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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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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).

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

One of the many pitfalls potentially encountered by a young researcher is the issue of authorship on publications. How can this be managed?

We will look at some of the causes of article retractions, how you can prevent retractions and provide useful resources for further information.

Self-plagiarism is a worry to many authors and researchers. Often, they are unsure what self-plagiarism is or how to avoid it.

Duplicate submission of papers to academic journals is actively discouraged by journals and publishers. Many publishers have strict policies about duplicate submission, and the reuse of research data. 

Although plagiarism can refer to the intentional copying of others’ work, it is most often committed accidentally, as a result of incorrect referencing or citation.  Alternatively, a lack of awareness of previous studies can lead to plagiarism, and a failure even to reference one’s own work will cause problems of copyright.

Carrying out research studies and then writing up the research results often involve many participants. Some (or all) of these may be considered to be ‘authors’ and appear in the list of authors connected with the final paper, but it is important to think about who actually constitutes an ‘author’.

Retraction of published scientific articles is not a new phenomenon, but 2015 saw some notable examples affecting even large, high-profile publishers.