Do Croatian open access journals support ethical research? Content analysis of instructions to authors

The aim of our study was to investigate the extent to which Instructions to authors of the Croatian open access (OA) journals are addressing ethical issues. Do biomedical journals differ from the journals from other disciplines in that respect? Our hypothesis was that biomedical journals maintain much higher publication ethics standards.

This study looked at 197 Croatian OA journals Instructions to authors to address the following groups of ethical issues: general terms; guidelines and recommendations; research approval and registration; funding and conflict of interest; peer review; redundant publications, misconduct and retraction; copyright; timeliness; authorship; and data accessibility. We further compared a subset of 159 non-biomedical journals with a subset of 38 biomedical journals. Content analysis was used to discern the ethical issues representation in the instructions to authors.

The groups of biomedical and non-biomedical journals were similar in terms of originality (χ2=2.183, P=0.140), peer review process (χ2=0.296, P=0.586), patent/grant statement (χ2=2.184, P=0.141), and timeliness of publication (χ2=0.369, P=0.544). We identified significant differences among categories including ethical issues typical for the field of biomedicine, like patients (χ2=47.111, P<0.001), and use of experimental animals (χ2=42.543, P<0.001). Biomedical journals also rely on international editorial guidelines formulated by relevant professional organizations heavily, compared with non-biomedical journals (χ2=42.666, P<0.001).

Low representation or absence of some key ethical issues in author guidelines calls for more attention to the structure and the content of Instructions to authors in Croatian OA journals.