Ethics in Scientific Publications

Abstract

Ethical scientific publication is of growing importance due to an array of reasons. The responsibilities of a researcher have grown manifold with robust laws to protect human rights from spurious research, and rising awareness of ethics in conceiving, conducting and reporting research. To report a good research, an author must be aware of ethical publication practices. In this paper, we review the ethical issues involved with scientific publication. Literature regarding ethical publication was reviewed in leading search engine PubMed with the following search terms and their combinations: ethics, publication, scientific publication. Twenty-six papers were selected based on their relevancy. There is a need to raise awareness about the ethical issues in publishing especially at a student level in academics so that as they become researchers they already are aware of publication ethics. The University Grants Commission has developed a course in this regard which should be well promoted and compulsory since graduate studies. This paper highlights the nuances of ethical publishing that need to be taken care of such as data fabrication, plagiarism, conflict of interest and such commonly mistaken aspects that need to be addressed seriously while reporting research.