Top researchers question UNSW incentive plan

Three eminent medical researchers have criticised UNSW’s new scheme to boost its research rankings.

Three eminent medical researchers have criticised University of NSW’s new scheme to boost its research rankings by offering financial incentives for publishing in prestige scientific journals.

David Vaux, deputy director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, Peter Brooks of the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health at the University of Melbourne, and Simon Gandevia, deputy director of Neuroscience Research Australia (who also holds a position at UNSW) say in a letter to The Australian (below) that “offering direct financial ­rewards puts even more pressure on researchers to exaggerate or ‘spin’ their findings”.

The three said it would lead to a weakening of research governance and oversight.

Their comments follow the news last month that UNSW would offer researchers money for travel, conferences and other small research expenses, as well as rewards for any paper in the top 1 per cent of citations.

In response to the letter, UNSW deputy vice-chancellor (research) Nicholas Fisk said the university did not offer “direct ­financial rewards”.

He said the reward scheme was intended to shift the focus of research from quantity to quality.

“Among a range of measures to address this, UNSW has launched an incentive scheme to redirect a small component of the (federal government) research block grant to support researchers publishing papers that become highly cited and/or appear in over 100 high quality outlets. The typically modest amounts are held in UNSW accounts and must be spent in support of research,” Professor Fisk said.

UNSW upheld the highest standards of research integrity and governance, he said.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

It was reported in the higher education section (“Financial bonus for published research”, 18/7) that University of NSW will give financial bonuses to researchers who publish in high-profile journals.

The rewards for publishing in journals such as Nature and Science are already substantial, and can lead to success in fellowship and grant applications, promotions, and invitations to meetings. Researchers who think their latest discovery has even a small chance of being published in journals such as these will not need additional incentives to submit their manuscripts to them.

Begley and Ellis commented in Nature (2012 483:531-3) that they could reproduce the findings in only 11 per cent of preclinical cancer research published in landmark journals. Indeed there is a plethora of irreproducible work being published across the academic spectrum. This suggests that the incentives are already high enough to encourage researchers to send poor quality work to high-profile publishers.

To add to these incentives by offering direct financial rewards puts even more pressure on researchers to exaggerate or “spin” their findings. Improving the quality and integrity of published research will require not only reducing the incentives to cut corners in experiments and exag­gerate findings, but also imp­rov­ing the governance of research.

Here, lessons can be learned from other areas, such as the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry, which has revealed the dangers of offering bonus incentives to loans officers and financial planners (not to mention chief executives). The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse has shown the importance of a central office to provide independent oversight. Both royal commissions have shown that self-governance was inadequate.

To improve integrity in research, the incentives to do the wrong thing should be reduced and the mechanisms of governance should be strengthened.

It is therefore disappointing to see two retrograde steps occurring at the same time: first, moves to offer financial bonuses for scientists to incentivise them to push their research into journals that they otherwise would not have considered; and second, a weakening of the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research so that research integrity will now be self-regulated, with no requirement for independent oversight.

As other countries such as Britain, China, the US and The Netherlands strengthen their independent research integrity commissions we find it extraordinary that Australia is weakening its research governance and oversight.

David Vaux, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute

Peter Brooks, Centre for Health Policy, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health

Simon Gandevia, Neuroscience Research Australia and UNSW