Research Ethics

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 Some areas of research ethics:
1. Research misconduct (falsification,
fabrication and plagiarism)
2. Collaboration issues (authorship, data
ownership and management)
3. Conflict of interest
4. Peer review
5. Funding sources
6. Animal subject research
 Data Fabrication

Fabrication means the data were never collected, but

were made up
 Data Falsification
Manipulating research data
with the intention of giving
a false impression. This
includes manipulating
images, removing outliers
or “inconvenient” results,
changing, adding or
omitting data points, etc.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism refers to using some other
person's ideas and information without
acknowledging that specific person as
the source. 
 Research Ethics
• Research should not harm anyone
• Maintaining anonymity and
confidentiality
• Informed consent
Authorship
Authorship
disputes Conflicts
Who can be the author?

Person with significant contribution can be the author

•Just given an idea (Can not be an author)

•Just provided a temporary field support on direction (Can not be an

author)

•Proofreading support (Can not be an author)

•Provided technical/laboratory support in term of instrument (Can not be

an author)
 Meaning of different authorships

First author

Corresponding author

Other author(s)
 First author
 Contributed most to the work including the
writing of the manuscript

• Experimental design
• Bulk of the experiments
• Data analysis
• Writing of the paper.
 Corresponding author
The corresponding author is in most cases the principal
investigator/ senior author
• Design of the work
• Supervises experiments
• Verify the results

• Data interpretation
• Takes primary responsibility for communication the
manuscript to journal, peer review, and publication
process. 
Gift (guest) and Ghost Authorship

Gift (guest) authorship: where someone is

added to the list of authors who has not been
involved in writing the paper.

Ghost authorship: where someone has been

involved in writing the paper but is not
included in the list of authors.
All authors contributed equally
 Manuscript with Decreased Author

• If a manuscript is submitted with a deceased

author listed, or an author passes away while
the manuscript is being peer reviewed, then a
footnote or similar should be added to the
published article to indicate this.

• Often journals use a dagger symbol (†) with a

footnote explaining the situation.
 Permission and article submission

• Obtained (written) permission to reuse any

figures, tables, and data sets
• Add all authors
• Declare conflicts of interest
• Only submit the paper to one journal at a time
• Provide all necessary information
Acknowledgements enable an author to thank
all those who have helped in carrying out the
research.
For instance:
• Technical/laboratory support
• Funding bodies
• Grant numbers
• Any associated fellowships
 Take clearance from ethical
committee before conducting
research on animals/birds
 Ethical editorial practices

• Editor(s) are expected to obtain a minimum of two peer

reviewers 

• Editor(s) should ensure absence of conflicts of interest (e.g.

recent collaboration with authors) for all peer reviewers

• Editorial decisions should be based on peer reviewer

comments that meet these criteria rather than on
recommendations made by short, superficial peer reviewer
reports which do not provide a rationale for the
recommendations.
• Editor(s) are expected to independently verify the contact

details of reviewers suggested by authors.

• Editor(s) are expected to respect and uphold the

confidential status of materials submitted to the Journal and

should ensure that material remains confidential while

under review.

• Financial and non-financial interests (including, but not

limited to personal relationships, professional interests or

personal beliefs) should be disclosed. 

Editors and peer reviewers should not ask
authors to add citations to their papers when
there is no strong scholarly rationale for doing
so.

Editors should mediate all exchanges between

authors and peer reviewers during the peer-
review process.
Thank You