From the Editor—Fake News, Information Literacy, and Scholarly Communication in Social Work

I do not recall hearing the words fake news prior to 2016, except perhaps in relation to magazines disguised as newspapers in the grocery checkout line that proclaim the presence of extraterrestrial aliens and herbal concoctions that can help you lose 30 pounds in the first week. Now the term seems to make headlines on a weekly, if not daily, basis with charges leveled against such mainstream media luminaries as the Washington Post or the New York Times. What can we believe? How do we know what is true and what is not? Fake news is information presented as factual but instead is biased information and is only part of the story that supports the author’s conclusions, is incorrect information in which the facts presented are distorted or otherwise inaccurate, or some mixture of the two.

Information literacy is a critical skill in these times. The Association of College & Research Libraries (2016a) has defined information literacy as:

the set of integrated abilities encompassing the reflective discovery of information, the understanding of how information is produced and valued, and the use of information in creating new knowledge and participating ethically in communities of learning. (p. 12)

Competency in information literacy, in the form of intellectual abilities in reasoning and critical thinking, has become a central objective of higher education (Association of College & Research Libraries, 2016b), including social work (Council on Social Work Education, 2015).

As educators, we teach social work students to use critical appraisal skills in accessing and using social work research. Often, one of the first criteria shared with students is telling them to look for peer-reviewed information. Peer review is the method by which staff of scholarly journals appraise the credibility of submissions and evaluate whether they should be published. For example, for the Journal of Social Work Education, peer reviewers “use their knowledge and expertise to provide blinded reviews of manuscripts submitted to the journal. They are experienced scholars in social work education and related fields who can make studied judgments about manuscripts and provide helpful comments for authors” (Council on Social Work Education, 2017, para. 1).

Unfortunately, across many academic fields, some articles that are accepted through peer review probably should not have been. They may be written unclearly, use less than optimal data collection or analysis methods, report findings incompletely, or perhaps make conclusions not supported by the results presented. In some cases, peer reviewers may not be familiar with the topic or the methods used in the study to examine the topic; in other cases, the editor may rely too heavily on the peer reviewers’ opinions. Retraction Watch (http://retractionwatch.com) is a blog sponsored by the Center for Scientific Integrity that reports on retractions of scientific papers in an effort to demonstrate the self-correcting nature of science. Although I am not aware of articles retracted from social work journals specifically, social science scholars have written about the “scientific reproducibility crisis” (Baker, 2016) and have initiated steps to increase the replicability of research (e.g., Open Science Collaboration, 2015). Further, several authors have made suggestions to address the reproducibility of research. For example, the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research of the National Institutes of Health (2015) has produced guidelines, available on its website, to improve data transparency, research, and publishing practices.

JSWE is fully committed to transparency and rigor in the articles it publishes. We strive for complete reporting of social work methods and results in concept papers, qualitative research, quantitative research, and notes, and have instituted new reporting guidelines intended to improve the quality of our articles over time. We hope to develop peer-review training in the future to train JSWE reviewers and other social work scholars to recognize limitations in submissions and provide corrective feedback to contributors to help them report their work more effectively.

This issue of JSWE offers a wide variety of concept papers, empirical research, teaching notes, and a research note for your consideration. Four concept papers explore topics ranging from a reconceptualization of person in environment by Akesson, Burns, and Hordyk (“The Place of Place in Social Work: Rethinking the Person-in-Environment Model in Social Work Education and Practice”); a reconceptualization of culture from Alvarez-Hernandez and Choi (“Reconceptualizing Culture in Social Work Practice and Education: A Dialectic and Uniqueness Awareness Approach”); a conceptualization of how to teach environmental rights and sustainability by Androff, Fike, and Rorke (“Greening Social Work Education: Teaching Environmental Rights and Sustainability in Community Practice”); and the application of critical race theory by Pulliam (“Practical Application of Critical Race Theory: A Social Justice Course Design”).

Nine empirical articles, four of which are reports of surveys, include one from Hughes, Narendorf, and Lacasse (“A National Survey of Graduate Education in Psychopharmacology: Advancing the Social Work Perspective on Psychiatric Medication”); Held, Mallory, and Cummings (“Preparing Social Work Students for Integrated Health Care: Results From a National Study”); Oxhandler (“Social Work Field Instructors’ Integration of Religion and Spirituality in Clinical Practice”); and Craig, Iacono, Paceley, Dentato, and Boyle (“Intersecting Sexual, Gender, and Professional Identities Among Social Work Students: The Importance of Identity Integration”). There is also a report on the development of an instrument to assess research learning from Secret, Abell, Ward, Charles, and Perkins (“Research Knowledge Assessment: A Study of MSW Students’ Acquisition and Retention of Research Knowledge”); a report on field supervisors’ perspectives on evidence-based practice by Heffernan and Dauenhauer (“Field Supervisor Perspectives on Evidence-Based Practice: Familiarity, Feasibility, and Implementation”); and a study of MSW student activism before and after students’ graduate studies by Dodd and Mizrahi (“Activism Before and After Graduate Education: Perspectives From Three Cohorts of MSW Students”). Finally, there is a mixed-methods examination of social work doctoral student satisfaction from Shapiro, Hudson, and Downey (“Institutional Expectations, Opportunities, and Interest in the Professoriate: A Mixed-Methods Examination of Satisfaction Among Doctoral Students in Social Work”) and a pilot evaluation of a Pinterest-based BSW assignment from Baker and Hitchcock (“Using Pinterest in Undergraduate Social Work Education: Assignment Development and Pilot Survey Results”).

Rounding out this issue of JSWE, we present three teaching notes and one research note. John and Bang describe projects for a BSW-level research course (“Keeping It Real: Program Evaluation Projects for an Undergraduate Research Class”), Quinn and Chu describe student-developed public service announcements for a BSW-level human behavior in the social environment course (“Student-Produced Public Service Announcements: A Project to Promote Active Learning in an Undergraduate HBSE Class”), and Levin and Fulginiti discuss the development of a hybrid course design to teach psychiatric diagnosis (“Developing an Online Blended Learning Course on Psychiatric Diagnosis”). Finally, Delavega, Lennon-Dearing, Neely-Barnes, Soifer, and Crawford discuss engaged scholarship (“Engaged Scholarship: A Signature Research Methodology for Social Work”).

Enjoy!