Company News, Training Services and Author Publication Tips

When you submit your paper to a journal for consideration, you want to be sure that the journal follows the appropriate ethical guidelines. You want to know that the editors will act in an ethical way, that the peer-review process follows appropriate standards, and that the journal has integrity.

Module 3 discusses what plagiarism is and how to avoid it in your academic work. It elaborates on what is considered as direct plagiarism, self-plagiarism, image plagiarism and accidental plagiarism.

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Module 4 answers very important questions on authorship. It talks about the types of authorship, order of authorship and what should your acknowledgements include.

Module 2 talks about why ethical standards for publication exists. It discusses about COPE, and details out publication ethics for Authors, Journal Editors and Peer Reviewers. 

Tune in to our bitesize webinar to learn more.

When you are conducting research there are a number of ethical principles that should be taken into account, especially if your research involves human subjects. One basic principle all researchers should follow is ‘do no harm’.

This module explains what ethical research is and how to conduct ethical research. Here we also discuss the elements of an IRB Proposal and the questions that guide the review process.

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When you use other people’s ideas, writing, or work, and represent these as your own without giving the original authors proper credit, this is plagiarism. If you work with students, teaching or mentoring, you have likely warned them against the consequences of plagiarism. Many institutions have detailed policies about plagiarism, and clearly articulate the consequences of this for students, faculty and staff.

Retraction is removing an article from the scientific record at any point after its publication. Retraction is distinct from withdrawal, which occurs prior to publication. Also, in contrast to withdrawal, retractions are visible to the scientific community, as the original papers are typically preserved as part of the publication record.

There are a number of different topics that come under the heading ‘publication ethics’, all of which have to do with how researchers present their work to the wider scientific community. In this post, we will talk about a number of behaviors related to publication ethics.

What is plagiarism?

Most researchers are already familiar with the concept of plagiarism, which is presenting someone else’s intellectual property – text, images, ideas, etc. – as your own.

Re-using an image from an earlier paper is re-publishing something that you, or another author, has previously used in an earlier article. This is possible, but requires permission in some form or another.

'Gift authorship’ is one of the most common kinds of unethical behaviour seen in academic publishing. In this practice, an author is added to a paper when they have not actually made a contribution to the work, perhaps to reward a collaborator, return a favour, or for some other gain. 

It is important to acknowledge the people involved in compiling and writing your research. Many journals now require authors to acknowledge not only the authors who were involved in writing up the research, but also any individuals who contributed to the research in some way. These are know as authorship and contributorship. 

Getting someone else to write peer reviews for you is unethical.

As so many academics can tell you, nothing is more frustrating than working for months on a paper and then receiving an almost immediate rejection from your target journal. Data has been collated by major publishing companies that reveals some of the main reasons academic research papers get rejected by handling editors without peer review.

The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) has highlighted the issue of extreme self-citation as one key form of citation manipulation that journals, editors, and publishers should address.

Early in your academic career the best publishing strategy to adopt is one that ensures you develop a reputation as a reliable and effective researcher.

One of the trickiest and most controversial aspects of academic publishing is deciding ‘who did what’ during research article writing.

Re-using images from published papers, even your own, can be problematic and is usually not possible without permission (re-use without citation and/or permission is a form of plagiarism).

Accurate citation is so important: ensure you’ve actually read a paper before citing it in your own work and be honest with your references.