Finally, it is important to make a practice of applying and using the Reassessed Checklist12 when assessing the integrity and quality of published research articles. “Reevaluated” is an acronym for 11 words, including; Research management, ethics, authorship, productivity (plausibility), plagiarism, research conduct, analysis and methods, image manipulation, statistics and data, errors and duplication of data and reports. A good journal requires that the submitted manuscript pass this checklist in order to be accepted for publication. The Nominating/Promotion Committee should also review whether the published article complies with this checklist. Traditionally, journals asked the corresponding author to indicate the order and contribution of each of the authors listed, including their signature and approval. Undoubtedly, the “author`s contributions” explanation is a valuable tool for appreciating the efforts of individual scientists to publish an article. However, it is not appropriate for the editor to create a list and order of authors. In fact, it is the responsibility of the scientists concerned and their institutions. Moreover, even with the best of intentions, it has never been easy to compare the relative values of intellectual and practical contributions to the research and the resulting article. For example, it seems very difficult for anyone to consider a more worthy author or the lead author who had the idea of the key experience than one who did most of the experiment. Therefore, it is important to carefully evaluate individual contributions when compiling the list of authors of a scientific article. Most importantly, it is the institution that provides evidence of the authors` involvement in the research being conducted.
Such a document to prove this could be the letters indicating the approval of the study by the ethics boards/institutional review committee and the register of research studies, which must include the names of all authors listed in the article. With these documents available as part of the discussion paper on appointment or promotion, it will be fairly easy to see who is an author and who is not, and also who has done more and who has done less or nothing at all. It is therefore imperative that these documents are available for the submitted article(s) on which the applicant has claimed authorship. According to McMaster University, “there are only a handful of ways to conduct a research study properly, but a thousand ways to get it wrong.” When assessing the quality of a published research article, the appeal or promotion committee may consider several aspects. The first is the journal itself, in which the article was published. In this regard, the impact factor of the review and the number of citations of the article give an indication of the quality of the research conducted by the authors. One publishing analysis company7 showed that approximately 60% of research articles published in Predatory Journals elicited no citations and 38% were cited only up to 10 times, with less than 3% of articles receiving more than 10 citations and none receiving more than 32 citations, indicating limited interest and readership in these journals or poor quality research published in these journals. In contrast, the analysis of a random sample of 1,000 articles published in 2014 in prestigious journals indexed in the Scopus database averaged about 18 citations, with only 9% of uncited articles. He said universities across the country are appointing teachers in light of the abolished rules of the Pakistan Medical and Dental Council (PMDC). Now, however, the PMDC has been replaced by a new body, the PMC, which has required that faculty hiring and promotion in medical universities be done according to the standards of the Commission on Higher Education or according to the university`s own rules.
Currently, the best-known guide to authorship credit decisions is the revised Vancouver Convention of the International Council of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE 2018).1 However, the stated rules are not helpful in resolving copyright disputes.2 According to the Materials Research Society (MRS)3 and the American Physical Society (APS)4, Authorship of a research publication is limited to those who have made a significant scientific contribution to the concept. Design, implementation or interpretation of the research study. Some scientific journals have adopted the Contributor Role Taxonomy (CRediT) system,5 which requires lead authors to provide an accurate summary of each author`s contribution to the 14 different domains considered relevant to authorship; Conceptualization, data curation, formal analysis, funding acquisition, survey, development methodology, project administration, resource input, software development, monitoring, validation, visualization, manuscript creation and design and editing review. Dr. Tariq said: “If we adopt the policy of the Higher Education Commission, there will be a crisis in medical universities.