Research ethics
Ethical research protects participants and the truth: informed consent, confidentiality and no harm, plus honest reporting with no fabrication, falsification or plagiarism.
Ethics towards participants
| Principle | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Informed consent | Participants know the purpose, procedure, risks and benefits, and agree freely |
| Voluntary participation | No pressure; free to withdraw at any time without penalty |
| Confidentiality and anonymity | Identity and data are protected; under anonymity even the researcher cannot link data to a person |
| No harm (non-maleficence) | No physical, psychological, social or legal harm |
| Beneficence and justice | Benefits outweigh risks; burdens and benefits are shared fairly |
| Debriefing | If deception was essential and approved, the truth is explained afterwards |
Research misconduct
| Act | What it is |
|---|---|
| Fabrication | Making up data or results |
| Falsification | Manipulating data, methods or results to misrepresent the research |
| Plagiarism | Using others' words or ideas without credit |
| Self-plagiarism | Reusing one's own published text or data without disclosure |
| Duplicate publication | Publishing the same study in two journals |
| Salami slicing | Splitting one study into many small papers |
| Gift or ghost authorship | Adding people who did not contribute, or hiding those who did |
| Predatory publishing | Fee-driven journals that skip real peer review |
UGC plagiarism levels (2018 regulations)
| Level | Similarity | Consequence for a student's thesis |
|---|---|---|
| Level 0 | Up to 10% | Minor; no penalty |
| Level 1 | Above 10% to 40% | Resubmit a revised script within a set period, up to six months |
| Level 2 | Above 40% to 60% | Debarred from resubmitting a revised script for one year |
| Level 3 | Above 60% | Registration for the programme cancelled |
Codes and bodies
- Nuremberg Code (1947): voluntary consent of human subjects is essential.
- Declaration of Helsinki (World Medical Association, 1964): ethics of medical research on people.
- Belmont Report (1979): respect for persons, beneficence, justice.
- An Institutional Ethics Committee (IEC) or Institutional Review Board (IRB) approves studies before data collection.
- COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) guides journals and editors on publication ethics.
- Excluded from the UGC similarity count: references, bibliography, acknowledgements, contents and properly quoted, attributed material.
NET asks you to identify misconduct in a short case (fabrication vs falsification), recall the UGC 2018 similarity levels, and name the principle broken in an ethics scenario (consent, confidentiality).
Typical MCQ: “A researcher alters outlier values so the results reach significance. Which misconduct is this?” Falsification: manipulating real data. Inventing data that were never collected would be fabrication.
Typical MCQ: “Under UGC's 2018 plagiarism regulations, what similarity is treated as Level 0?” Up to 10%, treated as minor with no penalty.
FFP are the three deadly sins: Fabricate (invent), Falsify (twist), Plagiarise (steal). UGC levels cut at 10, 40 and 60 per cent.