Introduction to Academic Integrity and Research Ethics

About

Academic integrity and research ethics are often interchangeable and are closely linked to each other. Academic integrity is all about owning and abiding of honesty, trust, fairness, respect, and responsibility by the academic community. These are in fact part of the 18 different pillars of ethical principles (which are summarised in figure 1), thereby integrity may be considered as part of ethics. In fact, ethics underpins everything we do, may this be linked to our personal behaviour, family, societal or communal interactions, research conduct and knowledge dissemination. As an academic community, teaching and learning should not only link to enhancing professional knowledge, its application and innovation but it also needs to provide a platform to practice ethics and behave with integrity. When conducting academic research (regardless of the type of research or the stage), it is important to establish basic research ethics to make sure it is conducted appropriately and with integrity.

Figure 1: The 18 main pillars of ethics and ethical behaviour

Academic Integrity

Academic community thrives by working on a problem sets, investigations (laboratory or otherwise) and write reports, projects, or papers. Academics are expected to learn from other sources and use that knowledge to develop new ideas/innovative approaches but remembering to credit the original articles or those who have originally provided this information - This is in fact academic integrity. As Albert Einstein once questioned “if we know what we are doing, it wouldn’t be called research – Would it?” Most research are considered as ‘secondary’ which mean, extending or following up other people’s research. In some cases, it can also be primary or original research in which a novel idea is explored as research. In either case, research should be initiated with an original hypothesis that can be tested for its validity. However, should the data produced by the research disprove the hypothesis, the findings must be truthfully, objectively, and fairly reported and disseminated without twisting the data set. A hypothesis is not a truth, and the research is carried out to test the hypothesis. The evidence from the research should not be misrepresented or downgraded. The evidence can be critically analysed in relation to previously published articles by which the reliability or validity of that evidence can be questioned. However, the conclusions can only be made based on the available data (not what was originally expected – i.e., obtained evidence is more valuable than expected outcomes). In addition, information that were used to justify your critical analysis or conclusions must be properly acknowledged. Giving due credit to other people’s ideas, information, and their work. Using other’s work includes (although not exclusive),

Replicating an author’s research methodology,
Using an interesting quote
Outlining the history of an idea or concept,
Including a photograph, tables, flow charts or other image.
Sharing others unwritten ideas etc.

Researchers owing integrity and ethics will give due credit to the people who came up with these things.

Pursuing an academic career with honesty, responsibility, and accountability.

Academia has established a proud tradition of maintaining high academic integrity standards by (a) Presenting truthful and accurate data or facts and research information in academic matters including assignments, (b) completing exams and other academic assignments in an honest way, (c) properly acknowledging extra help obtained from persons, books, articles and other sources, and avoid plagiarism, unauthorized collaboration, or any other forms of cheating, by properly incorporating these sources.

Failing to maintain above would results in “academic misconduct/offenses”. An academic offense has been committed when a person tries to gain improper advantage for themselves by breaking, or not following, the academic regulations. In fact, there are different types of academic offenses. These include (but not exclusive) the following:

Students cheating in class, assignments, and exams.
Trying to bribe to achieve academic advantage.
Misrepresenting facts, figures, data, or individuals
Fabricating results, information, or data
Conspiring to deceive in assignments and examinations.
Colluding with other author/student(s) with the aim to cheat.
Duplicating one’s own previous submissions with the intention to cheat
Improper use of online resources
Plagiarism with or without intention
Using someone else to write your assignments/essays.

Out of these, plagiarism is the commonest form of academic irregularity, mainly because students are not careful enough to avoid it. In academia, accidental plagiarism is as serious as intentional cheating.

More about Plagiarism

Plagiarism is defined as an act of presenting another person’s work (including ideas, writing, conversation, diagrams, song, words, and thoughts) as one’s own. When using another person’s work, even when paraphrasing, the author should acknowledge it fully and appropriately, unless the information is common knowledge. Proper acknowledgment requires citing sources (i.e., references). Academic theft/Dishonesty mainly comes in the forms of:-

Copying - using another person's data and/or ideas as one’s own with or without the intention to cheat. It can happen in two ways, (a) Verbatim copying - word-for-word copying of large passages without acknowledgment of the source and (b) Mosaic Plagiarism - some parts rather than the whole text are copied word-by-word without acknowledgment.
Inappropriate quote/paraphrase - Using another person’s sentences with minor or major modifications without acknowledgments.
“Patch-working” - Slightly modifying another person’s sentences under the disguise of paraphrasing with or without citations.
Collusion – copying from one’s peers with or without their permission (also known as unauthorized collaboration).
Self-plagiarising – Re-using or re-submitting one’s own work that was submitted before!
Contract cheating (Ghost writing) – buying or obtaining articles from external sources and submitting as one’s own. This includes using essays written by kins or friends.
Using artificial intelligence (AI) to write article – Using AI to generate articles, data with false information that can potentially mislead, misinform, or defame. To learn about AI generated writing practices please visit Turnitin website. To create a lesson plan to teach about AI please visit this website.

Research ethics and ethical conduct

Ethics (and its abidance) is a formal process of reflection and applying decisions shaped by values, principles, and purpose. Ethics should not be confused with morals, although, they both revolve around distinguishing the differences between right or wrong then accept and practice the right. Abiding ethics is a formal process of reflection and applying decisions shaped by values, principles, and purpose. Most people learn morals at home, at school, through religious beliefs, or in other communal settings and its development occurs throughout life and human beings pass through different stages of growth as they mature. However, ethics tends to be broader, more formal, and mostly enforced by laws. Ethical concepts are used to criticize, evaluate, propose, or abide to carry out justifiable research, respecting humans, animals, and environment.

As academics progress, they need to develop a deeper understanding of research ethics, including requirements to (a) declare any potential conflicts of interest, (b) obtain informed consent from research participants, (c) observe data protection laws and policies and respect the confidentiality and privacy of research participants, (d) protect human and animal safety, welfare and rights as much as possible, (e) respect cultural and other sensitivities and differences and (f) share and disseminate data appropriately, truthfully, and legitimately. Ethics may sometimes be connected to individual disciplines (i.e., may vary from one subject to other). This is because ethics and its application are linked to discipline specific methods, procedures, or perspectives for deciding how to act or analyse complex problems and issues. For example, conducting covert research (i.e., deliberately misinforming the participants about the research, or it’s aims) is considered as unethical in medical research. However, in psychology, this is acceptable, if the research objectives have strong scientific merits, appropriately risk managed avoiding discomfort, anger or objections among participants when revealed. Therefore, ethical norms are sometimes discipline specific serving the aims or goals of subject specific research. Yet it applies to all who conduct scientific research or other scholarly or creative activities.

The basics of research ethics.

Figure 2: Summary of the enabling ethical abidance at different stages of research.

Researchers are obliged to behave professionally by owning respectable research conduct involving the following basic expectations.

honesty
Integrity
Value
Confidentiality
Fairness
Responsibility
Accountability

These ethical principles should be followed or applied in every step within a research cycle, from forming the research questions until disseminating the findings and beyond.

Figure 2 summarises the steps in a typical research cycle and shows how ethical behaviour should underpin in every step.

Research often involves collaboration which needs ethical values such as trust, accountability, mutual respect, and fairness. In addition, during dissemination stage needs appropriate authorship by abiding copyright and patenting policies, data sharing policies which are designed to protect intellectual property interests. Collective accountability to scientific community and public is important gain trust and support. Please visit the National Institute of Health (NIH)’s website on glossary of commonly used terms in research ethics for further information.

Research Ethics

This video explains further about research ethics and its implications to researchers, volunteers, or patients . It further elaborate of different threats to research and how they can be managed by using and abiding by code of research involving humans or non-human educational research.

Introduction to Academic Integrity and Research Ethics

About

Academic Integrity

​

Replicating an author’s research methodology,

Using an interesting quote

Outlining the history of an idea or concept,

Including a photograph, tables, flow charts or other image.

Sharing others unwritten ideas etc.

Researchers owing integrity and ethics will give due credit to the people who came up with these things.

Pursuing an academic career with honesty, responsibility, and accountability.

​

Students cheating in class, assignments, and exams.

Trying to bribe to achieve academic advantage.

Misrepresenting facts, figures, data, or individuals

Fabricating results, information, or data

Conspiring to deceive in assignments and examinations.

Colluding with other author/student(s) with the aim to cheat.

Duplicating one’s own previous submissions with the intention to cheat

Improper use of online resources

Plagiarism with or without intention

Using someone else to write your assignments/essays.

Out of these, plagiarism is the commonest form of academic irregularity, mainly because students are not careful enough to avoid it. In academia, accidental plagiarism is as serious as intentional cheating.

More about Plagiarism

​

Inappropriate quote/paraphrase - Using another person’s sentences with minor or major modifications without acknowledgments.

“Patch-working” - Slightly modifying another person’s sentences under the disguise of paraphrasing with or without citations.

Collusion – copying from one’s peers with or without their permission (also known as unauthorized collaboration).

Self-plagiarising – Re-using or re-submitting one’s own work that was submitted before!

Contract cheating (Ghost writing) – buying or obtaining articles from external sources and submitting as one’s own. This includes using essays written by kins or friends.

Research ethics and ethical conduct

The basics of research ethics.

Researchers are obliged to behave professionally by owning respectable research conduct involving the following basic expectations.

honesty

Integrity

Value

Confidentiality

Fairness

Responsibility

Accountability

These ethical principles should be followed or applied in every step within a research cycle, from forming the research questions until disseminating the findings and beyond.

Figure 2 summarises the steps in a typical research cycle and shows how ethical behaviour should underpin in every step.

​

Research Ethics

This video explains further about research ethics and its implications to researchers, volunteers, or patients . It further elaborate of different threats to research and how they can be managed by using and abiding by code of research involving humans or non-human educational research.