Research and Publication Ethics (RPE)

Week

Module Name

Week 1

Module 1: Philosophy And Ethics

• Introduction to philosophy- scope, concept, branches.

• Ethics: definition-moral philosophy,

• nature of moral judgments

Week 2

Module 2: Scientific Conduct

• Ethics with respect to science and research; Intellectual honesty and research integrity

• Scientific misconducts: Falsification- Fabrication, and Plagiarism -Redundant publications

• Selective reporting and misrepresentation of data

Week 3

Module 3: Publication Ethics

• Publication ethics: definition, introduction and importance

• Best practices/ standards setting initiatives and guidelines: COPE, WAME etc.

• Publication misconduct: definition, concept, problems etc.

• Violation of publication ethics, authorship and contributorship; Identification of publication misconduct, complaints and appeals

• Predatory publishers and journals

Week 4

Module 4: Open Access Publishing

• Open access publications and initiatives

• OER- Open licenses- types & uses

• SHERPA/ ROMEO online resource to check publisher copyright & self- archiving policies etc.

Week 5

Module 5: Publication Misconduct

• Subject-specific issues, FFP, authorship

• Conflicts of interest

• Complaints and appeals: examples and fraud from India and abroad

• Software tools :Introduction- Turnitin, Urkund and other open source software tools

Week 6

Module 6: Databases and Research Metrics

• Databases-Indexing databases

• Citation databases: Web of Science, Scopus, etc.

• Research Metrics-Impact Factor of journal as per Journal Citation Report, SNIP, SJR, IPP, Cite Score

• Metrics: h-index, g index, etc.