RESEARCH

Research and Publication Ethics Online Course 2024

Research and Publication Ethics (RPE) is a two-credit course approved by the University Grants Commission (UGC) for awareness of publication ethics and publication misconduct and it is mandatory for research scholars of most universities in India.

St Thomas College (Autonomous), Thrissur, is offering RPE online, to those who are interested, including those outside the College.

Enrolment to course starts on:    11.09.2024

Closing date of application:          20.09.2024

Commencement of course:          20.09.2024

Tentative completion of course:  07.10.2024

Tentative examination date:         07.10.2024

Please note:

An objective type examination conducted will be conducted by St Thomas College at the end of the course.  Only those participants who complete the course and examination successfully will be awarded e-certificate. For all participants from universities in Kerala, it’s mandatory to attend PQE examination conducted by their respective universities, even if they obtain a certificate from this online course. For the attention of research scholars outside Kerala: you might need to take the university examination, please check with your university’s Directorate of Research to confirm.

Payment of course fee:

Course fee: Rs 1500

Those interested are requested to pay the fees via SBI Collect through the link at https://www.onlinesbi.sbi/sbicollect/icollecthome.htm?corpID=5052640

Please note down the SBCollect Reference Number which should be submitted in the registration form. You will receive the acknowledgement of payment, if your payment is success and you can download the receipt of payment from the final screen. No separate receipt of payment of fee will be issued.

Delivery mode of the course:

The course contents are available in the asynchronous format through Google Classroom. Recorded videos are available and the participants may listen to them at any time as per their convenience. Few study materials will be available the Google Classroom.

Prerequisites:

A Google (Gmail) ID is required for the course and this should be used consistently throughout the course. Only that e-mail id has to be used for the registration, participation and examination of the course. Issues occurring due to the use of multiple email ids or typographic errors in e-mail ids will not be entertained.

No-objection certificate (NOC) or leave is NOT REQUIRED to participate in the course. However, participants may inform their research supervisors or heads of institutions about their participation. Certificate of attendance or duty will not be issued by St Thomas College for the purpose.

Overview of the course

This course has total 6 units focusing on basics of philosophy of science and ethics, research integrity, publication ethics. Sessions are designed to identify research misconduct and predatory publications. Indexing and citation databases, open access publications, research metrics (citations, h-index, impact factor, etc.) and reference management tools are introduced in this course.

Course Structure:

The course comprises of six modules listed in table below.

Modules Unit Title Learning Hours
RPE 01 Philosophy and Ethics 5
RPE 02 Scientific Conduct 5
RPE 03 Publication Ethics 8
RPE 04 Open Access Publishing 5
RPE 05 Publication Misconduct 5
RPE 06 Database and Research Metrics 8
Total 36

RPE 01: Philosophy and Ethics

  1. Introduction to Philosophy: definition, nature and scope, concept, branches
  2. Ethics: Definition, moral philosophy, nature of moral judgments and reactions.

RPE 02: Scientific Conduct

  1. Ethics with respect to science and research
  2. Intellectual honesty and research integrity
  3. Scientific misconducts: Falsification, Fabrication and Plagiarism (FFP)
  4. Redundant publications: duplicate and overlapping publications, salami slicing
  5. Selective reporting and misrepresentation of data

RPE 03: Publication Ethics

  1. Publication ethics: definition, introduction and importance
  2. Best practices/standards setting initiatives and guidelines: COPE, WAME etc.
  3. Conflicts of interest
  4. Publication misconduct: Definition, concept, problems that lead to unethical behavior and vice versa, types
  5. Violation of publication ethics, authorship and contributorship
  6. Identification of publication misconduct, complaints and appeals

RPE 04: Open Access Publishing

  1. Open access publications and initiatives
  2. SHERPA/RoMEO online resource to check publisher copyright & self-archiving policies
  3. Software tool to identify predatory publications developed by SPPU: UGC-CARE list of journals
  4. Journal finder/journal suggestion tools viz. JANE, Elsevier Journal Finder, Springer Journal Suggester, etc.

RPE05: Publication Misconduct

  1. Subject specific ethical issues, FFP, authorship
  2. Conflicts of interest
  3. Complaints and appeals: examples and fraud from India and abroad

 RPE 06: Databases and research metrics

  1. Databases
  2. Indexing databases
  3. Citation databases: Web of Science, Scopus etc.
  4. Research Metrics
  5. Impact factor of journal as per Journal Citation Report, SNIP, SJR, IPP, Cite Score
  6. Metrics: h-index, g-index, i-10 index, altmetrics

Software tools

Use of reference management software like Mendeley, Zotero etc. and anti-plagiarism software like Turnitin, Urkund

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