Research ethics is a key principle of research, my understanding on research ethics was

minimal before taking this course. I knew about plagiarism but not in to detail but I have
learnt a lot about it in this course.

Rejection and retraction are completing new things to me. When unethical issues are
detected before publishing research articles, the article will be rejected and if research ethic
is notified after publishing an article such article will be retracted.

The three categories of research ethics; Falsification, Fabrication and Plagiarism (FFP) are
interesting information which have simplified my understanding on research ethics.
Falsification is a major concern, as researchers tend to change research data to meet their
needs or fit their research questions. Some researchers do not conduct the research studies
but create their own data (fabrication) and plagiarism is a wide and interesting topic in
research ethics. Some researchers make double publications, duplicate publications, fail to
cite authors, copy and fail to paraphrase. Some researchers break or segment a large study
in to two (Salami slicing). Another interesting component of research ethics is conflict of
interest.

Initially I thought its okay to copy and paste without paraphrasing when citing, not to cite
your own published paper and segment a large study in to two.

Research is costly and time consuming; I feel it is not good to retract a published paper
from a journal. The author should as well be given opportunity to fix the problem. Secondly,
authors should be given opportunity to submit their papers to more than one journal for
publishment. Notification will be made to the other journals once one of the journals
publishes the paper first.

All the concepts covered in this unit have been clear and understandable.

The knowledge gained from this lesson will have great impact on my research. In my
previous research, I have been doing some of these unethical practices unknowing. I learnt
about the good research practices in this lesson and I will apply them in my next research.

Thanks It was a great lesson!