This chapter provides a historical overview of scientific publication and
peer review and describes the current practices of scientific journals and
granting agencies. It also examines a number of different ethical issues and
concerns that arise in publication and peer review, such as quality control,
confidentiality, fairness, bias, electronic publication, wasteful publication,
duplicate publication, publishing controversial research, and editorial in-
dependence. The chapter also addresses the ethical responsibilities of re-
viewers and concludes with a discussion of the relationship between re-
searchers and the media.

Throughout history, advances in communication technologies have helped to
accelerate the progress of science (Lucky 2000). Written language was the first
important innovation in communication that helped promote the growth of
science. The Egyptians used hieroglyphics as early as 3000 bc, and by 1700 bc
the Phoenicians had developed an alphabet that became the basis of the
Roman alphabet. With the invention of writing, human beings were able to
record their observations and events as well as their ideas. The Egyptians and
Babylonians, for example, made detailed observations of the movements of
constellations, planets, and the moon in the night sky, as well as the position of
the sun in daytime. Ancient Greek and Roman scientists communicated
mostly through direct conversations and occasionally through letters. Philoso-
pher-scientists, such as Pythagoras, Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Euclid,
Hero, Ptolemy, and Archimedes, discussed their ideas with students and col-
leagues in their respective schools, academies, and lyceums. Although these
scientists also published some influential books, such as Euclid's Elements,
Plato's Republic, and Ptolemy's Almagest, books were very rare because they
had to be copied by hand on papyrus rolls.

Egypt, especially the city of Alexandria, was the cultural province of Greece
and later Rome. The Roman Empire built the largest network of roads and
bridges in the world, which increased commercial and scientific communica-
tion between the Far East and Middle East and the West. From about 40 bc
to 640 ad, most of the world's recorded scientific knowledge rested in the
great library of Alexandria. Invading forces burned the library three times, in
269 ad, 415 ad, and 640 ad. Each time the library burned, scholars rushed to
save books from being lost forever—to people in the modern, developed
world the idea of there being only a single copy of a book that, if lost, is lost
forever is almost inconceivable (Ronan 1982).

Aside from the development of written language, the invention of the
printing press during the 1400s by the German goldsmith Johannes Gutten-

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