Philosophy and Ethics
1. Introduction to philosophy: definition; nature & scope; concept; branches
2. Ethics: definition; moral philosophy; nature of moral judgements & reactions
Scientific Conduct
1. Ethics with respect to science & research, group discussion on subject specific ethical issues
2. Intellectual honesty & research integrity
3. Scientific misconducts: falsification, fabrication, & plagiarism (FPP), group discussion on subject specific FPP issues
4. Redundant publications: duplicate & overlapping publications, salami slicing
5. Selective reporting & misrepresentation of data
Publication Ethics
1. Publication ethics: definition, introduction & importance
2. Best practices/standard setting initiative & guidelines: COPE, WAME etc
3. Conflicts of interest, group discussions on conflicts of interest
4. Publication misconducts: definition, concept, problems that lead to unethical behaviour & vice versa, types
5. Violation of publication ethics, authorship & contributor-ship, group discussion on subject specific authorship issues
6. Identification of publication misconduct, complaints & appeals, group discussion on examples and fraud from India & abroad
7. Predatory Publishers & journals
Open Access Publishing
1. Open access publications & initiatives SHERPA/RoMEO online resource to check publisher copyright & self-archiving policies
2. Journal finder/journal suggestion tools viz. JANE, Elsevier Journal Finder, Springer Journal Suggester etc.
3. Software tools developed by SPPU to identify predatory publications
4. Software tools: use of plagiarism software like Turnitin, Urkund, and other open source software tools
Databases & Research Metrics Databases (3 hrs)
1. Indexing databases
2. Citation databases: Web of Science, Scopus, etc.
Research Metrics (3 hrs)