Mr. Vijayakumar G gave a seminar on research misconduct. He defined research misconduct as intentional deviations from ethical research practices, such as fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in conducting, planning, or reporting research. He discussed the different types of research misconduct including fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, improper authorship, conflicts of interest, and failure to follow approvals. He also discussed reasons for research misconduct like career pressures, personal psychology, lack of training, insufficient supervision, and inadequate knowledge. Finally, he outlined the consequences of research misconduct which can include damage to reputation, loss of funding, retraction of papers, job loss, and legal actions.

1. Seminar by-
Mr. Vijayakumar G.

2.  Research misconduct or scientific misconduct refers to actions and behaviors by
researchers that fail to honor the integrity of research. Research misconduct is any
intentional deviation from ethical research practices
 The Office of Research Integrity defines research misconduct as the falsification,
fabrication or plagiarism in conducting, planning, reporting or reviewing research.

3. TYPES OF RESEARCH
MISCONDUCT
• Fabrication: This refers to the practice of making up data without having done the required
research. Research misconduct covers not only the act of fabrication, but also the sharing,
discussing, or publishing of this fabricated data or results.
• Falsification: This type of scientific misconduct involves the wilful manipulation of data, materials,
processes, or equipment to arrive at a predefined conclusion. One such example would be
selectively omitting or changing data, which results in the erroneous representation of research
results.
• Plagiarism: This is one of the most common types of scientific misconduct, and involves using
another person’s ideas, content, writing, processes, or results without giving due credit. This also
includes self-plagiarism, which occurs when you replicate your own writings or ideas from
previously published research without providing proper credit.
• Authorship: This type of scientific misconduct in research includes attempts to assign false
authorships without adequate contribution to research, mentioning authors without their consent, or
failing to include authors who are original contributors. Naming authors in the wrong order or
incorrectly is also considered unethical.
• Conflicts of interest: This can be classified under general scientific misconduct and involves lapses
by researchers in declaring any conflict of interests in their research work. These conflicts of interest
may be financial, personal, and professional and need to be reported appropriately to avoid any
ethical issues.
• Approvals: One of the most important aspect of research that involves human or animal subjects is
adhering to all the ethical approvals and legal guidelines. Non-compliance with this ethical mandate

4. REASONS FOR RESEARCH
MISCONDUCT
 Let us look at 5 reasons for committing research misconduct.
• Career pressures: An important factor often associated with
research misconduct is the undue pressure researchers face.
They need to conduct original research in a fast-paced
environment, publish frequently in peer reviewed journals, and
procure funding for research projects to advance their research
career. This along with the need to juggle multiple responsibilities
against tight deadlines create undue stress to succeed at any
cost, leading to a lack of care or even deliberate research
misconduct.
• Researcher’s personal psychology: Some researchers may be
overly driven by a desire to quickly attain a strong professional
reputation or even financial gains, which could push them to
research misconduct.
• Lack of appropriate training and skills: The lack of training on
the best practices and ethical guidelines to be followed as
researchers is another reason for research misconduct. Poor
awareness and understanding on these issues often lead to
unethical conduct in research.
• Insufficient supervision or mentoring: Related to the point
above, this relates to situations where researchers, especially
early career researchers, fail to receive sufficient and appropriate
support from immediate supervisors or from their affiliated
institution. A lack of oversight and guidance may knowingly or
unknowingly lead to research misconduct.
• Inadequate knowledge: Scientific misconduct can occur if the
researcher does not have sufficient knowledge of the topic/subject
or on research best practices. Carelessness when conducting
research and reporting it are also considered research

5. CONSEQUENCES OF RESEARCH
MISCONDUCT
 These may involve damage to a researcher’s reputation, loss of funding, retraction of
published papers, and academic sanctions. Additionally, it undermines scientific integrity,
erodes public trust, and hampers the advancement of knowledge. Institutions may conduct
investigations, resulting in job loss and legal actions. It could mean the end to career as a
researcher. He may be dismissed and rejected. Academic achievement may be taken away.
It means a huge loss of fund, time, reputation to the editor and reviewer as well as the
researcher.
 Nowadays, due to the excess usage of the internet, schools’ colleges and universities are
taking plagiarism very seriously. Many universities have a committee for this very specific
purpose. Overall, research misconduct has far-reaching negative impacts on individuals,
institutions, and the scientific community as a whole.
UGC has guidelines for submitting the Ph.D. thesis report is below:-
 Similarities up to 10%.- excluded (well done)
 Similarities between 10% to 40% - shall be asked to submit a revised script within a stipulated
time period not exceeding 6 months.
 Similarities above 40% and below 60%- shall be asked to submit a revised script after a time
period of one year but not exceeding eighteen months.

7. ALARMING RISE OF SCIENTIFIC MISCONDUCT RECORDED IN INDIA |
RETRACTIONS FROM INDIA HAVE INCREASED 2.5 TIMES BETWEEN 2020 AND 2022 OVER THE
NUMBER RECORDED BETWEEN 2017 AND 2019
(PUBLISHED IN “THE HINDU” NEWS PAPER ON
NOVEMBER 16, 2023 09:29 AM | UPDATED NOVEMBER 17, 2023 06:42 PM IST
ACHAL AGRAWAL

8. Authorship
 A research generally has multiple authors, a research student,
investigators and staff those are involved in the project. While
converting the research findings into the manuscript, all the authors and
contributors must be listed properly.
 Some researchers often try to reduce the number of authors to increase
the effectiveness of contribution of each other. While some of them add
their spouse or partners names to return a favor of them even though
they haven’t contributed to corresponding study.
 One of the major aspect of assigning authorship is the order in which
authors are listed.
 The first author is usually the one who does most of the work
regarding the design, conduction the experiment, collecting the critical
data.
 While the middle author (can be 2 or more authors) (conducted
some research and helped in analysis),
 while the last author is the investigator who has studied the work
along with the first author and has conceptualized the research.

9. CONTRIBUTOR SHIP
 Contributors can be classified as intellectual (one who gives ideas or
helps in writing), practical (who helps in performing experimental) and
financial (who helps in funding the research). Any researcher, who
doesn’t fall into all the criteria for authorship will be listed as a
contributor.
 A person who has helped only in some part of the work can’t be listed
as author but their contributions must be mentioned in
acknowledgements of the articles. An acknowledgment should
be provided for writing, assistance, editing and proofreading.

11.  Types of publication misconduct | SAGE India (sagepub.com), Accessed date : 13 Dec-2023
 Definition of Research Misconduct | ORI - The Office of Research Integrity (hhs.gov)
Accessed date : 13 Dec-2023
 Research misconduct: Reasons and types of research misconduct - | Researcher.Life
Accessed date: 13 Dec-2023
 Alarming rise of scientific misconduct recorded in India | Data - The Hindu Accessed date:
13 Dec-2023
 Violation of publication ethics.pptx (slideshare.net) Accessed date: Dec-2023
 Violation of Publication Ethics, Authorship and Contributorship: Rules | PDF (scribd.com)
Accessed date: 14 Dec-2023