Scientific Misconduct & Publishing Ethics: Questionable Practices

This guide is from the U.S. Office of Research Integrity.  It covers how to avoid plagiarism in all its forms, self-plagiarism, and other lesser crimes of writing such as careless citations, citing unread sources, and selective reporting of the literature, methods, or results.  The guide also covers issues related to authorship.

Although not as serious as the crimes of fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism, the following unethical practices can be cause for the retraction of an article.

• Failure to disclose conflicts of interest
• Failure to disclose sources of financial support
• Authorship disputes/fradulent authorship
• Inaccurate references

Questionable practices related to authorship can include:

• Honorary/Gift authors
• Exclusion of rightful authors
• Submitting a manuscript without the approval of all of the authors
• The use of ghotst authors (often funded by commercial sponsors)

For more information on these practices, see the documents listed below.

Always check the author requirements listed in the journal's instructions for authors.  Many journals defer to the ICMJE criteria for authorship but others have their own criteria for authorship, including the number of individuals that can be listed as authors.