Publication Ethics: Awareness & Knowledge among Medical Faculties

Abstract

Publication ethics is related with ethical aspects of publication of scientific data to ensure high quality
scientific publication in the current era of evidence-based medicine. Violation of publication ethics also
known as scientific misconduct may be committed by researchers knowingly and unknowingly due to various
reasons. Present study inducted 130 medical faculties from a medical college providing self-administered
questionnaire regarding awareness about publication ethics using Google forms. Among those 94 faculties
responded and 75% of the faculties were in favor of gift authorship and did not perceive it as a misconduct.
83% of the faculties were aware that violation of publication ethics would affect career of all the involved
authors. Almost 56% believed that falsification or fabrication of data is acceptable and 58% faculties felt it
acceptable to split the results of a study and publish it separately. Considering the lack of awareness among
medical faculties scientific misconduct, it is recommended that a formal educational session of publication
ethics is necessary