Authorship practices and publication ethics

Ethical standards for publication exist to ensure high-quality scientific publications, public trust in scientific findings, and that people receive credit for their ideas.

The University requires that all research projects undertaken within the University observe a commitment to good research conduct with regard to authorship and publishing practices.

Authorship

Authorship is an explicit way of assigning responsibility and giving credit for intellectual work. Authorship practices should be judged by how honestly they reflect actual contributions to the final product.

University guidance on authorship

The University has produced Guidance on authorship (pdf), which includes details of how to manage situations where there are disputes relating to authorship.

Publication ethics

Publication of results is an integral and essential component of research. The University encourages all researchers to promote their work through timely and accurate publication of results as well as through other forms of dissemination.

Unethical publication practices include:

  • Fabrication - Making up data or results and recording or reporting them
  • Falsification - Manipulating research materials, equipment, or processes, or changing or omitting data or results such that the research is not accurately represented in the research record
  • Plagiarism - Appropriation of another person's ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit
  • Misrepresentation of data - Suppressing relevant findings; or knowingly, recklessly or by gross negligence presenting a flawed data interpretation
  • Multiple submissions - Multiple submissions of the same manuscript to multiple journals at the same time
  • Overlapping publication - Publishing of a paper which overlaps substantially with one already published
  • Redundant (or ‘salami’) publications - Slicing of data from a large study, which could have been reported in a single paper, into different pieces and publishing them in two or more articles
  • Inappropriate authorship practices - Authorship is not appropriately assigned based on the author's contributions.

Further resources

The following external resources on publication ethics are available:

 

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