Research Integrity: Analysis of Ethical Practices Essay

This essay addresses the critical issue of maintaining research integrity, synthesizing information from provided sources and an additional academic source. It explores unethical research practices, including fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism (FFP), as well as more subtle violations of research standards like data misuse and undisclosed conflicts of interest. The essay examines the underlying causes of these practices, such as inexperience, monetary gain, and lack of constructive criticism. It highlights the importance of ethical guidelines, codes of practice, monitoring, and education to promote responsible research conduct. The conclusion emphasizes the need for immediate action to uphold the integrity of the research community and restore public and academic trust.

Running head: MAINTAINING RESEARCH INTEGRITY
Maintaining Research Integrity
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

1MAINTAINING RESEARCH INTEGRITY
Conducting a scientific research needs many considerations. A research is meant to
benefit academicians, specific study fields, future researchers and the public in general. The
best practices related to research are arguable in many ways. Many scientists concerned with
proper ethical conduct during a research process and publication believe that it is mostly
guided by the personal ethical compass and institutional regulations. Many scientists believe
that pressure of publication, management and superiors lead to improper practices in research
fields. This essay synthesizes the issues related to ethical research conduct, the reasons that
could be the underlying reasons and the possible method to minimize those practices.
Unethical research practices include “Fabrication, Falsification or Plagiarism’ (FFP)
in research procedure, results, conduct or publication. This definition is narrow when it
comes to this topic. There are many subtle unethical practices that violate the standard of
research but cannot be found guilty on the above ground. These practices include using same
dataset for multiple researches, disclosing personal information of the participants, disclosing
unethical information regarding organizations involved, withholding information regarding
methodology, obtaining research data from known participants and many more (Martinson,
Anderson and Vries 2005). While many scientists believe that strict organizational or national
regulations might be the reasons for which scientists are forced to adopt unethical method,
several researches show that it is not the case. Research conducted by (Fanelli, Costas and
Larivière 2015) presents concrete proof that the institutions or countries that have strict
research ethics policy or guideline are less likely to produce papers that might be retracted for
bad practices. The research also shows that the factors such as inexperience in the research
field, monetary gain through research and lack of constructive criticism are underlying reason
behind the intentional or unintentional bad practices.
In most cases, it has been found that scientists that conduct unethical practices that
falls beyond FFP, have been done unknowingly, or without much though about the ethical

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implication of the action. It means that scientists that were involved in the research were not
fully aware and educated about the complete guideline of research conduct. Plagiarism is an
offence is known by most people, but guidelines on what actually constitute plagiarism and
how exactly to avoid that are likely help researchers better in their initial years. Giving false
accreditation or co-authorship is another practice that has been addressed through the studies.
The reason behind this is managerial pressure and reducing the chances of retraction and
chances of better recognition and impact of the research paper. These practices too, fall under
the grey area and institutional policies and frameworks have the ability to resolve these issues
(Dhakal, R.K., 2016). The general consensus regarding best practices in research is creating a
detailed ethical guideline on each aspect of research conduct, creating a code for practice that
has to be followed by all researchers, monitoring of the research practices in institutions and
educating the new researchers about what constitutes ethical research practice.
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that ethical research practice is
becoming an eluded concept which is contributing to the mistrust of the readers and
academicians worldwide. This issue needs to be dealt immediately so that the integrity of
research community can be upheld.

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References
Dhakal, R.K., 2016. Responsible practice of research: safeguarding research integrity and
publication ethics. Journal of education and research, 6(2), pp.1-11.
Fanelli, D., Costas, R. and Larivière, V., 2015. Misconduct policies, academic culture and
career stage, not gender or pressures to publish, affect scientific integrity. PloS one, 10(6),
p.e0127556.
Martinson, B.C., Anderson, M.S. and De Vries, R., 2005. Scientists behaving
badly. Nature, 435(7043), p.737.