Teams prevent misconduct: A study of retracted articles from the Web of Science

Abstract

Collaborations become increasingly important among almost all scientific disciplines. Teams can be more productive and achieve more attention to their work. It is, however, unclear, whether teams also lead to higher research integrity. On the one hand, there may be a volunteer's dilemma in larger groups such that the responsibility diffuses who is controlling whom. The 'volunteer hypothesis' predicts that the more co-authors, the more scientific misconduct. On the other hand, larger groups may also achieve a higher level of social con Show more