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Different aspects of scientific misconduct among Iranian academic members

Issue: 44(2) May 2018. Original articles Pages 28 – 31

Maryam Saberi-Karimian
Student Research Committee, Department of Modern Sciences & Technologies, Faculty of Medicine, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran

Reza Afshari
Department of Clinical Toxicology, Imam Reza Hospital, Mashhad University of Medical Science, Mashhad, Iran

Sara Movahhed
Faculty of Medicine, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran

Fateme Amiri
Faculty of Medicine, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran

Fateme Keykhaee
Faculty of Medicine, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran

Fariba Mohajer
Faculty of Medicine, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran

Mansooreh Noormandipour
Faculty of Medicine, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran

Ameneh Lamsehchi
Faculty of Medicine, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran

Mona Nasiri
Faculty of Medicine, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran

Bahareh Barkhidarian
Faculty of Medicine, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran

Abdolreza Norouzy
Faculty of Medicine, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran; Norouzya@mums.ac.ir

Abstract

Objective: Publications and research experiments are a major part of daily activities of the university academic members. Research misconduct, specifying its frequency and identifying the related behaviours is controversial. In recent years, there have been reports of scientific misconduct by Iranian academics. We examined the frequency of research misconduct by academic members in Mashhad University of Medical Sciences in Iran.
Method: 157 academic members participated in this study. A validated questionnaire according to Martinson study was used.
Results: Our results showed that the most frequently admitted research misconduct was “inaccurate assignment of authorship credit” by 35% of academic members and 54.8% of their colleagues. All the respondents mostly emphasized their colleagues’ engagement in research misconduct rather than themselves. Almost 43% of the respondents had engaged in at least one of the top ten scientific plagiaristic behaviours listed in the table of results.
Conclusion: Nearly 43% of the Iranian academic members had engaged in at least one of the top ten misbehaviours over the past three years. A relatively high proportion of misconduct behaviours should be addressed in the scientific community by all relevant institutions and factors and by scientific journal editors.

Notes/discussion

This article was corrected on 1st March 2019 following discovery of a missing row in Table 3.
The changes are highlighted in the PDF.
The publishers apologise for this error.

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