By far, the most common violation of academic and research integrity is plagiarism. In this course, we have not addressed plagiarism as a separate topic. Academic writing was the focus of the bachelor-level Integrity course. Let us just note that internet made plagiarism easier, but the new technologies made also plagiarism detection easier. You are already aware that theses (and many other student works) are checked for originality by a plagiarism detection system, e.g. Turnitin. Consider learning more about plagiarism detection and the reasons why a thesis or other paper may end up with a high "Similarity Score" in Turnitin (see https://www.turnitin.com).

Unfortunately, plagiarism is not the single integrity problem related to research reports or publications. Your thesis may or may not turn into a publication in a scholarly journal or even a book. In any case, it is important that you understand how the publication and dissemination of scientific information has changed in recent years. Again, this change is closely related to digital revolution and networking. 

In many areas of science, the most important research results can be found in peer-reviewed journals. Rigorous peer review is the key process of maintaining the integrity of research. Moreover, Open Access is the preferred form for making the results of research accessible to public today. For a typical student, Open Access means that he or she can legally access a lot of publications on-line and without having to pay for it. But if you do not pay, who pays? Open Access often means “author pays” model in which researcher (or, in practice, her or his employer) covers so called “processing charges”, i.e. author pays for his article or book to be published. (Did you know that?)

Open Access model was meant to make newest scientific information available to everybody - free of charge. Unfortunately, it is ever more apparent that there is also dark side to Open Access. Some Open Access publishers can be “predatory”. They make quick money by publishing articles or books without guarantee of quality. Predatory publishers do not follow the proper standards as rigorous peer review. Sure, this is not a rule - many high-quality Open Access journals apply the same rigorous process that traditional journals do. 

Publishing in a predatory journal can damage your professional career. That is why you should be aware about following scenario. Imagine that you have just completed your Master's program. A foreign publisher approaches you stating that they have read your thesis on internet and consider it to be of superior quality. You are then invited to publish your thesis with them as a book or as a shorter paper. That may sound great to you, but that can be a trap. For such case, general advice is: Think and Check before you Submit. Watch the following short video and visit the Think. Check. Submit. (https://thinkchecksubmit.org) page to learn more. 

Last modified: Tuesday, 13 October 2020, 10:34 AM