Logo: to the web site of Uppsala University

Aim: To identify and address ethical challenges in doctoral supervision within nursing and health sciences and propose strategies to overcome them.

Design: Following PRISMA guidelines, this mixed-method systematic review synthesises findings from quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods studies published in English between 2014 and 2025. Studies were included if they examined ethical challenges in doctoral supervision and strategies to address them within nursing and health sciences. Exclusion criteria encompassed reviews, books, editorials, opinion papers, conference papers, studies unrelated to nursing or health sciences or published before 2014.

Data Sources: A systematic search was conducted in CINAHL, Education Source, ERIC, PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science Core Collection, yielding 1100 citations.

Review Methods: The methodological quality of included studies was assessed using the STROBE checklist for quantitative studies and the COREQ framework for qualitative studies. The findings were then synthesised and thematically organised.

Results: Eleven studies met the inclusion criteria: four quantitative, four qualitative, and three mixed methods. Ethical challenges in doctoral supervision emerged at three levels: individual (e.g., misaligned expectations, inadequate feedback, student adjustment difficulties), institutional (e.g., high student–supervisor ratios, limited support structures), and cultural (e.g., differing norms around autonomy and academic authority). Supervisors also reported role conflicts. Strategies to address these challenges included improved communication, supervision agreements, institutional support, and targeted training.

Conclusions: Ethical challenges in supervision are shaped by individual, institutional, and cultural factors. Addressing them requires multi-level strategies, including clear expectations, feedback mechanisms, structured training, and culturally sensitive supervision practices. Applying ethical principles fosters a transparent and supportive academic environment that enhances doctoral outcomes.

Implications for the Institutions: Universities should adopt multi-level strategies, including supervisor training, mentorship structures, and culturally informed policies, to strengthen the ethical integrity and effectiveness of doctoral supervision.

Impact: What problem did the study address? This study synthesises ethical challenges in doctoral supervision within nursing and health sciences, focusing on communication barriers, institutional constraints, and the transition from clinical practice to academia.

What were the main findings? Misaligned expectations between supervisors and students, inadequate feedback and structural limitations negatively impact the quality of supervision. Doctoral students struggle to adapt to academic expectations, while supervisors face challenges in balancing multiple roles. Effective communication, institutional support and targeted training programs are essential for improving supervisory experience.

Where and on whom will the research have an impact? The research will inform universities and institutions offering doctoral education in nursing and health sciences. It will benefit doctoral students, supervisors, and academic administrators by providing insights and strategies to enhance supervision quality and promote ethical practices.

Reporting Method: This systematic review follows the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines.

Aim: This scoping review aims to investigate the reasons for adopting the Contributor Roles Taxonomy (CRediT) in scholarly publishing, identify barriers to its implementation or concerns about its use, and propose improvements to enhance its effectiveness in attributing individual contributions to research articles.

Methods: A comprehensive literature search was conducted following PRISMA guidelines across multiple databases, including ProQuest, LISA, LISTA, EBSCO, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science Core Collection.

Results: From an initial pool of 732 papers, 45 were selected for inclusion in the review. The findings indicate that, while the adoption of CRediT promotes transparency and recognition of contributions beyond traditional authorship, several challenges remain. Key barriers include limited applicability across different research types, potential ethical concerns, and conflicts among contributors. Factors contributing to slow adoption include low awareness, inconsistent implementation, and cultural resistance within the research community. Additionally, ambiguous role definitions complicate attribution and fairness.

Conclusions: This review highlights CRediT’s potential to enhance transparency and equitable recognition of diverse contributions in scholarly publishing. However, it underscores the need to address internal challenges and promote broader acceptance within the research community. Recommendations include establishing clearer role hierarchies, standardizing adoption policies, and integrating CRediT into metadata for improved contribution tracking.

This study explores how papers published in international journals in palliative and end-of-life care report ethical approval and informed consent. A literature search following PRISMA guidelines was conducted in PubMed, the Web of Science Core Collection, Scopus, the ProQuest Social Science Premium Collection, PsycINFO, and the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL). A total of169 empirical studies from 101 journals were deductively coded and analysed. The results showed that 5% of publications provided no information on ethical approval, 12% reported minimal information, 56% reported rudimentary information, and 27% reported comprehensive details. We also found that 13% did not report any information on informed consent, 17% reported minimal information, 50% reported rudimentary information, and 19% reported comprehensive details. The prevalence of missing and incomplete ethical statements and inadequate reporting of informed consent processes in recent publications raises concerns and highlights the need for improvement. We suggest that journals advocate high reporting standards and potentially reject papers that do not meet  ethical  requirements,  as  this is the quickest path to improvement.

Little is known about the information parents of children with cancer find when searching for clinical trials information on YouTube. Thus, this study aimed to analyse the content, quality and reliability of YouTube videos focused on clinical trials for paediatric cancer. A descriptive cross-sectional design was used, and YouTube was searched using the phrases ‘clinical trials for children with cancer’ and ‘paediatric cancer clinical trials’. Videos that met inclusion criteria were assessed using the instruments Global Quality Scale and DISCERN. About half of the examined videos were in the GQS excellent-quality group and exhibited a total of 84,804 views. The mean time for videos was 5.7 minutes, they originated from the US or UK, were uploaded after 2016, and had a cancer centre/foundation or children hospital as video source. Half of them were focusing on early experimental trials and had a positive tone. Twenty percent were classified as useful without serious shortcomings, almost 50% as misleading with serious shortcomings, and 30% as inappropriate sources of information. In conclusion, most YouTube videos on paediatric cancer trials are not very informative and fall short of what could ethically be required regarding their facilitation of informed decision-making.

Antibiotic resistance (AR) is a major threat to public health and healthcare worldwide. In this article, we analyse and discuss the claim that taking actions to minimize AR is everyone's responsibility, focusing on individual moral responsibility. This should not be merely interpreted as a function of knowledge of AR and the proper use of antibiotics. Instead, we suggest a circumstantial account of individual responsibility for AR, where individuals do or do not engage in judicious antibiotic behaviour with different degrees of voluntariness. Furthermore, we suggest a notion of responsibility as a virtue, in which individuals have the opportunity to develop a sensitivity towards the AR theme and, consequently, are capable of engaging, actively and voluntarily, in judicious antibiotic behaviour. The development of such sensitivity depends on the creation of adequate circumstances, that is individual capacities and availability of resources.

A global survey of researchers was conducted to gather perceptions on the prevalence and impact of predatory academic journals and conferences. The survey was open and inclusive in nature, with 1872 researchers, from a wide array of geographic regions, disciplines and academic career stages, voluntarily participating. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected and analysed. The survey revealed that over 80% (1537 of 1859) of respondents perceive predatory practices are already a serious problem or on the rise in their country of work, and risk infiltrating and undermining the research enterprise if left unchallenged. At least 24% (445 of 1872) of respondents admitted they had already published in a predatory journal, participated in a predatory conference, or did not know if they had. Over 87% of respondents who had published (174 of 199) or participated (60 of 64) indicated that a lack of awareness of predatory practices was the main reason. Those in lower-middle and upper-middle-income countries were more likely to indicate they had engaged in these activities than those in high-income ones, with some disciplines appearing to engage more than others. Individual impact was mixed: some indicated no impact while others noted a range of negative and detrimental feelings.

OBJECTIVE: To systematically map the scholarly literature on predatory conferences and describe the presentstate of research and the prevalent attitudes about these conferences.

METHODS: This scoping review follows Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines. Four databases were searched (PubMed/Medline, Web of Science, Scopus and ProQuest SocialSciences Premium Collection). In addition, the included studies’ reference lists were scanned for additional papers  not found in the searches. Peer-reviewed publications were included irrespective of study design. Letters and commentary were included if they were peer reviewed. Editorials and literature reviews were excluded.

RESULTS: From 809 initial publications, 20 papers were included in the review, from 12 countries and covered a wide range of science disciplines, from nursing/medicine to energy/technology and computer science. More than half were empirical and published after 2017. In most papers, a definition of the term predatory conferences was put forward. Spam email invitations with flattering language were the most common characteristics, and the conferences were often hosted by unknown organisations that used copied pictures without permission. High fees, lack of peer review, and a multidisciplinary scope were signal features. All papers explicitly or implicitly suggested possible reasons for participating in predatory conferences. Some reasons were related to the overall context of academic work, the nature of predatory conferences (eg, researchers falling prey to misleading information about a conference or choosing a conference based on an attractive location) and the personal characteristics of researchers. Only one paper reported empirically identified reasons for participating in predatory conferences. The three countermeasures proposed most frequently to deal with predatory conferences were increasing education, emphasising responsibilities of universities and funders, and publishing lists of predatory publishers associated with conferences.

CONCLUSIONS: This review identified a scarcity of research concerning predatory conferences. Future empirical as well as fully analytical research should be encouraged by funders, journals and research institutions.

Due to the alarming rise of antibiotic resistance, medically unwarranted use of antibiotics has assumed new moral significance. In this paper, a thematic content analysis of focus group discussions was conducted to explore lay people’s views on the moral challenges posed by antibiotic resistance. The most important finding is that lay people are morally sensitive to the problems entailed by antibiotic resistance. Participants saw the decreasing availability of effective antibiotics as a problem of justice. This involves individual as well as collective moral responsibility. Yet, holding agents responsible for their use of antibiotics involves varying degrees of demandingness. In our discussion, these findings are related to the contemporary ethical debate on antibiotic resistance and two proposals for the preservation of antibiotic effectiveness are compared to and evaluated against participants’ views.

Background: Predatory publishing poses a fundamental threat to the development of nursing knowledge. Previous research has suggested that authors of papers published in predatory journals are mainly inexperienced researchers from low- and middle-income countries. Less attention has been paid to contributors from high-income countries.

Aim: To describe the prevalence and characteristics of Swedish authors publishing in predatory nursing journals.

Design: Quantitative descriptive case study.

Participants and research context: Descriptive statistics were used to analyse the academic positions and academic affiliations of the authors of 39 papers published in predatory nursing journals during 2018 and 2019. Predatory nursing journals with Swedish contributors were identified by searching public listings of papers and applying a set of criteria. Journal site archives were used to identify additional papers with Swedish authors.

Ethical considerations: This study was conducted in accordance with national regulations and ethical principles of research.

Results: Almost two-thirds of Swedish authors publishing in predatory nursing journals hold senior academic positions. A small group of higher education institutions account for a majority of academic affiliations. Findings suggest that higher education institutions and experienced nursing researchers from Sweden make substantial contributions to predatory nursing journals, but that predatory publication habits might be concentrated in a limited number of academics and research milieus. A year-to-year comparison indicates that the prevalence of publishing in predatory journals might be diminishing.

Discussion: Swedish nurse researchers help legitimize predatory journals, thus jeopardizing the trustworthiness of academic nursing knowledge. Substandard papers in predatory journals may pass as legitimate and be used to further academic careers. Experienced researchers are misleading junior colleagues, as joint publications might become embarrassments and liabilities.

Conclusion: While the academic nursing community needs to address the problem of predatory publishing, there is some hope that educational efforts might have an effect on combating predatory publishing in nursing.