Location
Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain
Elected Trustee
Term of office as a Trustee
2023 - 2026 First term
Prof. Emilio J. Sanz is a Professor in Clinical Pharmacology at the University of La Laguna, in Tenerife, the Canary Islands, Spain, where he has been an employee since 1982 and currently is also the head of the Hospital Department of Clinical Pharmacology at the University Hospital.
Apart from pharmacovigilance and drug safety, he has developed a research line of qualitative studies on Health, Medical Anthropology and Bioethics, being a board member of dipexinternational.org. He is the Director of a joint Master's program in Bioethics and Biolaw arranged by three Spanish Universities and a member of several Institutional Research Boards.
Since 2002, he has been Associate Editor of the "European Journal of Clinical Pharmacology" of the "Springer Nature" editorial. He has received several awards in Education: the EACPT 2019 prize "Lifetime Achievement in Clinical Pharmacology Education" and the "Hélice Prize" 2021 for academic Quality of ANECA (the Spanish Agency for Quality of Education).
2023 competing interest statement for Prof Emilio J. Sanz (PDF)
Getting to know you
An interview with Emilio J Sanz
What path has your work, studies or research taken led you to become a COPE Trustee?
I've been in the academic research community for the last 40 years and have seen tremendous changes in the meaning of publications for a scientific career. Years ago, fewer scientific journals and publications were backed up by a solid and respectful peer review system. The evaluation of CVs for new positions at research institutes and universities was more uncomplicated and straightforward due to the because there was less systemic and extended fraud.
Nowadays, the plethora of new online open access and predatory journals implies that the evaluation of the scientific career of candidates is more complicated and challenging to assess the actual quality and relevance of publications.
For the last twenty years, I've also been managing editor of a Springer journal (now SpringerNature). I've seen changes in the quality of the submissions, the emergence of scientists from lower income countries (which is a good sign), and extraordinary difficulty in finding suitable reviewers for the papers (many no responses, refusals and delays).
Finally, I've also seen an increase in fraudulent papers and paper mill products that are frequently difficult to recognise.
All these aspects, as well as my work and interest in bioethics, have made me more active in COPE activities.
What are some of the more common publishing ethics issues you and your colleagues deal with?
In quantitative terms, the publication of poor, low-quality research papers that do not merit publication. Furthermore, the faults in the design and interpretation of data, or their fabrication or deletion, constitute examples of fraud that our university's ethics committee has dealt with. Plagiarism is also an issue, not just copying entire paragraphs but paraphrasing ideas and discussions. I want to mention "honorific" authorship and sharing authorship between members of scientific teams that have not appropriately collaborated on the publication.
Are there any ethics issues that are unique or more common in your field, country, or region?
There are no unique issues in my country or region. In Spain, for example, scientific careers in the academic arena are heavily dependent on the evaluation of the National Agency for Evaluation of Quality. Its assessment of individual scientists is almost exclusively based on the ranking of the journals in which they have published. The quality of the publication, its contribution to the advancement of science, or even if some of the journals in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR) are predatory are rarely considered. The weight of the Impact Factor in scientific recognition is an excellent example of a failed measurement: it is an exact measure (it goes down to centesimal, measuring citations of the journal), but its values only indirectly relate to what it is intended to measure; the quality of science.
I want to mention the field of clinical research, clinical trials and meta-analysis. The design of clinical trials for new drugs is extraordinarily complex and has substantial financial repercussions. Quite often, there are biases in the presentations of the results and the discussions and conclusions and many clinical trials are challenged later on. This is a tricky issue because it is not fraud in data management, but in some cases, it has to do with biased interpretations to promote the product's usefulness. When data obtained during the trial are omitted or modified, we are dealing with a clear case of scientific fraud. The same applies to systematic reviews and meta-analyses that can be exposed to severe flaws.
What do you think are among the most pressing ethical concerns to address?
Currently, the rise in predatory journals which lack scientific evaluation of the submissions and are fuelled by the "publish or perish" environment; fraud in the construction of science such as paper mills, data invention and manipulation; the falsification of authorship and the inclusion of authors for rewards or payment.
Are there any areas or aspects of your work, or academic publishing in general, that you feel need guidelines or standards that would be useful?
The area of predatory journals is a top priority because publications in those journals are commonly used as merits for academic promotion when most of those products would have never been accepted in a publication with high standards. In the academic world, it is complicated to disregard certain publications because the administrators lack enough knowledge to assess the quality. Initiatives such as DOAJ or OASPA are instrumental, and I rely on COPE's capacity to illuminate this field and set clear and valuable guidelines.
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