Assignment on Ethical Issues in Research

Introduction of Ethical Issues in Research

Research has been considered as the main pillar of knowledge which organizes an essential part of the process. Ethics are actually a set of principles or rules, both written and unwritten, that rule our anticipation of others’ and our own behavior. Ethics in research involved various requirements on the entire tasks, the shield of the subject's dignity, along with the publication of the entire information included in the research (Beins, 2017).

The Importance of Research Ethics

Before we discuss the importance of research ethics, we need to understand properly the definition of research ethics. Research ethics defined as a series of ethics that have a purpose to govern the method of how scientific and other types of researches are presented and also disseminated. Research by Resnick (2015) has noted some reasons for the importance of research ethics (Resnik, Elliott, Soranno, & Smith, 2017) such as:

 Research ethics encourage the research’s aims, such as escalating knowledge

 Research ethics assist the various values that prerequisites for cooperative work, such as equality along with mutual respect. This is highly fundamental with the reason that scientific research relies completely on the collaboration performed by the researchers.

 Research ethics mean that the researchers are accountable for all of their activities

 Research ethics sustenance the essentiality of both moral and social values

 Research ethics guarantee the validity and authenticity of the research itself

Ethical Issues in Research

Various ethical issues in research (Code, 2017) are mentioned such as:

1. Study designs along with ethics sanction

Good research is the type of research that is well-planned, well-organized, properly designed, and also ethically sanctioned. Research which has a low standard might able to create misconduct. Even though this might occur to be a strict standard, but it underlines the fundamental requirement of a researcher which is to perform research reliably. In order to accomplish this, a specific protocol should be formatted and followed. In fact, research must search for accurate answers for particular questions instead of only collecting data.

2. Data Analysis

The researchers have the responsibility to appropriately analyze the data gathered. Even though inaccurate analysis might not lead to misconduct, but a deliberate exclusion of results might be able to trigger whether misinterpretation or mislead the readers. In addition to this, the falsification of data is potentially leading to misconduct. For this reason, in order to make sure an accurate analysis of data, then there should be fully disclosed of the entire resources along with the methods utilized to gain and analyze data.

3.  Authorship

Up till now, there is no generally fixed description of authorship itself. Instead, authorship is, by large and general, fixed that an author must have performed significant contribution and support to the intellectual content, as well as hypothesizing and designing the study, obtaining, and ultimately, both analyzing and interpreting the entire data. It is a responsibility of an author to guarantee that the paper embodies valid work, and the author would also take the work’s public responsibility as well. Lastly, an author would typically be engaged in conscripting or else revising the research, in addition to approving the submitted research. On the other hand, the various contexts such as data collection, grammar or language editing, and any further regular works by itself, do not warrant authorship.

4. Conflicts of Interest

The conflicts of interest might appear in case if the researchers have some interests which are not completely ostensible, and that might be able to influence their own judgments on the published work. These types of conflicts include personal, political, academic, financial, or commercial interest. For this reason, those interests, if relevant, must be discussed right from the initial stage of research itself. In fact, the researchers have an extra responsibility to take an effort in making sure that their conflicts of interest will not impact the methodology, as well as the result of research. At the time of publishing, all of these conflicts of interest must be stated to the editors, and the readers have the right to judge whether the findings of the research are reliable or not.

5.  Plagiarism and terminated publication

Terminated publication might have appeared if there are two or more researches share a similar hypothesis, data, the points discussed or maybe the same conclusions, without a complete cross-reference. This circumstance is also considered as a self-plagiarism. Though the ranges of plagiarism are varied, it started from unreferenced utilization of others' ideas, whether published or unpublished, to the submission of research with new authorship of previous research which has converted into a different language. Thus, it is crucial to reveal the entire resources of information presented, along with permission in case if research uses others' written or demonstrative materials.

Conclusion of Ethical Issues in Research

Research which has been considered as the main pillar of knowledge must be conducted in a proper manner, in which, the researches properly understand and apply all of the standards in research ethics. In fact, the researches need to acknowledge the importance of research ethics before they would conduct any type of research. In addition to this, the researchers also should able to tackle some ethical issues in research such as study designs along with ethics sanction, data analysis, authorship, the conflicts of interest, as well as the plagiarism and terminated publication. In brief, it is definitely the responsibility of the researcher to make sure that research that he or she conducted is performed reliably and ethically right from the planning stage to the final publication of research.

References of Ethical Issues in Research