Citizen Science refers to the consultation, participation, engagement or involvement of the gener... more Citizen Science refers to the consultation, participation, engagement or involvement of the general public in research. Rationales for this interaction include increased public access and involvement of citizens in research, immersion of community values relevant to research, outreach, and educational potential with the public, and ultimately, the democratization of science. This paper focuses on the specific subset of citizen science that seeks to engage “patient partners” in health research to gain the valuable experiential knowledge of those living with a disease. Greater patient engagement in research (PER) can provide researchers with insights about citizen values and needs relevant to determining research priorities, methodology, applications, and ethical parameters; this would ideally lead to more effective real-world applications. Over the last decade, projects involving patients partners in research (PPRs) have varied from mere tokenism and undervaluation to full involvement and empowerment of patient participants – the former, a subject of criticism, and the latter, promoted as an ideal. In this article, we will argue that the value of that experiential knowledge from PPRs should not only be acknowledged through its ongoing use, but also through recognition of participants who contribute to the creation and application of new knowledge. We will explore types of recognition that might be attributed to PPRs, including scientific recognition; financial recognition or reward; personal and altruistic recognition; and the beneficial outcomes of research applications. We also will consider whether such types of recognition could be applied to the broader field of citizen science.
Misunderstanding and disputes about authorship are commonplace
among members of multi/interdisci... more Misunderstanding and disputes about authorship are commonplace
among members of multi/interdisciplinary health research
teams. If left unmanaged and unresolved, these conflicts can
undermine knowledge sharing and collaboration, obscure
accountability for research, and contribute to the incorrect attribution
of credit. To mitigate these issues, certain researchers
suggest quantitative authorship distributions schemes (e.g.,
point systems), while others wish to replace or minimize the
importance of authorship by using “contributorship”—a system
based on authors’ self-reporting contributions. While both methods
have advantages, we argue that authorship and contributorship
will most likely continue to coexist for multiple ethical and
practical reasons. In this article, we develop a five-step “best
practice” that incorporates the distribution of both contributorship
and authorship for multi/interdisciplinary research. This procedure
involves continuous dialogue and the use of a detailed
contributorship taxonomy ending with a declaration explaining
contributorship, which is used to justify authorship order.
Institutions can introduce this approach in responsible conduct
of research training as it promotes greater fairness, trust, and
collegiality among team members and ultimately reduces confusion
and facilitates resolution of time-consuming disagreements.
Various U.S. laws, such as the Clean Air Act and the Food Quality Protection Act, require additio... more Various U.S. laws, such as the Clean Air Act and the Food Quality Protection Act, require additional protections for susceptible subpopulations who face greater environmental health risks. The main ethical rationale for providing these protections is to ensure that environmental health risks are distributed fairly. In this article, we (1) consider how several influential theories of justice deal with issues related to the distribution of environmental health risks; (2) show that these theories often fail to provide specific guidance concerning policy choices; and (3) argue that an approach to public decision making known as accountability for reasonableness can complement theories of justice in establishing acceptable environmental health risks for the general population and susceptible subpopulations. Since accountability for reasonableness focuses on the fairness of the decision-making process, not the outcome, it does not guarantee that susceptible subpopulations will receive a maximum level of protection, regardless of costs or other morally relevant considerations.
In academia, authorship on publications confers merit as well as responsibility. The respective d... more In academia, authorship on publications confers merit as well as responsibility. The respective disciplines adhere to their "typical" authorship practices: individuals may be named in alphabetical order (e.g. in economics, mathematics), ranked in decreasing level of contribution (e.g. biomedical sciences) or the leadership role may be listed last (e.g. laboratory sciences). However, there is no specific, generally accepted guidance regarding authorship distribution in multidisciplinary teams, something that can lead to significant tensions and even conflict. Using Scanlon's Contractualism as a basis, I propose a conceptual foundation for the ethical distribution of authorship in multidisciplinary teams; it features four relevant principles: desert, just recognition, transparency, and collegiality. These principles can serve in the development of a practical framework to support ethical and non-arbitrary authorship distribution, which hopefully would help reduce confusion and conflict, promote agreement and contribute to synergy in multidisciplinary collaborative research.
Using a database of recent articles published in the field of Global Health research, we examine ... more Using a database of recent articles published in the field of Global Health research, we examine institutional sources of stratification in publishing access outcomes. Traditionally, the focus on inequality in scientific publishing has focused on prestige hierarchies in established print journals. This project examines stratification in contemporary publishing with a particular focus on subscription vs. various Open Access (OA) publishing options. Findings show that authors working at lower-ranked universities are more likely to publish in closed/paywalled outlets, and less likely to choose outlets that involve some sort of Article Processing Charge (APCs; gold or hybrid OA). We also analyze institutional differences and stratification in the APC costs paid in various journals. Authors affiliated with higher-ranked institutions, as well as hospitals and non-profit organizations pay relatively higher APCs for gold and hybrid OA publications. Results suggest that authors affiliated with high-ranked universities and well-funded institutions tend to have more resources to choose pay options with publishing. Our research suggests new professional hierarchies developing in contemporary publishing, where various OA publishing options are becoming increasingly prominent. Just as there is stratification in institutional representation between different types of publishing access, there is also inequality within access types.
Contemporary biomedical research is performed by increasingly large teams. Consequently , an incr... more Contemporary biomedical research is performed by increasingly large teams. Consequently , an increasingly large number of individuals are being listed as authors in the bylines, which complicates the proper attribution of credit and responsibility to individual authors. Typically, more importance is given to the first and last authors, while it is assumed that the others (the middle authors) have made smaller contributions. However, this may not properly reflect the actual division of labor because some authors other than the first and last may have made major contributions. In practice, research teams may differentiate the main contributors from the rest by using partial alphabetical authorship (i.e., by listing middle authors alphabetically, while maintaining a contribution-based order for more substantial contributions). In this paper, we use partial alphabetical authorship to divide the authors of all biomedical articles in the Web of Science published over the 1980–2015 period in three groups: primary authors, middle authors, and supervisory authors. We operationalize the concept of middle author as those who are listed in alphabetical order in the middle of an authors' list. Primary and supervisory authors are those listed before and after the alphabetical sequence, respectively. We show that alphabetical ordering of middle authors is frequent in biomedical research, and that the prevalence of this practice is positively correlated with the number of authors in the bylines. We also find that, for articles with 7 or more authors, the average proportion of primary, middle and supervisory authors is independent of the team size, more than half of the authors being middle authors. This suggests that growth in authors lists are not due to an increase in secondary contributions (or middle authors) but, rather, in equivalent increases of all types of roles and contributions (including many primary authors and many supervisory authors). Nevertheless, we show that the relative contribution of alphabetically ordered middle authors to the overall production of knowledge in the bio-medical field has greatly increased over the last 35 years.
Background: In 1982, the Annals of Virology published a paper showing how Liberia has a highly en... more Background: In 1982, the Annals of Virology published a paper showing how Liberia has a highly endemic potential of Ebola warning health authorities of the risk for potential outbreaks; this journal is only available by subscription. Limiting the accessibility of such knowledge may have reduced information propagation toward public health actors who were indeed surprised by and unprepared for the 2014 epidemic. Open access (OA) publication can allow for increased access to global health research (GHR). Our study aims to assess the use, cost and impact of OA diffusion in the context of GHR. Method: A total of 3366 research articles indexed under the Medical Heading Subject Heading " Global Health " published between 2010 and 2014 were retrieved using PubMed to (1) quantify the uptake of various types of OA, (2) estimate the article processing charges (APCs) of OA, and (3) analyse the relationship between different types of OA, their scholarly impact and gross national income per capita of citing countries.
This article begins by providing an overview of several historical tragedies in research involvin... more This article begins by providing an overview of several historical tragedies in research involving humans and how they can serve to promote the awareness and development of ethical practices and policies. We highlight several norms specific for ethical clinical research and what they mean in terms of corresponding practices for researchers and ethics reviewers. We also bring up two key issues that bioethicists are currently grappling with, namely how to handle the ethics review of clinical research performed by many researchers at multiple institutions, and how biobanking research involves altering some of the traditional norms and practices of research ethics.
Le présent rapport a pour but d'apporter une aide constructive pour la mise à jour de la pol... more Le présent rapport a pour but d'apporter une aide constructive pour la mise à jour de la politique universitaire concernant les conflits d'intérêts (CI). Le rapport est une évaluation détaillée des politiques actuelles de l'Université afin d'aider une meilleure gestion de celles-ci. L'Université de Montréal a déjà une longueur d'avance sur plusieurs universités canadiennes en possédant une politique centrale sur la question. Toutefois, cette politique mériterait une mise à jour au regard des standards contemporains ainsi qu'une mise en ...
Summary
Through review of the bioethics and global health literatures, and examination of guidan... more Summary
Through review of the bioethics and global health literatures, and examination of guidance documents on ethical authorship, we identified a set of issues regarding authorship in collaborative partnerships between researchers from low-middle income countries and high income countries. We propose several recommendations to address these concerns.
National and international organisations have implemented governance mechanisms to address a dive... more National and international organisations have implemented governance mechanisms to address a diversity of ethical, security and policy challenges raised by advances in research and innovation. These challenges become particularly complex when research or innovations are considered ‘dual-use’, i.e. can lead to both beneficial and harmful uses, and in particular, civilian (peaceful) and military (hostile) applications. While many countries have mechanisms (i.e. export controls) to govern the transfer of dual-use technology (e.g. nuclear, cryptography), it is much less clear how dual-use research from across the range of academic disciplines can or should be governed. Using the Canadian research and policy context as case study, this paper will first, examine the governance mechanisms currently in place to mitigate the negative implications of dual-use research and innovation; second, compare these with other relevant international governance contexts; and finally, propose some ways forward (i.e. a risk analysis approach) for developing more robust governance mechanisms.
Citizen Science refers to the consultation, participation, engagement or involvement of the gener... more Citizen Science refers to the consultation, participation, engagement or involvement of the general public in research. Rationales for this interaction include increased public access and involvement of citizens in research, immersion of community values relevant to research, outreach, and educational potential with the public, and ultimately, the democratization of science. This paper focuses on the specific subset of citizen science that seeks to engage “patient partners” in health research to gain the valuable experiential knowledge of those living with a disease. Greater patient engagement in research (PER) can provide researchers with insights about citizen values and needs relevant to determining research priorities, methodology, applications, and ethical parameters; this would ideally lead to more effective real-world applications. Over the last decade, projects involving patients partners in research (PPRs) have varied from mere tokenism and undervaluation to full involvement and empowerment of patient participants – the former, a subject of criticism, and the latter, promoted as an ideal. In this article, we will argue that the value of that experiential knowledge from PPRs should not only be acknowledged through its ongoing use, but also through recognition of participants who contribute to the creation and application of new knowledge. We will explore types of recognition that might be attributed to PPRs, including scientific recognition; financial recognition or reward; personal and altruistic recognition; and the beneficial outcomes of research applications. We also will consider whether such types of recognition could be applied to the broader field of citizen science.
Misunderstanding and disputes about authorship are commonplace
among members of multi/interdisci... more Misunderstanding and disputes about authorship are commonplace
among members of multi/interdisciplinary health research
teams. If left unmanaged and unresolved, these conflicts can
undermine knowledge sharing and collaboration, obscure
accountability for research, and contribute to the incorrect attribution
of credit. To mitigate these issues, certain researchers
suggest quantitative authorship distributions schemes (e.g.,
point systems), while others wish to replace or minimize the
importance of authorship by using “contributorship”—a system
based on authors’ self-reporting contributions. While both methods
have advantages, we argue that authorship and contributorship
will most likely continue to coexist for multiple ethical and
practical reasons. In this article, we develop a five-step “best
practice” that incorporates the distribution of both contributorship
and authorship for multi/interdisciplinary research. This procedure
involves continuous dialogue and the use of a detailed
contributorship taxonomy ending with a declaration explaining
contributorship, which is used to justify authorship order.
Institutions can introduce this approach in responsible conduct
of research training as it promotes greater fairness, trust, and
collegiality among team members and ultimately reduces confusion
and facilitates resolution of time-consuming disagreements.
Various U.S. laws, such as the Clean Air Act and the Food Quality Protection Act, require additio... more Various U.S. laws, such as the Clean Air Act and the Food Quality Protection Act, require additional protections for susceptible subpopulations who face greater environmental health risks. The main ethical rationale for providing these protections is to ensure that environmental health risks are distributed fairly. In this article, we (1) consider how several influential theories of justice deal with issues related to the distribution of environmental health risks; (2) show that these theories often fail to provide specific guidance concerning policy choices; and (3) argue that an approach to public decision making known as accountability for reasonableness can complement theories of justice in establishing acceptable environmental health risks for the general population and susceptible subpopulations. Since accountability for reasonableness focuses on the fairness of the decision-making process, not the outcome, it does not guarantee that susceptible subpopulations will receive a maximum level of protection, regardless of costs or other morally relevant considerations.
In academia, authorship on publications confers merit as well as responsibility. The respective d... more In academia, authorship on publications confers merit as well as responsibility. The respective disciplines adhere to their "typical" authorship practices: individuals may be named in alphabetical order (e.g. in economics, mathematics), ranked in decreasing level of contribution (e.g. biomedical sciences) or the leadership role may be listed last (e.g. laboratory sciences). However, there is no specific, generally accepted guidance regarding authorship distribution in multidisciplinary teams, something that can lead to significant tensions and even conflict. Using Scanlon's Contractualism as a basis, I propose a conceptual foundation for the ethical distribution of authorship in multidisciplinary teams; it features four relevant principles: desert, just recognition, transparency, and collegiality. These principles can serve in the development of a practical framework to support ethical and non-arbitrary authorship distribution, which hopefully would help reduce confusion and conflict, promote agreement and contribute to synergy in multidisciplinary collaborative research.
Using a database of recent articles published in the field of Global Health research, we examine ... more Using a database of recent articles published in the field of Global Health research, we examine institutional sources of stratification in publishing access outcomes. Traditionally, the focus on inequality in scientific publishing has focused on prestige hierarchies in established print journals. This project examines stratification in contemporary publishing with a particular focus on subscription vs. various Open Access (OA) publishing options. Findings show that authors working at lower-ranked universities are more likely to publish in closed/paywalled outlets, and less likely to choose outlets that involve some sort of Article Processing Charge (APCs; gold or hybrid OA). We also analyze institutional differences and stratification in the APC costs paid in various journals. Authors affiliated with higher-ranked institutions, as well as hospitals and non-profit organizations pay relatively higher APCs for gold and hybrid OA publications. Results suggest that authors affiliated with high-ranked universities and well-funded institutions tend to have more resources to choose pay options with publishing. Our research suggests new professional hierarchies developing in contemporary publishing, where various OA publishing options are becoming increasingly prominent. Just as there is stratification in institutional representation between different types of publishing access, there is also inequality within access types.
Contemporary biomedical research is performed by increasingly large teams. Consequently , an incr... more Contemporary biomedical research is performed by increasingly large teams. Consequently , an increasingly large number of individuals are being listed as authors in the bylines, which complicates the proper attribution of credit and responsibility to individual authors. Typically, more importance is given to the first and last authors, while it is assumed that the others (the middle authors) have made smaller contributions. However, this may not properly reflect the actual division of labor because some authors other than the first and last may have made major contributions. In practice, research teams may differentiate the main contributors from the rest by using partial alphabetical authorship (i.e., by listing middle authors alphabetically, while maintaining a contribution-based order for more substantial contributions). In this paper, we use partial alphabetical authorship to divide the authors of all biomedical articles in the Web of Science published over the 1980–2015 period in three groups: primary authors, middle authors, and supervisory authors. We operationalize the concept of middle author as those who are listed in alphabetical order in the middle of an authors' list. Primary and supervisory authors are those listed before and after the alphabetical sequence, respectively. We show that alphabetical ordering of middle authors is frequent in biomedical research, and that the prevalence of this practice is positively correlated with the number of authors in the bylines. We also find that, for articles with 7 or more authors, the average proportion of primary, middle and supervisory authors is independent of the team size, more than half of the authors being middle authors. This suggests that growth in authors lists are not due to an increase in secondary contributions (or middle authors) but, rather, in equivalent increases of all types of roles and contributions (including many primary authors and many supervisory authors). Nevertheless, we show that the relative contribution of alphabetically ordered middle authors to the overall production of knowledge in the bio-medical field has greatly increased over the last 35 years.
Background: In 1982, the Annals of Virology published a paper showing how Liberia has a highly en... more Background: In 1982, the Annals of Virology published a paper showing how Liberia has a highly endemic potential of Ebola warning health authorities of the risk for potential outbreaks; this journal is only available by subscription. Limiting the accessibility of such knowledge may have reduced information propagation toward public health actors who were indeed surprised by and unprepared for the 2014 epidemic. Open access (OA) publication can allow for increased access to global health research (GHR). Our study aims to assess the use, cost and impact of OA diffusion in the context of GHR. Method: A total of 3366 research articles indexed under the Medical Heading Subject Heading " Global Health " published between 2010 and 2014 were retrieved using PubMed to (1) quantify the uptake of various types of OA, (2) estimate the article processing charges (APCs) of OA, and (3) analyse the relationship between different types of OA, their scholarly impact and gross national income per capita of citing countries.
This article begins by providing an overview of several historical tragedies in research involvin... more This article begins by providing an overview of several historical tragedies in research involving humans and how they can serve to promote the awareness and development of ethical practices and policies. We highlight several norms specific for ethical clinical research and what they mean in terms of corresponding practices for researchers and ethics reviewers. We also bring up two key issues that bioethicists are currently grappling with, namely how to handle the ethics review of clinical research performed by many researchers at multiple institutions, and how biobanking research involves altering some of the traditional norms and practices of research ethics.
Le présent rapport a pour but d'apporter une aide constructive pour la mise à jour de la pol... more Le présent rapport a pour but d'apporter une aide constructive pour la mise à jour de la politique universitaire concernant les conflits d'intérêts (CI). Le rapport est une évaluation détaillée des politiques actuelles de l'Université afin d'aider une meilleure gestion de celles-ci. L'Université de Montréal a déjà une longueur d'avance sur plusieurs universités canadiennes en possédant une politique centrale sur la question. Toutefois, cette politique mériterait une mise à jour au regard des standards contemporains ainsi qu'une mise en ...
Summary
Through review of the bioethics and global health literatures, and examination of guidan... more Summary
Through review of the bioethics and global health literatures, and examination of guidance documents on ethical authorship, we identified a set of issues regarding authorship in collaborative partnerships between researchers from low-middle income countries and high income countries. We propose several recommendations to address these concerns.
National and international organisations have implemented governance mechanisms to address a dive... more National and international organisations have implemented governance mechanisms to address a diversity of ethical, security and policy challenges raised by advances in research and innovation. These challenges become particularly complex when research or innovations are considered ‘dual-use’, i.e. can lead to both beneficial and harmful uses, and in particular, civilian (peaceful) and military (hostile) applications. While many countries have mechanisms (i.e. export controls) to govern the transfer of dual-use technology (e.g. nuclear, cryptography), it is much less clear how dual-use research from across the range of academic disciplines can or should be governed. Using the Canadian research and policy context as case study, this paper will first, examine the governance mechanisms currently in place to mitigate the negative implications of dual-use research and innovation; second, compare these with other relevant international governance contexts; and finally, propose some ways forward (i.e. a risk analysis approach) for developing more robust governance mechanisms.
Uploads
Papers by Elise Smith
among members of multi/interdisciplinary health research
teams. If left unmanaged and unresolved, these conflicts can
undermine knowledge sharing and collaboration, obscure
accountability for research, and contribute to the incorrect attribution
of credit. To mitigate these issues, certain researchers
suggest quantitative authorship distributions schemes (e.g.,
point systems), while others wish to replace or minimize the
importance of authorship by using “contributorship”—a system
based on authors’ self-reporting contributions. While both methods
have advantages, we argue that authorship and contributorship
will most likely continue to coexist for multiple ethical and
practical reasons. In this article, we develop a five-step “best
practice” that incorporates the distribution of both contributorship
and authorship for multi/interdisciplinary research. This procedure
involves continuous dialogue and the use of a detailed
contributorship taxonomy ending with a declaration explaining
contributorship, which is used to justify authorship order.
Institutions can introduce this approach in responsible conduct
of research training as it promotes greater fairness, trust, and
collegiality among team members and ultimately reduces confusion
and facilitates resolution of time-consuming disagreements.
Through review of the bioethics and global health literatures, and examination of guidance documents on ethical authorship, we identified a set of issues regarding authorship in collaborative partnerships between researchers from low-middle income countries and high income countries. We propose several recommendations to address these concerns.
among members of multi/interdisciplinary health research
teams. If left unmanaged and unresolved, these conflicts can
undermine knowledge sharing and collaboration, obscure
accountability for research, and contribute to the incorrect attribution
of credit. To mitigate these issues, certain researchers
suggest quantitative authorship distributions schemes (e.g.,
point systems), while others wish to replace or minimize the
importance of authorship by using “contributorship”—a system
based on authors’ self-reporting contributions. While both methods
have advantages, we argue that authorship and contributorship
will most likely continue to coexist for multiple ethical and
practical reasons. In this article, we develop a five-step “best
practice” that incorporates the distribution of both contributorship
and authorship for multi/interdisciplinary research. This procedure
involves continuous dialogue and the use of a detailed
contributorship taxonomy ending with a declaration explaining
contributorship, which is used to justify authorship order.
Institutions can introduce this approach in responsible conduct
of research training as it promotes greater fairness, trust, and
collegiality among team members and ultimately reduces confusion
and facilitates resolution of time-consuming disagreements.
Through review of the bioethics and global health literatures, and examination of guidance documents on ethical authorship, we identified a set of issues regarding authorship in collaborative partnerships between researchers from low-middle income countries and high income countries. We propose several recommendations to address these concerns.