The research assessment exercise (RAE) forms the basis for determining the funding of higher education institutions in the UK. Monies are distributed according to a range of performance criteria, the most important of which is "research outputs". Problems to do with publication misconduct, and in particular, issues of justice in attributing authorship, are endemic within the research community....

Self-plagiarism is a controversial issue in scientific writing and presentation of research data. Unlike plagiarism, self-plagiarism is difficult to interpret as intellectual theft under the justification that one cannot steal from oneself. However, academics are concerned, as self-plagiarized papers mislead readers, do not contribute to science, and bring undeserved credit to authors. As such,...

To present the basic principles and standards of Ethics in medical research and publishing, as well as the need for continuing education in the principles and ethics in science and publication in biomedicine. An analysis of relevant materials and documents, sources from the published literature. Investing in education of researches and potential researches, already in the level of medical schoo...

A detailed review of all 2,047 biomedical and life-science research articles indexed by PubMed as retracted on May 3, 2012 revealed that only 21.3% of retractions were attributable to error. In contrast, 67.4% of retractions were attributable to misconduct, including fraud or suspected fraud (43.4%), duplicate publication (14.2%), and plagiarism (9.8%). Incomplete, uninformative or misleading r...

BACKGROUND: Aggressive behaviour in patients with schizophrenic disorders is an ongoing source of concern to community-based services. It has been suggested that optimal treatment may reduce the risk of serious misconduct. OBJECTIVE: To assess prospectively aggressive and sexual misconduct in a cohort of patients receiving continued evidence-based community treatment. METHOD: Fifty patients wit...

It’s all so easy with Photoshop 1 . In the days before imaging software became so widely available, making adjustments to image data in the darkroom required considerable effort and/or expertise. It is now very simple, and thus tempting, to adjust or modify digital image files. Many such manipulations, however, constitute inappropriate changes to your original data, and making such changes can ...

Why the guidelines were developed COPE was founded in 1997 to address breaches of research and publication ethics. A voluntary body providing a discussion forum and advice for scientific editors, it aims to find practical ways of dealing with the issues, and to develop good practice. We thought it essential to attempt to define best practice in the ethics of scientific publishing. These guideli...

UNLABELLED A review of the United States Office of Research Integrity annual reports identified 228 individuals who have committed misconduct, of which 94% involved fraud. Analysis of the data by career stage and gender revealed that misconduct occurred across the entire career spectrum from trainee to senior scientist and that two-thirds of the individuals found to have committed misconduct we...

This paper describes processes of disqualification in an environmental dispute, and the impact they (can) have. Scientists, benefiting from aura neutrality reason, publicly express their ...

In the academic world, despite their corrective nature, there is still a negative stigma attached to retractions, even more so if they are based on ethical infractions. Editors-in-chief and editors role models in scholarly communities. Thus, have multiple retractions or record of misconduct, this viewpoint argues that should not serve journals’ editorial boards. The exception where su...