Basic Course in Biomedical Research

Dr. Sirshendu Chaudhuri

ICMR – National Institute of Epidemiology, Chennai

Lecture - 23
Publication Ethics

Hello! I am Sirshendu from ICMR National institute of Epidemiology, I will talk to you on
Publication Ethics.

(Refer Slide Time: 00:20)

At the end of the session I expect the participants will be able to recognize various ethical
issues related to publication and make use of guidelines available from various national and
international organizations for publication ethics.
 (Refer Slide Time: 00:36)

Before I start my main slides, I want you to throw some highlights on two issues. Number
one is, if you remember the life cycle of a research, how it goes on? It starts with identify
data needs and then spell out research question, you formulate your study objectives, plan for
analysis, prepare data collection instruments and then you go, collect your data and analyze it
and then draw some conclusions and recommendations. ‘Publication’ exactly fits at the end of
this process of this life cycle.
(Refer Slide Time: 01:17)

The second one is why to publish a research finding? Now if I ask somebody usually I get the
answer is like ‘it helps in career progression, of course that is there, because you need
publication for your promotion or getting through an interview. But, if you think deeply, it
allows us to communicate our research findings to our stakeholders. And when I say
stakeholders this includes your peer group sitting across the world. In addition, the funding
agencies and the common people also would like to see your results and your research
findings. It identifies the research gaps and the future potential areas of research. Finally, it
increases the responsibility to influence your practice, because if it goes in a right direction,
then your paper matters, your research finding can influence the current practice available.
(Refer Slide Time: 02:18)

Unfortunately postgraduate medical research in India often lack of relevant research question,
may not address the local needs, or sometimes have inappropriate design and methods and
sometimes not accessible for others. Often you don’t publish it and so it is difficult to find out
the full report. But there are instances, the postgraduate research can contribute to clinical
practice and you can change your practice in field whichever you are working in.
(Refer Slide Time: 02:54)

With this note let’s come to the main slides of today topic. I have enlisted various
components of publication ethics, but make sure that this list is not final one. There are other
issues related to publication ethics and sometimes, some of these components are overlapping
with each other. So, they may not be the separate entity. So, let’s take a look at the
components, 1. Ethics review and breach of confidentiality, 2. Fabrication and Falsification,
3. Authorship, 4. Plagiarism, 5. Ethics related to submission and conflict of interest.
(Refer Slide Time: 03:37).

The first, Ethics review and Breach of confidentiality: When you are planning for a research
you must take the human and or animal ethics committee approval whichever is applicable as
per the national guidelines. Also, you must take the informed consent or age appropriate
accent whenever required. Because unless you have these two none of the journals are going
to accept your manuscript. If you are doing a trial, then you must register this trial with
clinical trial registry of India, and you make sure that you are not disclosing the data other
than people from your institution, or whoever have access to it based on your ethics
committee review. There is a common habit that without institutional permission some PGs
used to share their work or the research work with people from other institution working may
be the friend, may be with somebody else for data analysis. But you must remember that,
these are not a good practice and that these are unethical, because unless you have your
institutional permission, you cannot do this, you cannot disclose your information with
outsiders.
(Refer Slide Time: 04:53)

The second one, Fabrication and falsification. If the research results not generated from the
study, we call it as fabrication or if it is generated by manipulating data, we call it
falsification. These are extremely serious misconduct. If your research comes under any
scrutiny for any reason, to defend that you must preserve your data for sufficiently long
duration either in paper form or in electronic form.
(Refer Slide Time: 05:33)

I will share an example of falsification and fabrication with you. A final year postgraduate
student came to me requesting to analyse his thesis data. He also asked if I could make some
significant results, though they weren’t initially so. Participants! This is case I felt, the student
has done the study appropriately but failed to get a statistically significant result he was
expecting, so he wanted me to manipulate the data to get his desired findings. This is
falsification. Then, curiously I asked how he has collected the data. To my surprise, he
revealed that the data was taken from his senior’s thesis. Now the whole game changed, I
understood that he didn’t even do the study. Either copied completely from someone else or
generated the new data without even doing the study. This is fabrication. It is the
responsibility of all the postgraduate students to be faith full with the research works, while
the mentors and the guides should rigorously encourage the students to conduct the study as
per protocol. Make an analysis plan during the designing stage itself and maintain the same.
Further report the same results, whatever you find.
(Refer Slide Time: 06:55)

Falsification and Fabrication happens not only at PG level or at our country, it happens
everywhere across the world. But the most important issue what is there is breach of trust of
common people, because they trust you, you are going to deliver something they trust on it.
And also you are losing time and other resources which you cannot do and that is absolute
ethical breach.

(Refer Slide Time: 07:21)

The third one ‘Authorship’, First credit implies responsibility and accountability of your
published work. Each author should be clear about their responsibility, it is mandatory to
declare the contribution of each authors, and this is mandatory nowadays before you sur
manuscript to any journal. Decide on authorship on while writing protocol itself. That gives
clarity, and there is no ambiguity, when we do, when you do right at the beginning, the
international committee on medical journal editors recommend that the authorship should
based on four criteria.

(Refer Slide Time: 08:07)

The criteria are number one, substantial contributions to the conception or design of the
work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work AND drafting the
work or revising it critically for important intellectual content AND final approval of the
version to be published, AND finally agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work
in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are
appropriately investigated and resolved. For ex ample if your editor is asking for some
queries, make sure that the responsible person is accountable for answering for these
questions.
(Refer Slide Time: 09:01)

The fourth one ethics related to submission. There are issues with such things, for example
when one author is submitting the same manuscript simultaneously at different journals, we
call it as simultaneous submission. And that should not happen at any point of time, you
submit a manuscript to a journal, the journal gets back to you, the editor reply back to you,
and you see, what is the response from the editor. If it is accepted then fine, if it is not
accepted, they may ask a review for it again, review and submit. To all those things and then
you decide whether to be with that journal or choose a different journal. A duplicate
submission is defined submitting a new manuscript with same hypothesis, methods, data
discussion and conclusion which you have published earlier. You cannot do that. Also, it
happens that when you are writing your manuscript, you unnecessarily refers to your self -
written manuscript published earlier. That should not happen, you also be careful about
submitting your manuscript to a predatory journal. These predatory journals hardly peer
reviews any manuscript. A list of predatory journal has given by University Grant
Commission Consortium for Academic and Research Ethics (UGC). Follow those list to
choose your journal.
(Refer Slide Time: 10:32)

The fifth one, plagiarism is a very serious issue and I think the most commonly faced by
everybody of us. It is defined as use of previously published manuscript by someone for his
or her manuscript or unreferenced use of others published or unpublished ideas without
consent, credit or acknowledgement. As I said, if you again look back the definition carefully,
sometimes people think that is only about copying and pasting. It is not just copying and
pasting, in addition even the idea if you take from someone without acknowledging without
his or her consent that is a serious issue.
(Refer Slide Time: 11:15)

There are various types of plagiarism, like direct plagiarism when you copy from someone
else work or self- plagiarism when you duplicate your own previously published paper. And
there is something called redundant publication, when with the same objective with
hypotheses and research methodology and you are using it for publishing as different paper
that is called as ‘salami’ publications. It should not happen of course. You publish it as a
single paper.
(Refer Slide Time: 11:48)

To avoid plagiarism, avoid copy-pasting, in addition write the concept in own words, you
spend more time with your papers, with your references and literature. But don’t copy paste.
Acknowledge the original sources even it is unpublished work, cite the reference accurately,
you may use the reference manager for this, avoid writing articles of same type that is
‘salami’ publication. You can’t do that. And to avoid the plagiarism finally what you can do is
use anti-plagiarism tools like ‘URKUND’ ‘Ithenticate’ or ‘Turnitin’. But as per it should be as
per the university norms, university will have their own criteria and own software what they
are using or subscribing.
(Refer Slide Time: 12:47)

The last one ‘conflict of interest’, financial, personal, social and other interest that directly or
indirectly influence the conduct of the author with respect to the manuscript. For example, a
PG or researcher is conducting a drug trial which is funded by a pharmaceutical company, of
course the output can be influenced by the pharmaceutical company, it is not just financial
conflict of interest in addition they may change the output or outcome of interest. So, make
sure that you are identifying those conflict of interest what you have to do is you have to
disclose those conflict of interest during submission. The readers will decide the influence of
such conflict of interest on conclusion of the paper.
(Refer Slide Time: 13:41)

Consequences of any research misconduct can be dealt with seriously. Committee on

publication ethics describes the consequences, it depends on the type of misconduct which is
major minor, if it is found to be a major one then the author can be blacklisted by all the
member journal, also they can inform your institute and the institute can take necessary
action against it.
(Refer Slide Time: 14:07)

I have summarized the guidelines related to publication ethics for the academicians in Indian
institutions. What should be the index agencies, what should be the type of articles and the
authorship criteria, which is required for your promotion and career progression.

(Refer Slide Time: 14:31)

So, I have summarized the checklist for publication ethics, when you are planning for
publication this starts right at the beginning when you start your work. Make sure you are
getting the approval from your ethics committee and get the consent or accent, when you are
collecting data you make sure that the data accuracy you have maintained, you have not done
any falsification or fabrication of your data, to check plagiarism, you check with your
university or the institution what they are using, and you do accordingly. But make sure that
plagiarism is not there or as minimum as possible.

(Refer Slide Time: 15:14)

You make sure that you are submitting to only one journal at one point of time, according to
the ICMJE guidelines, you have maintained the authorship criteria and you have choose the
right authors. And finally you disclose all the conflict of interest that you have.

Thank you.