Course Name : Research and Publication Ethics (RPE)

Course Code : RPE 601

Credits : 2
L T P : 1-0-2

Course Objectives:
To create awareness of research and publication ethics.
To give the students hand on experience in open-access publishing, software tools, databases, and research
metrics.
Total No. of Lectures – 10
No. of No. of
Lecture wise breakup
Lectures Hours
Ethics in Research (2) 2
Ethics: definition, moral philosophy, nature of moral judgments and reactions, need
for ethics
01
Ethical considerations and regulation agencies
Ethics with respect to science and research, intellectual honesty and research
integrity
Scientific & Ethical Conduct (2) 2
Scientific misconducts: Falsification, Fabrication, and Plagiarism (FFP)
02 Redundant publications: duplicate and overlapping publications, salami slicing
Selective reporting and misrepresentation of data
Case studies
Ethics in Publication (6) 6
Publication Ethics: definition, introduction, and importance
Publication Regulations: Best practices/ standards setting initiatives and guidelines
such as COPE, WAME, etc.
Conflict of interest
03
Publication misconduct: definition, concept, problems which lead to unethical
behavior and vice-versa, types
Violation of publication ethics, authorship, and contribution-ship
Identification of publication misconduct, complaints, and appeals
Predatory publishers and journals
Total No. of Practicals – 10
(Each practical session being of 2 hours each)
No. of No. of
Practical wise breakup
Practicals Hours
Open-Access Publishing (3) 6
Open-access publications and initiatives
SHERPA/ RoMEO - an online resource to check publisher copyright and self-
04 archiving policies Software tool to identify predatory publications developed by
SPPU
Journal finder/ Journal suggestion tools viz. JANE, Elsevier Journal Finder,
Springer Journal Suggester, etc.
Publication Misconduct (3) 6
A. Group discussion
Subject specific ethical issues, FFP, authorship
Conflicts of interest
05
Complaints and appeals: examples and fraud from India and abroad
B. Software Tools
Use of Plagiarism Software like Turnitin, Urkund, and other open-source
software tools
06 Databases and Research Metrics (4) 8
A. Databases
Indexing databases
Citation databases: Web of Science, Scopus, etc.
B. Research Metrics
 Impact factor of a journal as per journal citation report, SNIP, SJR, IPP, Cite
Score
Metrics: h-index, g index, i10-index, altmetrics

Course Outcomes:
1 The students will learn how to conduct research and publication in an ethical manner.
The students will become familiar with open-access publishing, software tools, databases, and research
2
metrics.

Suggested Books:
S.No Year of Publication/
Name of Book/ Authors/ Publisher
. Reprint
1 Gregory, I.Ethics in Research. London: Continuum. 2003
Oliver, P. The Students’ Guide to Research Ethics. 2nd ed. Berkshire: Open 2010
2
University Press.
Mc Lafollette. Stealing into Print – Fraud, Plagiarism & Misconduct in 1996
3
Scientific Publishing. California: University of California Press.
4 Loue, Sana. Textbook of Research Ethics. Springer. 2002
Israel, Mark. Research Ethics and Integrity for Social Scientists.London: 2014
5
Sage.
6 Darr, Terry. Combating Plagiarism. ABC-CLIO. 2019
Biagioli, Mario and Lippman, Alexandra.Gaming the Metrics.Massachusetts: 2020
7
MIT Press.