Kontakt 2005, 7(1-2):59-65 | DOI: 10.32725/kont.2005.012

Ethics and authorship in scientific publicationsHealth and Social Sciences

Jozef Novotný

Jihočeská univerzita v Českých Budějovicích, Zdravotně sociální fakulta, katedra ošetřovatelství

Ethics is conditio sine qua non in the professional activity and thus also in the scientific work and even in the everyday activity. Ethics can be considered as practical philosophy representing the relationship of the man to the world. Ethics is a theory of morals, i. e. philosophic discipline investigating the moral or morally relevant behavior and its forms. We can currently encounter the concept of ethics in ever new association, e. g. bioethics, which cannot be understood solely as a synonym of medical ethics. Scientific work is a driving force of intellectual persons, which shifts the practice forward and, on the other hand, the practice presents the invention in the scientific work. It is to stress that the theory is blind without the practice and the practice is deaf without the theory. The authorship of a scientific work expresses the fact, that the individual, who is specified as an author, is an originator of the work and thus, he/she also takes his/her responsibility for the scope of the work.
In well established scientific journals, the authorship of scientific work is usually considered based on the following facts:
Principal contribution to the origination of the concept and design of the study, to acquiring data and to the analysis and interpretation of results obtained.
Principal control of compiling the manuscript or article.
Final consideration and checking of the version to be sent to the editorial office for print.
Of course, there are also "institutional/local traditions" which represent an opposite pole of the rules above and the head of the institution is usually added as a co-author due to the fact that he is a head of the institution. This automatic adding of the head of the institution as a co-author should not be obligatory, particularly when he brought no particular contribution to the work, since the scientific work is not a list of individuals, who quite did not participate in the scientific work. All the authors i. e. also the co-author take the responsibility for possible problems associated with the work, i. e. plagiarism, non-scientific method, poor quality of the research, etc. These approaches are not common in European region and it is to expect their charging by the society in Europe in the near future. A classical case of rough violation of the ethics and thus also of the professional scientific ethics is a redundant publication. Redundant or duplicate publication is publishing of an article whose contents and thus also hypothesis, data obtained, discussion and conclusions are identical or essentially overlapping with an already published work. A similar, however, hardly defendable violation of ethical standards is plagiarism. The most severe plagiarism is submitting of a complete work signed by new authors, sometimes with identical wording, frequently in the other language. Each work to be published should be reviewed without prejudice, with providing objectivity. All the works and data presented should be considered as confidential. In the case of clinical research, directions for authors have to include requirements for obtaining the informed consent from all the persons who are/were included into the research, in a clinical trial. The ethics of the editorial activity of the publisher is of an extraordinary importance. Decisions of the publisher may never be affected by benefits from advertisements. Publishing and advertising strategies of each publisher must be distinctly separated from each other. Publishers must responsibly react on any manifestations of violating ethical standards. It is, however, to mention that they have neither legal legitimacy nor tools for solving these cases. Appropriate sanctions should be instituted as far as publishers are convinced about violation of ethical standards. The sanctions can be used either separately or in combination, depending on the severity of violating ethical standard.

Keywords: ethics; scientific authorship; duplicate publications; plagiarism; communication with media; editorial activity

Published: June 29, 2005  Show citation