The document outlines critical aspects of publication ethics, including rules against plagiarism, data fabrication, and redundant submissions, to maintain the integrity of scientific research. It emphasizes the responsibility of authors, reviewers, and editors in adhering to ethical standards and disclosing conflicts of interest. Additionally, it addresses the threats posed by predatory publishers that exploit the publication process without ensuring quality or accountability.

1. Research Publication And Ethics
Course Code: CPE-RPE
Singh, Renu (PhD.)
Department of Biosciences (Biotechnology), JJT
University, Jhunjhunu
Rajasthan, India

2. Publication Ethics
• Publication ethics are rules of conduct generally
agreed upon when publishing results of scientific
research or other scholarly work.
• Generally, it is a standard that protects intellectual
property and forbids the re-publication of another's
work without proper credit.
• It also forbids the use of plagiarism of another's
efforts.
• Data and information published as original must, in
fact, be original.

3. Introduction
• Ethical standards for publication exist to
ensure high quality scientific publications,
public trust in scientific findings, and that
people receive credit for their ideas.
• It is important to avoid Data fabrication and
falsification.
• Data fabrication means the researcher did not
actually do the study, but made up data.

4. Plagiarism
• Taking the ideas and work of others without giving them credit is
unfair and dishonest.
• Copying even one sentence from someone else's manuscript, or even
one of your own that has previously been published, without proper
citation is considered plagiarism-use your own words instead.
• Multiple submissions: It is unethical to submit the same manuscript to
more than one journal at the same time.
• Redundant publications (or 'salami' publications): This means
publishing many very similar manuscripts based on the same
experiment.
• Improper author contribution or attribution: All listed authors must
have made a significant scientific contribution to the research in the
manuscript and approved all its claims.

5. Scientific Publication is a Team Effort
Author
Review
er
Journal
Reader

6. Duties
• Duties of the Publisher
• Duties of Editors
• Duties of Reviewers
• Duties of Authors:
– Reporting Standards.
– Data Access and Retention.
– Originality and Acknowledgement of Sources.
– Multiple, Redundant or Concurrent Publication.
– Confidentiality.
– Authorship of the Paper.
– Hazards and Human or Animal Subjects.
– Declaration of Competing Interests.
– Notification of Fundamental Errors.
– Image Integrity.
– Clinical Trial Transparency.

7. The Role of COPE and WAME in Research and
Publication Ethics
• COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) was established as
a registered charity in the United Kingdom in October 2007.
• COPE provides advice to editors and publishers on all
aspects of publication ethics and, in particular, how to
handle cases of research and publication misconduct.
• Facilitate worldwide cooperation and communication
among editors of peer-reviewed medical journals; also
promote to improve editorial standards, to promote
professionalism in publicaton editing through education,
self-criticism and self-regulation and to encourage research
on the principles and practice of medical editing.

8. Standard publication ethics, challenges and
responsibility on stakeholders
• Ethics and Professionalism.
• Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing.
• Professionalism Code of Conduct for Medical Journal Editors.
• Publication Ethics Policies for Medical Journals.
• The Relationship Between Journal Editors-in-Chief and Authors and
Authorship.
• Ghost Writing Initiated by Commercial Companies.
• Identifying Predatory or Pseudo-Journals
• Prevent Peer Review Manipulation by Authors.
• Impact Factor
• Conflicts of Interest

9. Conflict of interest (COI)
• COI exist when there is a divergence between an individual‘s private interests
(competing interests) and his or her responsibilities to scientific and publishing activities
such that a reasonable observer might wonder if the individual‘s behavior or judgment
was motivated by considerations of his or her competing interests.
• A conflict of interest can occur when you (or your employer or sponsor have a financial,
commercial, legal, or professional relationship with other organizations, or with the
people working with them, that could influence your research.
• Full disclosure is required when you submit your paper to a journal..
• The journal editor will firstly use this information to inform his or her editorial decisions.
They may then publish such disclosures to assist readers in evaluating the article. Or,
instead, the editor may decide not to publish your article on the basis of any declared
conflict.
• You can declare the conflict of interest on your cover letter or on the manuscript
submission form in the journal‘s online peer-review system.
• Personal conflicts of interest or Potential conflicts of interest in relation to your
submitted manuscript could include:

10. • Consultancies
• Employment
• Advocacy groups
• Grants Fees and honoraria
• Patents
• Royalties
• If necessary, please describe any potential conflicts of interest in a covering
letter.
• In addition, you should fully acknowledge all funding sources supporting the
work.
• Institutional conflicts of interest
• Disclosure statement you should also include a relevant disclosure statement
with the text of your article.
• You can do this in conjunction with any acknowledgments and details of funders.

11. Publication Misconduct
• According to the definition of publication misconduct need to stop with appropriate policies and standards for
publication misconduct, following malpractices of publication misconduct as below:
• Plagiarism: Plagiarism is the appropriation of another person's thoughts, ideas, data, figures, research methods,
or words without giving appropriate credit, or the over-citation of another person's published work.
• Fabrication: Fabrication is the practice of making up data or results without having performed relevant
research.
• Falsification: Falsification is the practice of changing data or results intentionally such that misleading
conclusion is drawn.
• Inappropriate Authorship: Authorship is not appropriately assigned based on the author's contributions.
• Duplicate submission/multiple submissions: refers to practice of submitting the same manuscript or several
manuscripts with minor differences (e.g., differences only in title, keywords, abstract, author order, author
affiliations, or a small amount of text) to two or more journals at the same time, or submitting to another
journal within an agreed or stipulated period.
• Overlapping publication: Overlapping publication refers to the practice of publishing a paper overlaps
substantially with one already published.
• Salami publications: Salami publication refers to the practice of slicing data from a large study, could have been
reported in a single paper, into different pieces and publishing them in two or more articles, all of which cover
the same population, methods, and question.
• Inappropriate Authorship: Authorship is not appropriately assigned based on the author's contributions.

12. Problem that leads to unethical behavior and
vice versa
• Misappropriation of Ideas – taking the intellectual property of others, perhaps
as a result of reviewing someone else‘s article or manuscript, or grant
application and proceeding with the idea as your own.
• Plagiarism – utilizing someone else‘s words, published work, research processes,
or results without giving appropriate credit via full citation.
• Self-plagiarism – recycling or re-using your own work without appropriate
disclosure and/or citation.
• Impropriety of Authorship – claiming undeserved authorship on your own
behalf, excluding material contributors from co-authorship, including non-
contributors as authors, or submitting multi-author papers to journals without
the consensus of all named authors.
• Failure to Comply with Legislative and Regulatory Requirements – willful
violations of rules concerning the safe use of chemicals, care of human and
animal test subjects, inappropriate use of investigative drugs or equipment, and
inappropriate use of research funds.

13. • Violation of Generally Accepted Research Practices – this can include the proposal of the
research study, manipulation of experiments to generate preferred results, deceptive
statistical or analytical practices to generate preferred results, or improper reporting of
results to present a misleading outcome.
• Falsification of Data – rather than manipulate the experiments or the data to generate
preferred results, this transgression simply fabricates the data entirely.
• Failure to Support Validation of Your Research – by refusing to supply complete datasets
or research material needed to facilitate validation of your results through a replication
study.
• Failure to Respond to Known Cases of Unsuccessful Validation Attempts – published
research that is found to be flawed should be retracted from the journal that published it.
• Inappropriate Behavior in Relation to Suspected Misconduct – failure to cooperate with
any claims of misconduct made against you, failure to report known or suspected
misconduct, destruction of any evidence related to any claim of misconduct, retaliation
against any persons involved in a claim of misconduct, knowingly making false claims of
misconduct.

14. Violation of publication ethics, authorship
and contributor-ship
• Major problems with respect to publication ethics were plagiarism
and multiple submissions in the three journals. When the authors
were challenged, many of them did not reply, and wrote back saying
that they would like to withdraw the manuscript, claimed ignorance.
• Authors are generally defined as persons who have contributed
sufficiently to a scientific report to be listed on the byline of the
published report. Many journals provide guidelines on authorship in
their instructions for authors. Some professional and research
funding organizations and academic institutions also provide such
guidance.
• Principles related to authorship with general consensus include the
following:

15. • Identification of authors and other contributors is the responsibility of the people who did the work (the
researchers) not the people who publish the work (editors, publishers). Researchers should determine
which individuals have contributed sufficiently to the work to warrant identification as an author.
• Individuals who contributed to the work but whose contributions were not of sufficient magnitude to
warrant authorship should be identified by name in an acknowledgments section.
• All individuals who qualify for authorship or acknowledgment should be identified. Conversely, every
person identified as an author or acknowledged contributor should qualify for these roles.
• Individuals listed as authors should review and approve the manuscript before publication.
• Editors should require authors and those acknowledged to identify their contributions to the work and
make this information available to readers.
• The ultimate reason for identification of authors and other contributors is to establish accountability for
the reported work.
• Guest authorship: Guest authorship has been defined as authorship based solely on an expectation that
inclusion of a particular name will improve the chances that the study will be published or increase the
perceived status of the publication. The ―guest‖ author makes no discernible contributions to the study,
so this person meets none of the criteria for authorship.
• Honorary or gift authorship: Honorary or gift authorship has been defined as authorship based solely on a
tenuous affiliation with a study. A salient example would be ―authorship‖ based on one‘s position as the
head of a department in which the study took place
Principles related to authorship with general
consensus include the following

16. Identification of publication misconduct,
complaint and appeals
• Process to Handle Author Misconduct
Complaints should be made in confidence to
the editor or editorial office, rather than
directly to the author or in the public domain,
and should be managed in confidence until
they are resolved. Prior to Publication Review
may raise a concern about a submitted
manuscript during the course of the review
process:

17. • Where appropriate, the reviewer should be asked for information
to substantiate their concern (e.g. suspicious data in the paper). 
Contact the author should to raise the concern and, if appropriate,
ask for clarification. Avoid accusatory or defamatory language;
stick to factual statements, presenting any available evidence. 
The review process should be put on hold until the matter is
resolved. If the author provides a satisfactory explanation then

the review process can proceed, perhaps following changes by the
author. If the author acknowledges misconduct or is unable to

provide a satisfactory explanation then the submission should be
rejected. The reviewer who raised the complaint should be told

of the outcome once the matter is resolved.

18. Safeguarding against 'Fake reviewers'
• Some journals give authors the option to suggest potential
reviewers for the peer review process. This can help to identify
qualified reviewers and/or broaden a journal's reviewer pool.
• Editors should take care to check the qualifications of all reviewers
before issuing an invitation to review.
• But, it is especially important to verify the qualifications of
potential reviewers who have been recommended by authors.
• Editors should request an ORCiD (an online digital identifier that
distinguishes researchers from one another) from reviewers
whenever possible.
• Avoid using reviewers whose background and institutional
affiliation cannot be determined by a simple web search.

19. 3.7 Predatory publisher and Journal
• A predatory publisher is an opportunistic publishing venue that exploits the academic
need to publish but offers little reward for those using their services.
• The academic "publish or perish" scenario combined with the relative ease of website
creation has inadvertently created a market ripe for the exploitation of academic
authors.
• Predatory publishing sometimes called write only publishing or deceptive publishing.
• Some publishers are predatory on purpose, while others may make mistakes due to
neglect, mismanagement, or inexperience.
• While the motivations and methods vary predatory publishers have common
characteristics:
– Their primary goal is to make money (i.e. there will be fees).
– They do not care about the quality of the work published (i.e. no or little editing or peer-
review).
– They make false claims or promises (i.e. claims of impact factors and indexing).
– They engage in unethical business practices (i.e. not as advertised).
– They fail to follow accepted standards or best practices of scholarly publishing (various).

20. Dangers of publishing with a predatory
publisher
• Your work may be subject to sub-par peer-review: The peer-review system isn't
perfect but there is general consensus that papers that undergo peerreview are
better for it.
• If you plan to seek promotionor tenure you want to make sure you are publishing in
a place that values your work and is willing to devote time and resources to
improving it.
• Your work could disappear: One of the advantages of publishing with a responsible
publisher is that they make commitments to preserve your work.
• Opportunists looking to make a quick buck are not going to care if your paper is still
available in 5 years, much less tomorrow.
• Your work will be hard to find: Some predatory publishers advertise that they are
included in well-known databases like Web of Science or Scopus when they are not.
• Since, including the two mentioned, this is easy to check.
• While most predatory journals will probably be covered by Google Scholar your
work won't be as visible if it's missing from other research databases.