Post date: Dec 25, 2019 6:35:59 PM
SciWrite Tip of a day: In scientific writing, academic dishonesty (also called academic misconduct) takes different forms. And, below are the forms that I have experienced in some papers/theses/dissertations:
1. Changing text in the main document into “math equations” as an attempt to fool (bypass) the plagiarism checker software
2. Using software, such as scigen (https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/archive/scigen/), to generate a fake paper
3. Presenting results that were not generated in the actual experiments (overreporting); modifying weak results to claim superiority of the proposed method; and, changing intentionally the results of the competing methods in favor of your less-performing method
4. Omitting critical references as an attempt to hide potential materials related to the work under consideration
5. Presenting and/or modifying copyrighted materials (e.g. Tables and Figures) without attribution or without obtaining consent from the original owners of such materials
6. Paraphrasing sentences/paragraphs of other sources, especially without providing attribution
7. Excluding authors that have extensively taken part in the production of the manuscript
8. Submitting the same paper to multiple journals, with an intention of retaining a copy from a journal that possibly accepted that paper and to withdraw the remaining unaccepted copies from other journals
9. Submitting a paper to a journal without the knowledge of your co-authors, and, for students, without the knowledge of your supervisor
10. Filling wrong Email addresses of your co-authors in the submission system as an attempt to prevent them from monitoring the progress of the paper as it undergoes different peer-review stages
11. Claiming the first position in the co-authorship on grounds of your ego for (decisively) achieving academic excellence (e.g. promotion)
12. Subcontracting the research to other people. For instance, paying other people/companies to write paper/do research/write proposal or dissertation or thesis on your behalf
13. Reporting incorrect number of respondents to the questionnaire
We should not commit these forms of academic misconducts because they can potentially harm our reputations.