Module 4

Research and publication ethics

Syllabus: Research and integrity, scientific misconduct: falsification, fabrication and plagiarism,
conflict of research, predatory publishers and journals, open access publication, citation and
acknowledgment, reproducibility and accountability, software tools for similarity check

Research and integrity

Research Integrity means conducting research in such a way that allows others to have
confidence and trust in the methods and the findings of the research. It relates both to the
scientific integrity of conducted research and to the professional integrity of researchers. Key
elements of Research Integrity include:

1. Honesty

2. Rigour: Quality of being extremely thorough and careful

3. Transparency and open communication

4. Care and respect of all participants

5. Accountability

Scientific misconduct

Research Misconduct is Fabrication, Falsification, or Plagiarism in Research Activities or

Deliberate Interference. It does not include honest error or differences of opinion.

• Fabrication is making up data or results and recording or reporting them.

• Falsification is manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing or

omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the Research
Record.

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• Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person’s ideas, processes, results, or words without
giving appropriate credit.

• Deliberate Interference is intentionally causing material harm to the research or scholarly

work of others, and may include damaging or destroying the property of others, such as
research equipment or supplies; disrupting active experiments; or altering or deleting products
of research, including data.

Conflict of research

An interest may be defined as a commitment, goal, or value held by an individual or an

institution.

"A conflict of interest in research exists when the individual has interests in the outcome of the
research that may lead to a personal advantage and that might therefore, in actuality or
appearance compromise the integrity of the research.” (US National Academies of
Science, Integrity in Scientific Research, 2002, p. 38)

1. Conflict of interest exists when two or more contradictory interests relate to an activity by an
individual or an institution.
2. The conflict lies in the situation, not in any behavior or lack of behavior of the individual.
That means that a conflict of interest is not intrinsically a bad thing.
3. Conflicts of interest are "situations in which financial or other personal considerations may
compromise, or have the appearance of compromising, an investigator's judgment in
conducting or reporting research." AAMC, 1990
4. We are often required to disclose any conflicts of interest we might have, for instance, when
submitting a paper to a journal, or when acting as reviewers of a research project at the
request of a funding agency.
5. Over the past few decades, the duty to declare conflicts of interest has become a normal
component of academic life.
6. This concept is sometimes misunderstood, especially by novel researchers who may
mistakenly believe that the mere existence of such a conflict is violation of ethical principles,
which is not.

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7. In this situation, the same individual is involved in two competing interests, one of which
could possibly corrupt the motivation of the other and introduce bias in his or her professional
judgment.

Significance of conflict of research

There are following significance of conflict of research:

1. Conflict of research matters because they can potentially clash with the purpose of
scientific work itself. Science is generally characterized as the “search for truth”.

2. Good scientists are guided by a genuine desire to pursue truth and impartial judgment by
honesty in reporting and interpreting their research results.

3. The scientific work should be as unbiased and objective as possible in the sense that non-
scientific interests (financial or personal) should not play any significant role in the way
in which the research work is conducted and its results are interpreted and presented.

4. Another reason of the importance of declaring conflicts of interest in research

is transparency towards readers and institutions to whom the scientific work is addressed.

5. This stops the personal or financial interests that would jeopardize the impartial nature of
scientific activity.

Components in conflict of research:

1. The names of sponsors of research projects must always be disclosed. This is especially
important when sponsors are not public funding agencies, but profit oriented companies,
which may be tempted to influence the research outcomes in a way that could increase
their financial gain.

2. More problematic forms of conflict of interest happen when researchers participate in the
selection of a procurement contract with a company where they or their relatives have a
financial interest, or when peer review panel members have a close family or professional
relationship with one of the applicants to a position or a grant.

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 3. It is a duty to disclose the actual or potential conflict of interest to the relevant person or
institution (for instance, the journal where the paper is submitted; the institution for
which a report is prepared).

4. However, such disclosure should not be interpreted in a negative way, as if it were a kind
of confession that something wrong has happened or is likely to happen.

Predatory publishers and journals

Predatory publishers are a growing phenomenon in the world of academic publishing. These
publishers charge a fee for the publication of material without providing the publication services
an author would expect such as peer review and editing.

1. Predatory publishers typically contact potential authors directly via email to offer their
services and encourage publication with many starting to branch out into offering academic
conferences. To the researcher eager to make an impact with their work these can seem like
very tempting offers but they often come with little academic reward.
2. Predatory publishers rarely enhance reputations and in extreme cases may result in lasting
damage. Even if the individual research is sound there is little to be gained by having it sit
alongside research that is substandard or even wrong. Publishing with these publishers often
entails signing away copyright which means that authors lose the right to publish elsewhere.
3. Missing out on these important steps can undermine the final product and perpetuates bad
research in general and exploits the Open Access publishing model.

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Checklist of things for publishing with a journal:

• Association membership

• Transparency

• Indexing

• Quality of previous publications

• Fees

• Copyright

• Peer review

• Editorial board

• Website quality

Open access publication

A publication is defined 'open access' when there are no financial, legal or technical barriers to
accessing it - that is to say when anyone can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search for
and search within the information, or use it in education or in any other way within the legal
agreements.

1. Open access is a broad international movement that seeks to grant free and open online
access to academic information, such as publications and data.
2. Open access is a publishing model for scholarly communication that makes research
information available to readers at no cost, as opposed to the traditional subscription model
in which readers have access to scholarly information by paying a subscription (usually via
libraries).

Advantages:

• Increase in the visibility

• Reuse of academic research results

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• More citations

• Reach to wider group of researchers

Ways of publishing open access

The Golden route

 In full open access journals, publication is done via publisher platforms. This route may
involve a charge.
 The publication costs, known as ‘article processing charges’ (APCs), are covered by authors
or by their institutions.
 Most research funders support open access and are willing to cover the costs themselves.
 A list of fully open access journals that are accessible worldwide can be found on
the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) website.

The Green route

 The full text of academic publications is deposited in a trusted repository, a publicly

accessible database managed by a research organization.
 Example: All Dutch institutional repositories can be accessed via the Netherlands Research
Portal on OpenAIRE CONNECT where access to all the publications in Dutch repositories
are provided

The Diamond route

• These do not charge author-facing publication fees (APCs).

• Diamond open access journals are usually funded via library subsidy models, institutions or
societies.

• List of Diamond journals are available on the DOAJ website by filtering for 'Journals without
APCs’

The aspect of quality deserves extra efforts on open access platform publication route.

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Citation and acknowledgment

Citations are a way of giving credit when certain material in our work comes from another
source. Citing sources helps the readers to distinguish our ideas from those of our sources. This
will actually emphasize the originality of our own work. Citations look paper accurate

• A “citation” is the way we tell your readers that certain material in our work came from
another source.

• It also gives our readers the information necessary to find that source again.

• It provides an important roadmap to our research process.

• It also gives our readers the information necessary to find the location details of that
source on the reference or Works Cited page.

Why should we cite sources?

• To give credit to the source authors

• To help our audience/reader find out more about our research/arguments/ideas/topic

• To strengthen our work by providing outside support to our ideas

• To keep us from failing a paper, a course or being sued in the real world

• Citing sources actually helps our reader distinguish our ideas from those of our sources

When to cite

• When someone else’s words, thoughts, ideas, etc. is used.

• When direct quotes are used.

• When paraphrases are used.

• When any idea or thought which has already been expressed, is used.

• When any reference to another source is done.

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 • When another’s ideas, words or thoughts are influencing our writing and research.
research

Common citation styles

• American Psychology Association (APA) style

• Modern Language Association of America (MLA) style

• Chicago and Turabian style

• American Medical Association (AMA) style

How to cite

In American Psychology Association (APA) style:

Table1. Citation in APA style

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Citation of an article in Elsevier

• M. A. Fox and M. T. Dulay, Heterogeneous photocatalysis, Chem. Rev. 93 (1993) 341-

357

Citation generators

Citation generators are simple apps that take bibliographic information and generate citations and
references in a desired citation style (such as APA or MLA).

 EndNote

 Mendeley

 Zotero

 Citation Machine

 KnightCite Citation Creator

Software builds a database of references, which can then be used to generate citations and
references. They "remember" our library of references, so we don't have to re-find or re-generate
the same references over and over. They also keep track of articles and studies we have read. I
can be done by syncing our library of references or PDFs across multiple devices. The facility to
annotate and "mark up" PDFs, or keep notes attached to references is given with them as well.
The "cite-while-you-write" functionality can be added to the Microsoft Word to save the time as
well (insert citations from your library into your manuscript and generate the bibliography in the
specified citation style). Personal library of references can be shared with colleagues through
these citation generators as well.

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 Reproducibility

The ability of independent researchers to obtain the same (or similar) results when repeating an
experiment or test is called as reproducibility.

• It is one of the hallmarks of good science.

• Reproducibility provides scientists with evidence that research results are objective and
reliable and not due to bias or chance.

Irreproducibility

Irreproducibility may indicate a problem with any of the steps involved in the research, but not
limited to,

 The experimental design

 Variability of biological materials (such as cells, tissues or animal or human subjects)

 Data quality or integrity

 Statistical analysis

 Study description

 Some of the irreproducibility in scientific research may be due to data fabrication or

falsification.

 The website Retraction Watch (2016) keeps track of papers which have been retracted
due to misconduct or other problems.

Even if the rate of misconduct is low, it still represents a serious ethical problem that can
undermine the reproducibility, integrity and trustworthiness of research.

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Case study:

In March 1989, University of Utah chemistry professor Stanley Pons and Southampton
University chemistry professor Martin Fleischmann announced at a press conference that they
had developed a method for producing nuclear fusion at room temperatures (i.e. “cold fusion”).
Pons and Fleischmann bypassed the peer review process and reported their results directly to the
public in order to protect their claims to priority and intellectual property. When physicists and
chemists around the world tried, unsuccessfully, to reproduce these exciting results, many of
them accused Pons and Fleischman of conducting research that was sloppy, careless, or
fraudulent. While it does not appear that Pons and Fleischmann fabricated or falsified data, one
of the ethical problems with their work was that they did not provide enough detail in their press
release to enable scientists to reproduce their experiments. By leading their colleagues on a wild
goose chase, they wasted the scientific community’s time and resources and tainted cold fusion
research for years to come (Shamoo and Resnik 2015).

Accountability

Accountability is willingly accepting responsibility for your actions. It is the liability to ensure
that the given work is satisfactorily done. Researchers must ensure that their work is transparent
and responsible, with appropriate oversight and reporting. Research integrity and accountability
are essential for conducting ethical, rigorous, and trustworthy research. It is devoted to the
examination and critical analysis of practices and systems for promoting integrity in the conduct
of research. It involves adhering to the principles and standards of good research practice, such
as honesty, transparency, fairness, and responsibility. Accountability also provides an
interdisciplinary, international forum for the development of ethics, procedures, standards,
policies, and concepts to encourage the ethical conduct of research and to enhance the validity of
research results. Researchers are responsible for sustainable development of the human being. It
is not for what we do that we are held responsible, but also for what we do not do (By Moliere).
There are four pillars of accountability: responsibility, answerability, trustworthiness and liability
(Accountability in Research: The need of the hour, Anand Gawadekar, UNIVERSITY NEWS, 55(08)

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FEBRUARY 20-26, 2017). They remind us to perform our role towards society in the form of
money, time or manpower.

Figure 1. Pillars of accountability in research

How does a research paper look like?

Figure 2.. Research paper in R

Royal Society of Chemistry

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Figule 3. Research paper in Elsevier

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Figure 4. Research paper in scientific reports

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Software tools for similarity check

Similarity check is done to prevent scholarly and professional plagiarism by providing

immediate feedback regarding a manuscript's similarity to other published ac
academi
ademic and general
web content. For most of the journals, a similarity of 15%-20% is considered acceptable.
acceptabl

Table 2. Comparison of different software tools to check plagiarism

• Turnitin

• QuillBot

• Plagium

• Editpad

• SE ranking plagiarism checker

• HIX.AI

• ZeroGPT

• Plagiarismchecker.ai

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 • Plagiarisma

It is important to check the credibility of the website/software before uploading the article for
plagiarism check in order to safeguard the copyright.

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