Understanding the Basic Ethical Standards of Open Access

Hosmane N S

Distinguished Research Professor,Northern Illinois University, USA.

*Corresponding Author

Narayan S. Hosmane PhD, FRSC,
Distinguished Research Professor,
Northern Illinois University,USA.
E-mail: hosmane@niu.edu

Article Type: Editorial
Received: August 09, 2014; Published: August 26, 2014.

Citation: Hosmane N S (2014) Understanding the Basic Ethical Standards of Open Access. Int J Bioorg Chem Mol Biol. 2(4e), 1. doi: dx.doi.org/10.19070/2332-2756-140007e

Copyright: Hosmane N S© 2014. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

In order to establish a premier scientific journal, the editorial board, the expert reviewer panel, the contributing authors and the readers must make sure that there are neither any falsified scientific data presented nor plagiarism committed by the authors. It is also equally important to make sure that the reputation of the journal is not tarnished by those unethical acts of authors that have been ignored or overlooked by the expert reviewers and/or undetected by the readers of that particular published article. The observed or determined scientific data are actual or existent facts of nature and, of course, “facts are forever”, but “interpretations may come and go”. Therefore, the peer review system should be such that the authors interpret the data to the best of their ability and consistent with the existing literature data. Thus, the SciDoc Publishers created a new International Journal of Bioorganic Chemistry & Molecular Biology (IJBCMB), an open access journal, in order to present the highest quality publications in the area of Science, Technology and Medicine.

At this point, it is important to bring our “words of wisdom” to those young budding researchers and contributing future authors. It may be surprising that not all younger generation of researchers are taught the correct meaning of ethical standards and plagiarism at home and at school. The words, such as "lying" is not a "sin" and “plagiarism” is not a “crime”, have been the corrupted belief in their vocabulary, particularly among the new generation in many developing countries. However, the younger generation of students/postdocs and even the junior faculty think that "lying, stealing or plagiarism" and then "not being caught" is a "bravery"! If it weren't for the modern day high-speed Internet, we would not have found these illegal acts to stop them in order to preserve the integrity of the publications. Thanks to those great scientists who have discovered these things by using their own creativity, rather than stealing the ideas from others. A wise man once said – “If you salute your work, then you don’t salute anyone; but if you pollute your work, then you need to salute everyone” – so true!

It has been a general misconception that the open access journals do not follow the same standard as those established main line journals of a particular International Scientific Society or Academy. One way to eliminate this misconception would be by publishing the names of the reviewers of each accepted paper as suggested by my mentor Professor M. Frederick Hawthorne, recipient of the US National Medal of Science, Priestley Medal and former Editor-in-Chief of American Chemical Society’s journal Inorganic Chemistry. This should improve the integrity of the science being reported.