Abstract:
There is a substantial body of scientific literature on the use of third-party services (TPS) by academics to assist as \"publication consultants\" in scholarly publishing. TPS provide a wide range of scholarly services to research teams that lack the equipment, skills, motivation, or time to produce a paper without external assistance. While services such as language editing, statistical support, or graphic design are common and often legitimate, some TPS also provide illegitimate services and send unsolicited e-mails (spam) to academics offering these services. Such illegitimate types of TPS have the potential to threaten the integrity of the peer-reviewed scientific literature. In extreme cases, for-profit agencies known as \"paper mills\" even offer fake scientific publications or authorship slots for sale. The use of such illegitimate services as well as the failure to acknowledge their use is an ethical violation in academic publishing, while the failure to declare support for a TPS can be considered a form of contract fraud. We discuss some literature on TPS, highlight services currently offered by ten of the largest commercial publishers and expect authors to be transparent about the use of these services in their publications. From an ethical/moral (i.e., non-commercial) point of view, it is the responsibility of editors, journals, and publishers, and it should be in their best interest to ensure that illegitimate TPS are identified and prohibited, while publisher-employed TPS should be properly disclosed in their publications.
摘要:
有大量关于学者使用第三方服务(TPS)的科学文献,以协助学术出版中的“出版顾问”。TPS为缺乏设备的研究团队提供广泛的学术服务,技能,动机,或者在没有外部援助的情况下生产纸张的时间。虽然语言编辑等服务,统计支持,或图形设计是常见的,通常是合法的,一些TPS还提供非法服务,并向提供这些服务的学者发送未经请求的电子邮件(垃圾邮件)。这种非法类型的TPS有可能威胁到同行评审的科学文献的完整性。在极端情况下,被称为“造纸厂”的营利性机构甚至提供虚假的科学出版物或作者身份出售。使用这种非法服务以及不承认其使用是学术出版的道德违反,而未能声明对TPS的支持可被视为合同欺诈的一种形式。我们讨论了一些关于TPS的文献,重点介绍目前由10家最大的商业出版商提供的服务,并期望作者对在其出版物中使用这些服务保持透明。从伦理/道德(即,非商业)观点,这是编辑的责任,期刊,和出版商,确保识别和禁止非法的TPS应该符合他们的最大利益,而出版商采用的TPS应在其出版物中适当披露。