Beyond Plagiarism: Scientific Ethics and Its Other Aspects

Abstract

The purpose of science is to advance human knowledge, cure diseases, and make life for people better. Does the current competitive environment in academia allow researchers to pursue such noble goals? The increase we see in the number of articles retracted by even reputable journals is quite alarming, and we need to have an honest discussion about why this is happening. When talking about scientific ethics, we usually focus on plagiarism and scientific fraud. Scientific misconduct may be very subtle (like, not citing peer’s articles), but sometimes it is more obvious (fabricating results). Scientific ethics, though, is much more than plagiarism and fabrication of data. As you will see, the authors of the articles included in this issue have looked at scientific ethics from a broader perspective.