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Plagiarism is easy to understand in most cases as the use of data, text or figures in your own work from another paper without appropriate citation, and is actually not especially common in academic publishing. Self-plagiarism, however, is much less well-understood by authors. This article discusses common ways in which self-plagiarism can occur and tips to avoid it.

Plagiarism involves a failure to credit another’s work or ideas, including data, word-for-word quotations, paraphrasing, methodology when conducting an experiment, and even music, images and other media forms.

This article looks at some of the causes of article retractions and how you can prevent retractions.

Carrying out research studies and then writing up the research results often involve many participants. Some (or all) of these may be considered to be ‘authors’ and appear in the list of authors connected with the final paper, but it is important to think about who actually constitutes an ‘author’.

Authorship involves not only credit for the work but also accountability. It is this idea of credit and accountability which determines the need for ethical considerations to be made in scholarly publishing and, more specifically, scientific publishing.

Duplicate submission of papers to academic journals is actively discouraged by journals and publishers. Many publishers have strict policies about duplicate submission, and the reuse of research data. This article explains the ICMJE guidelines on overlapping or similar research submissions and publications.

Access to data is very important to researchers: read on to find out about the opportunities that open data provides and the concerns surrounding it.

One of the many pitfalls potentially encountered by a young researcher is the issue of authorship on publications. How can this be managed?

As well as acting as a peer-reviewer for scientific papers in your field, its also common to be asked to review grant applications. Our Charlesworth Knowledge workshops provide training in how to perform reviews effectively and ethically.

There are three kinds of lies: Lies, damned lies and statistics. Did you know that, often, the toughest papers for journal editors to process are those that contain statistical analyses? 

Re-using images from published papers, even your own, can be problematic and is usually not possible without permission (re-use without citation and/or permission is a form of plagiarism).

One of the trickiest and most controversial aspects of academic publishing is deciding ‘who did what’ during research article writing.

Early in your academic career the best publishing strategy to adopt is one that ensures you develop a reputation as a reliable and effective researcher.

The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) has highlighted the issue of extreme self-citation as one key form of citation manipulation that journals, editors, and publishers should address.

Is it possible to make changes to an article once it's been submitted to a journal? Not really. Authorship is also very hard to change.

It is important to acknowledge the people involved in compiling and writing your research. Many journals now require authors to acknowledge not only the authors who were involved in writing up the research, but also any individuals who contributed to the research in some way. These are know as authorship and contributorship. 

'Gift authorship’ is one of the most common kinds of unethical behaviour seen in academic publishing. In this practice, an author is added to a paper when they have not actually made a contribution to the work, perhaps to reward a collaborator, return a favour, or for some other gain. 

Re-using an image from an earlier paper is re-publishing something that you, or another author, has previously used in an earlier article. This is possible, but requires permission in some form or another.

Plagiarism involves not citing the source of the material, or citing the source inadequately or inaccurately. So how do you make sure that your journal submission is not delayed or rejected due to plagiarism? This article discusses simple ways to avoid plagiarism in academic writing.

There are a number of different topics that come under the heading ‘publication ethics’, all of which have to do with how researchers present their work to the wider scientific community. In this post, we will talk about a number of behaviors related to publication ethics.