Research Ethics

 

Research Ethics.

The word `Ethics’ is derived from the Greek word `ethos’ which means customs, usages or habits. Ethics is also called as Moral Philosophy. The word ‘moral’ is derived from the Latin word `mores’ which also means customs, usages or habits. Thus literally, Ethics is the science of customs or collective habits of men. Any custom has a reference to the community. Customs are the ways of acting, approved by the group. The root word ‘ETHOS’ indicates that this branch of philosophy was originated in Greece and the credit goes to Aristotle.

Research Ethics is a set of guidelines that help researchers to conduct research successfully. The major principals revolve around the research process, data collection, interpretation of data, report publication, thesis, confidentiality, obfuscation and plagiarism.

General Ethical Issues:

There are three 3 main issues:

1.    Ethical issues related to the research process

2.    Ethical issues related to participant or researcher

3.     Ethical issues related to sponsoring institution

 

Privacy and confidentiality

Ø Privacy is the right of an individual to control or influence the information that can be collected and stored and by whom and to whom that information may be disclosed or shared.

Ø The researcher should safeguard the confidentiality of research related data of participants and the community.

 

Conflict of interest:

 

Ø Conflict of interest (COI) is a set of conditions where professional judgement concerning a primary interest such as participant’s welfare or the validity of research tends to be unduly influenced by a secondary interest, financial or non-financial (personal, academic or political).

Ø  Research institutions must develop and implement policies and procedures to identify, mitigate conflicts of interest and educate their staff about such conflicts & Researchers must ensure that the documents submitted to the EC include disclosure of interests that may affect the research.

 

Research misconduct and policies for handling misconduct-   

Ø Research misconduct means fabrication, falsification or plagiarism (FFP) in proposing, performing or reviewing research or in reporting research.

Ø The fabrication is making up data or results and recording or reporting them without visiting the field area.

Ø  The falsification is manipulation research materials equipment or processes or changing or omitting data or result such that the research is not accurately represented in

Ø The plagiarism is the appropriation of another person’s idea, processes result or words without giving due credit. Another type of plagiarism is self-plagiarism when copying or reuse of one’s own research but both type of plagiarism is considered to be an unacceptable practice

 

What is Plagiarism in Research?

•        Plagiarism means using someone else’s words or ideas without properly crediting the original author.

•        Considered as a serious academic and intellectual offense, plagiarism can result in highly negative consequences such as paper retractions and loss of author credibility and reputation. It is currently a grave problem in academic publishing and a major reason for paper retractions.

Important Keys:

•        When we have to write an academic paper, we should avoid plagiarism

•        We may Follow four steps to ensure our paper is free from plagiarism:

•        Follow the quotation “Honesty is the best policy” in our practical life.

•        Believe in positivity.

•        Theoretical and Experimental work.

Four steps to ensure our paper is free from plagiarism:

•        Keep track of the sources 

•        Paraphrase or quote 

•        Cite the original source

•        Use a plagiarism checker

 

Rules by UGC:

1.    The UGC has prepared the Approved List of Journals that would be considered for the purpose of Career Advancement Scheme (CAS) and Direct Recruitment of Teachers and other academic staff as required under the UGC (Minimum Qualifications for Appointment of Teachers and other Academic Staff in Universities and Colleges) Regulation, 2016.

2.    Credibility of Research Publications is extremely important because it has a direct impact upon the individual, institutional and National image. With an aim to refine and strengthen the University Grants Commission (UGC) approved a list of journals, the UGC has issued a Public Notice dated 28th November 2018, and decided to establish a Consortium for Academic and Research Ethics (CARE).

3.    UGC provided URKUND software to libraries of many universities in the country to check plagiarism.

Questions

1.    Good ‘research ethics’ means (1) Not disclosing the holdings of shares/stocks in a company that sponsors your research. (2) Assigning a particular research problem to one Ph.D./research student only. (3) Discussing with your colleagues’ confidential data from a research paper that you are reviewing for an academic journal. (4) Submitting the same research manuscript for publishing in more than one journal.                                            

2.    From the following list of statements identify the set which has negative implications for ‘research ethics’ :  (i) A researcher critically looks at the findings of another research.  (ii) Related studies are cited without proper references.  (iii) Research findings are made the basis for policy making.  (iv) Conduct of practitioner is screened in terms of reported research evidences.  (v) A research study is replicated with a view to verify the evidences from other researches.  (vi) Both policy making and policy implementing processes are regulated in terms of preliminary studies.   Codes :  (1) (i), (ii) and (iii) (2) (ii), (iii) and (iv)  (3) (ii), (iv) and (vi) (4) (i), (iii) and (v)