Research and Publication Ethics Online Course 2025

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, has been offering an online RPE course since 2020. The course is especially designed for Ph.D. scholars who need to take an RPE course as part of their course work.

RPE 2025 will begin on August 04 2025

Enrolment to course starts on:   25.07.2025

Closing date of application:         04.08.2025

Commencement of course:         04.08.2025

Tentative examination date:         29.08.2025

Please note:

The course will consist of both live online sessions and recorded sessions. The sessions, study materials and module wise assignments will be delivered via Google Classroom. The participants are expected to familiarize themselves with Google Classroom. An objective type examination will be conducted at the end of the course.  Only those participants who submit the module wise assignments, complete all modules of the course and pass the examination successfully will be awarded an e-certificate of completion for the course.

For all participants from universities in Kerala, it’s mandatory to attend PhD Preliminary Qualifying Examination PQE examination conducted by their respective universities, even if they obtain a certificate from this online course. Research scholars with affiliation to Universities outside Kerala are requested to confirm with their university’s Directorate of Research regarding any exemption from the examinations conducted by their university.

Course fee inclusive of GST:

Course fee for research scholars enrolled at St. Thomas College – ₹ 1100/-

Course fee for research scholars enrolled at other institutions- ₹ 1400/-

Course fee for research scholars enrolled at St. Thomas College if hard copy of certificate required – ₹ 1200/-

Course fee for research scholars enrolled at St. Thomas College if hard copy of certificate required – ₹ 1600/-

Those interested are requested to pay the fees via SBI Collect

Select Research and Publication Ethics Course from the dropdown menu in Payment Category. Fill other details and complete the payment.

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 successful and you can download the receipt of payment from the final screen. No separate receipt of fee payment will be issued.

Delivery mode of the course:

Most of 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. One live online session per module will be conducted through Google Meet. 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. This single e-mail id should be used for 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 must inform their research supervisors and/or heads of institutions about their participation. Certificate of attendance or duty certificate will not be issued.

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 as follows.

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
7. Predatory publishers and journals

RPE 04: Open Access Publishing

1. Open access publications and initiatives
2. SHERPA/RoMEO online resource to check publisher copyright & self-archiving policies
3. How to identify credible journals avoiding predatory publications
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

4. Demonstration of similarity checking software

RPE 06: Databases and research metrics

1. Databases

Indexing databases

Citation databases: Web of Science, Scopus etc.

2. Research Metrics

Impact factor of journal as per Journal Citation Report, SNIP, SJR, IPP, Cite Score

Metrics: h-index, g-index, i-10 index, altmetrics

In addition to the above the participants can also benefit from bonus modules on

Reference management tools, Research design and Gap identification