Research and Publication Ethics

Introduction to philosophy: definition; nature & scope; concept; branches

Ethics: definition; moral philosophy; nature of moral judgements & reactions

Ethics with respect to science & research, group discussion on subject specific ethical issues

Intellectual honesty & research integrity

Scientific misconducts: falsification, fabrication, & plagiarism (FPP), group discussion on subject specific FPP issues

Redundant publications: duplicate & overlapping publications, salami slicing

Selective reporting & misrepresentation of data     

Publication ethics: definition, introduction & importance

Best practices/standard setting initiative & guidelines: COPE, WAME etc

Conflicts of interest, group discussions on conflicts of interest

Publication misconducts: definition, concept, problems that lead to unethical behaviour & vice versa, types

Violation of publication ethics, authorship & contributor-ship, group discussion on subject specific authorship issues 

Identification of publication misconduct, complaints & appeals, group discussion on examples and fraud from India & abroad. Predatory Publishers & journals

Open access publications & initiatives SHERPA/RoMEO online resource to check publisher copyright & self-archiving policies

Journal finder/journal suggestion tools viz. JANE, Elsevier Journal Finder, Springer Journal Suggester etc.

Software tools developed by SPPU to identify predatory publications

Software tools: use of plagiarism software like Turnitin, Urkund, and other open source software tools

Databases & Research Metrics Databases (3 hrs)

Indexing databases

Citation databases: Web of Science, Scopus, etc.

Research Metrics (3 hrs)

Impact Factor of journal as per Journal Citation Report, SNIP, SJR, IPP, Cite Score

Metrics: h-index, g index, i10 index, altmetrics