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Research and Publication Ethics

Course Code: MM 831; AM 831; ST 831  |  Credits: 2  |  Prerequisite: NIL

Syllabus Details

  • Philosophy and Ethics: Introduction to philosophy — definition, nature and scope, concept and branches; ethics — definitions, moral philosophy, the nature of moral judgements and reactions.
  • Scientific Conduct: Ethics with respect to science and research; intellectual honesty and research integrity; scientific misconduct — falsification, fabrication and plagiarism; redundant publications — duplicate and overlapping publications, salami slicing; selective reporting and misrepresentation of data.
  • Publication Ethics: Definition, introduction and importance; best practices and standard setting initiatives and guidelines such as COPE and WAME; conflicts of interest; publication misconduct — definition, concept, the problems that lead to unethical behaviour, and types; violation of publication ethics, authorship and contributorship; identification of publication misconduct, complaints and appeals; predatory publishers and journals.
  • Open Access Publishing: Open access publications and initiatives; the SHERPA/RoMEO resource for checking publisher copyright and self-archiving policies; the SPPU software tool for identifying predatory publications; journal finder and suggestion tools such as JANE, Elsevier Journal Finder and Springer Journal Suggester.
  • Publication Misconduct: Group discussion on subject specific ethical issues, falsification, fabrication and plagiarism, authorship, conflicts of interest, and complaints and appeals with examples of fraud from India and abroad; software tools, including plagiarism software such as Turnitin and Urkund and open source alternatives.
  • Databases and Research Metrics: Indexing databases and citation databases such as Web of Science and Scopus; research metrics — journal impact factor as per the Journal Citation Report, SNIP, SJR, IPP and CiteScore; h-index, g-index, i10 index and altmetrics.
  1. Bird, Alexander. Philosophy of Science. Routledge, 2006
  2. MacIntyre, Alasdair. A Short History of Ethics. London, 1967
  3. Chaddah, Praveen. Ethics in Competitive Research: Do Not Get Scooped; Do Not Get Plagiarized. 2018
  4. Resnik, David B. What is Ethics in Research and Why is it Important. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, 2011
  5. Beall, Jeffrey. “Predatory Publishers are Corrupting Open Access.” Nature 489 (7415), 2012
  6. National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering and Institute of Medicine. On Being a Scientist: A Guide to Responsible Conduct in Research. 3rd ed. National Academies Press, 2009
  7. Indian National Science Academy. Ethics in Science Education, Research and Governance. INSA, 2019
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