elite universities vs. non-elite universities), retraction status (universities hosting retraction-afflicted WTSs vs. universities hosting retraction-free WTSs), the number of WTSs, and the prevalence of retraction-afflicted WTSs.

Authorship remains the primary currency of academic credit and a cornerstone of research integrity, yet current practices often fail to reflect the collaborative and interdisciplinary nature of modern science and questionable authorship practices persist. We argue that addressing these shortcomings is a collective responsibility shared by researchers, journals, research funders, scholarly societies, and research institutions. We examined authorship guidelines issued by journals and research institutions and found that their recommendations to researchers are highly variable. We propose that fostering a responsible authorship culture requires a shared, principle-based framework grounded in transparency, credit, and accountability. These three interconnected principles highlight when authorship practices are questionable and offer a framework for constructive reflection on the meaning of authorship. We outline practical ways research leaders can embed these principles into everyday practice by initiating early, inclusive, and fair authorship discussions and ensuring transparent description of contributions. Research institutions have a unique opportunity to inculcate good practices and lead this culture change with harmonized guidance, education, fair conflict resolution, and reform of researcher assessment. Anchoring authorship in transparency, credit, and accountability will strengthen the credibility of individual research, the fairness of recognition systems, and, ultimately, the trustworthiness of science itself.

A number of proposals across different fields have suggested incorporating "independent" actors into the research process as a way to manage potential bias. For example, in response to allegations of bias in psychedelic science, some have suggested the idea of independent auditors for adverse events, as well as the incorporation of independent researchers into the research teams of psychedelic trials. However, despite growing interest in these methods, the concept of independence itself remains frequently undefined. Moreover, although introducing independent actors may seem like a prima facie beneficial solution to help reduce bias and improve the scientific rigor of research, it may come with significant drawbacks as well. Here, we argue that the sense of independence on which these proposals for independent actors implicitly rely on is freedom from any influence that might alter the actors' choices in a way that reduces the trustworthiness or accuracy of research findings. Whether it is possible to identify and involve such actors without incurring trade-offs with other scientific desiderata (e.g. due to the risk of inadequate expertise) is then further explored. We conclude by providing two models in law and science that may be helpful to draw upon if seeking to incorporate independent actors.

In this article, we discuss the growing problem of hallucinated citations produced by Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) in scholarly research and writing. We argue that GenAI hallucinated citations might qualify as a provable instance of research misconduct under the U.S. federal regulations when a) the researcher uses a GenAI tool to produce hallucinated (i.e., nonexistent) citations for a research document; b) the citations function as data because they directly support research findings, as in, for example, review articles or bibliometric studies; and c) the researcher demonstrates indifference to the risk of fabrication of the data (i.e. citations) because they did not check the GenAI's output for veracity and accuracy. Other types of problematic citations such as bibliometrically incorrect citations, or contextually inaccurate citations, are indicative of poor scholarship and irresponsible behavior, but do not qualify as research misconduct. Recognizing that GenAI hallucinated citations could be regarded as research misconduct in certain cases will hopefully encourage researchers to take this problem more seriously than they do now. In partnership with scientific institutions, funders and professional societies, the scholarly community should work on establishing, promoting, and enforcing standards for responsible use of AI in research, including standards pertaining to citation practices.

This study investigates the awareness, perceptions, and responses of library and information science (LIS) researchers toward retracted papers, aiming to inform the improvement of research integrity governance. A questionnaire survey of 280 LIS researchers examined their sources of retraction information, understanding of causes, perceived consequences, and attitudes toward evaluation. The influence of academic background, publication volume, and discipline was also explored. Findings indicate generally low retraction awareness and a primary reliance on informal channels. Critically, the analysis reveals several nuanced patterns: (1) Significant disciplinary differences exist in perceiving retraction causes; (2) Opinions are sharply divided on including retraction records in research evaluation, reflecting concerns about uniform responsibility attribution; (3) A considerable proportion of researchers mistakenly view retraction's impact as reversible. These attitudes are strongly associated with educational background and publication experience. In response, this paper proposes five key recommendations: establishing authoritative retraction platforms, improving journal retraction mechanisms, differentiating retraction types in evaluation, strengthening integrity education, and building a coordinated governance framework. These measures contribute to fostering a more transparent, fair, and sustainable scholarly correction ecosystem.

It is an unfortunate reality that metascience and metaresearch are not immune to methodological or reporting issues. Best practices for conducting and reporting evidence syntheses are well-established, and we expect them to be enforced by this journal. Thus, we were surprised to see a recent "systematic review" published in Accountability in Research state that the first article published about retractions was from 1998. As we know of several potentially relevant articles published prior to 1998, we looked deeper into the review and its methodology. Because of the methodological and reporting flaws throughout the review, which we describe in this commentary, the conclusions it presents overstate the certainty and completeness of the findings, and the review includes inaccuracies. That these issues were seemingly not addressed prior to publication highlights the importance of involving individuals with methodological expertise, including search expertise, in the review process, and the necessity of adhering to the appropriate reporting guidelines to ensure accuracy, credibility, and reproducibility. We call on Accountability in Research to ensure that evidence syntheses are peer reviewed by individuals with appropriate methodological expertise; to ensure that authors are adhering to appropriate reporting guidelines; and to consider requiring study preregistration and presubmission inquiries for evidence syntheses.

The lack of diversity in research participation poses a threat to health equity and the ethical principle of justice. Yet few evidence-based interventions exist. This study compared two educational programs for research teams, designed to build capacity for inclusive recruitment practices. This parallel cluster randomized trial compared outcomes generated by an anti-bias focused educational workshop and one emphasizing pro-diversity learning. The evaluation consisted of pre-/post-intervention (n = 124) and 3-month follow-up surveys (n = 83). Regression analysis was employed to evaluate program efficacy, and the adoption of simple behaviors comparing groups at follow-up while controlling for pre-measurement levels and utilizing propensity weights. Interviews (n = 33) with participants explored experiences post-intervention. There were no statistically significant differences in outcomes between the test and control groups. Both workshop versions increased participants' self-efficacy and simple behaviors, including "thinking about community perspectives" and "identifying ways to increase community voice" at follow-up. Participants in the test group were the only ones to show a significant increase (within group) in "making suggestions" to their teams about using inclusive strategies (p = .02) and in increasing community voice (p = .00). Qualitative data indicate that pro-diversity activities provided participants with concrete ideas for suggestions and revealed persistent barriers faced by post-intervention.

This paper introduces the second installment of the two-issue series in the Journal of Prevention and Intervention in the Community with a focused theme on "Cardiovascular Diseases and Risk Factors for Minoritized Communities." Building on Part I, which examined cardiovascular health disparities through intersectional and multiscale frameworks, Part II shifts attention from understanding inequities to translating knowledge into action through community engagement and intervention. The paper situates cardiovascular disease (CVD) disparities within structural contexts shaped by systemic racism, socioeconomic inequality, environmental exposures, and inequitable healthcare access that disproportionately affect minoritized populations. The articles in this issue highlight community-engaged and practice-oriented approaches to addressing cardiometabolic risk across diverse settings. Collectively, these contributions demonstrate the value of integrating clinical care with social support systems, strengthening community capacity, and leveraging culturally grounded strategies to improve prevention and disease management. The issue also explores how structural disruptions, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, interact with chronic disease burden to heighten vulnerability among older adults and underserved groups, underscoring the importance of resilience-focused and system-level interventions. The paper concludes with a call for research and practice that combines intersectional and multilevel perspectives with implementation of science and community-based participatory approaches to ensure interventions are culturally relevant, scalable, and sustainable. By emphasizing empowerment, partnership, and structural accountability, Part II underscores the importance of moving beyond documenting disparities toward mobilizing communities and implementing solutions to advance cardiovascular health equity among minoritized populations.

Patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) are increasingly integrated into routine clinical care and value-based accountability frameworks, yet systematic non-response may exclude structurally marginalized populations, including transgender and gender diverse (TGD) individuals. This study examined individual- and neighborhood-level predictors of non-response to the PROMIS Global Health (PROMIS-10) questionnaire among TGD individuals using an intersectional multilevel framework. We conducted an observational cohort study used electronic health record data from 2015 to 2023 within a large U.S. healthcare system. TGD adults (≥18 years) assigned the PROMIS-10 during clinical encounters were included. PROM non-response was defined as a questionnaire assigned but not completed. Multivariable regression evaluated sociodemographic predictors, and multilevel analysis of individual heterogeneity and discriminatory accuracy quantified variance across intersectional strata. Structural predictors included segregation (Delta Index) and Social Vulnerability Index (SVI). Non-response at encounter level was high among 7528 TGD patients (85.8%; 95% CI 84.2-87.4). Older age (≥ 36 years; β = 3.3; 95% CI 1.12-5.50) and lower educational attainment (β = 3.23; 95% CI 1.05-5.41) were associated with increased non-response, while insurance type was not associated and ethno-racial identity showed a small, non-significant increase after adjustment. Intersectional strata explained only 1% of variance in non-response, decreasing to 0.3% after adjustment. Higher segregation (Delta Index; β = 10; 95% CI 4.0-17.0) and residence in the highest vulnerability areas (SVI > 0.75; β = 7.9; 95% CI 0.6-15.0) predicted greater non-response. PROM non-response among TGD individuals reflects individual and structural inequities. Equity-centered PROM implementation strategies are needed to prevent systematic exclusion from outcome-based evaluation.

Black individuals are more likely to die from colorectal cancer (CRC) and experience more treatment-related side effects compared to White individuals. Physical activity (PA) has been associated with decreased side effects, improved CRC treatment completion rates and responses, and survival. However, Black survivors of CRC are 60% less likely to engage in PA than White survivors. The Physical Activity Centers Empowerment (PACE) study is testing an intervention specifically designed to increase PA among Black individuals diagnosed with CRC. This study outlines the protocol for a randomized controlled trial. The study aims to test the feasibility of PACE and will use the reach, effectiveness, adoption, implementation, and maintenance (RE-AIM) framework. The PACE study was developed in partnership with a community advisory board consisting of Black cancer advocates and survivors of cancer. The study aims to recruit 72 participants aged >18 years from North Carolina who have been diagnosed with CRC. These participants will be randomized in a 1:1 ratio to an intervention or control group. During the 12-week intervention, all participants will receive a wearable activity tracker and informational materials from the American College of Sports Medicine's "Moving through Cancer" program. The intervention group will also receive additional PACE theory-guided intervention components, including personalized daily adaptive step goals, access to the PACE video library, and optional video chat meetings for PA support. Data will be collected at 3 time points: baseline, after the intervention (3 months), and 6 months after the intervention (9 months). Using the RE-AIM framework, the study aims to evaluate the intervention's reach, effectiveness, acceptability, implementation, and maintenance. The National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities funded this study in 2021. Study enrollment began in August 2024 and is anticipated to conclude in December 2024. This study will advance our understanding of effective behavioral strategies to increase PA and help advance the use of PA as a form of complementary cancer treatment, with the aim of improving health outcomes for Black survivors of CRC. ClinicalTrials.gov NCT06411756; https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT06411756. DERR1-10.2196/65804.