Ethics of

Scholarship
and Publishing

VVM Aguirre, M.L.S., LL.M., M.L.S.

Intellectual Property Right as
Moral Right
 The author of a work shall...
independently of the economic rights...
have the right to require that the
authorship of the work be attributed to
him, in particular, the right that his name,
as far as practicable, be indicated in a
prominent way on the copies, and in
connection with the public use of his
work... (IPC, sec.193.1)
Intellectual Dishonesty

 Any form of deception committed

with the intent of making academic
credentials appear better than they
really are (UP Guidelines)
 Advocacy of positions known to the
person to be false
Forms of Intellectual
Dishonesty:
 Plagiarism
 Fabrication
 making up data results
 Falsification
 misquoting, changing, misreporting data
or results
PLAGIARISM
 the taking and using of ideas, passages, etc.
from another’s work, representing them as
one’s own (Websters, 1998)
 the uncredited use (intentional or unintentional)
of somebody else’s words or ideas (OWL at
Purdue, retrieved 2008)
 the act of claiming authorship for another’s
words or ideas (Russell, 2004)
PLAGIARISM & COPYRIGHT

 In plagiarism, the amount of work

copied is immaterial; in copyright, it
has to be substantial to be a violation
 Copyright no longer applies when the
work is already in the public domain;
not so for plagiarism
 Ideas cannot be protected by copyright
unless expressed; ideas can be
plagiarized
How Plagiarism Is Committed:

• Submitting someone else's work as your own;

• Copying words or ideas from someone
without giving credit;
• Failing to put quotation marks for phrases or
sentences copied verbatim from another's
work;
• Giving incorrect information about the source
of a quotation
How Plagiarism Is Committed:

• Changing words but copying the sentence

structure of a source without giving credit;
and
• Copying so many words or ideas from
another so that the work which you claim is
yours is made up almost entirely with
another persons words or ideas, whether
you give credit or not
(plagiarism.org/learning_center).
Self-Plagiarism:
• Authors reuse own previously written
work or data in a “new” written
product without letting the reader
know that this material has appeared
elsewhere (Roig, n.d.).
Duplicate Publication:
• Criticism: Authors may divide findings from
single study into minimally publishable pieces
(Hegyvary, 2005)
• Defense: Some multiple publications from single
study offer new substantive and undeveloped
content; thus contributing to advancement and
dissemination of knowledge (Silva et al., 2006)
Ghostwriting:
• Sue Hudson (American Writers
Association)
• while ghostwriting may be considered
unethical in scientific publication, use of
professional medical writers may be
appropriate and ethical
• Transparent disclosure of roles of
contributors avoids ghostwriting and
allows evaluation of credibility of report
Ghostwriting:
• Dr. Joseph S. Ross (Mount Sinai
School of Medicine)
• “recruiting someone to put his or her
name on a paper to which he or she has
made little or no contribution […] ‘give
the science more of an appearance of
objectivity than it was conducted with. It
is bad science and bad research
practice”
AUTHORSHIP: Allocation of
Credit
investigators today collaborate on
projects with colleagues from across
the country and around the world...
each brings different expectations and
even cultural experiences to issues
such as who should be included as an
author on a paper for publication
(Responsible Authorship and Peer
Review, from columbia.edu)
AUTHORSHIP:
Some Allocation of Credit
Practices
 heads of departments as authors, as “guest
authors” or “gift authors”
 technicians as authors or merely
acknowledged
 collectors of data (researchers who
gathered data and wrote up reports on
them)
 foreign researchers “gifting” mentors from
home countries with authorship of their own
papers
Harvard Faculty of Medicine
Authorship Guidelines
 Authorship is an explicit way of
assigning responsibility and giving
credit for intellectual work.
 Authorship practices should be
judged by how honestly they reflect
actual contributions to the final
product
Harvard Faculty of Medicine
Authorship Guidelines
 Most important criteria for
determining authorship is substantial
and direct intellectual contribution to
the work
International Committee of
Medical Journal Editors (from
columbia.edu)
 Authorship credit should be based on:
1. substantial contribution to conception
and design, or acquisition of data, or
analysis and interpretation of data;
2. drafting the article or revising it critically
for important intellectual content; and
3. final approval of the version to be
published
International Committee of
Medical Journal Editors (from
icmje.org)

Authorship means both accountability

and independence. A submitted
manuscript is the intellectual
property of its authors, not the study
sponsor.
International Committee of
Medical Journal Editors (from
icmje.org)
the publication of clinical-research findings in
respected peer-reviewed journals is the
ultimate basis for most treatment decisions...
Public discourse about this published evidence of
efficacy and safety rests on the assumption that
clinical-trials data have been gathered and are
presented in an objective and dispassionate
manner.
Ganatra (1996)
 there are no set guidelines regarding
authorship of scientific papers
 the practice of putting the name of the head
of the institution as co-author is justified by
the argument that he was responsible for
providing facilities for carrying out research
 in research, the most important aspect is
conception of an idea and its intellectual
nourishment.
 how are we to decide upon the origin of an idea?
Ganatra (1996)
 Two categories of technicians for
purposes of allocation of authorship
credits:
 those who participate intelligently, and
 those who carry out assigned tasks in a
mediocre manner
Data Ownership (Copyright)

 Creator’s right of ownership:

 Ownership is acquired either by
occupation or by intellectual creation
(Civil Code, Art.712)
Data Ownership (Copyright)

 By intellectual creation the following

persons acquire ownership:
 the author with regard to his literary,
dramatic, historical, legal philosophical,
scientific or other work;
 the composer, as to his musical
composition
 the painter, sculptor or other artist with
respect to the product of his art; and
Data Ownership (Copyright)
 the scientist or technologist, or any
other person with regard to his
discovery or invention. (Civil code,
art.721)
Data Ownership (Copyright)

The State recognizes that an effective intellectual and

industrial property system is vital to the development
of domestic and creative activity, facilitates transfer of
technology, attracts foreign investments, and ensures
market access for our products. [For this reason, the
State] shall protect and secure the exclusive rights of
scientists, inventors, artists and other gifted citizens to
their intellectual property and creations, particularly
when beneficial to the people... (IPC, Pt.1, sec.2)
Data Ownership (Copyright)

fair use of a work for criticism,

comment, news reporting, teaching,
including multiple copies for
classroom use, scholarship, research
and similar purposes does not
infringe copyright. (Sec. 185.1, IP
Code)
Data Ownership (Copyright)
 Fair Use Criteria:
1. the purpose and character of the use, including
whether such use is of a commercial nature or is
for non-profit educational purposes;
2. the nature of the copyrighted work;
3. the amount and substantiality of the portion used
in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole;
and
4. the effect of the use upon the potential market for
or value of the copyrighted work.
Data Ownership (Copyright)

 Other exclusions:
 ideas, concepts, principles, discoveries or
mere data as such, even if expressed
(underlining supplied)
 procedure, system, method or operation,
news of the day and other miscellaneous
facts having the character of mere items of
press information, and official texts of
legislative, administrative or legal nature,
including official translations thereof (IPC,
sec.175)
Data Ownership (Copyright)
 Copyright of works created by an author
“during and in the course of his
employment” belongs to
 the employee if the work created is not a part
of his regular duties even if he used the time,
facilities and materials of the employer;
 the employer if the work is the result of the
performance of the employee's regularly
assigned duties, unless there is an agreement
to the contrary
(IP Code, Chap.V, Sec.178.3)
Responsible Conduct in Data
Management (from
columbia.edu)
 Summarizes Loshin (2002), to wit:
 at the core, the degree of ownership
(and by corollary, the degree of
responsibility) is driven by the value that
each interested party derives from the
use of that information
 sharing data reinforces open scientific
inquiry, encourages and diversity of
analyses and conclusions
Responsible Conduct in Data
Management (from
columbia.edu)
 Summarizes Loshin (2002), to wit:
 and permits:
 1. reanalyses to verify or refute
reported results,
 2. alternative analyses to refine
results, [and]
 3. analyses to check if the results are
robust to varying assumption
Responsible Conduct in Data
Management (from
columbia.edu)
 Stakeholders (Loshin, 2002)
 Creator – creates or generates data
 Consumer – uses data
 Compiler - selects and compiles information
from different sources
 Enterprise - in relation to all data that enters
its system
 Funder - that commissions the data creation
 Decoder - “unlocks” the information inside a
particular encoded format
Responsible Conduct in Data
Management (from
columbia.edu)
 Stakeholders (Loshin, 2002)
 Packager - collects data for a particular
use and adds value through formatting
of this information for a particular
market or set of consumers
 Reader - subsumes the data read and
gains value by it
 Purchaser or licenser - buys or licenses
data
Confidentiality: Use of cases in
teaching and research
publications
 Rogers and Draper (2003)
 the use of cases in ethics research and
teaching can be justified by appeal to
the public interest argument” (par.1).
 For teaching, case studies offer vivid
and dramatic examples of what might
otherwise seem like dry theoretical
problems (par.1).
Confidentiality: Use of cases in
teaching and research
publications
 Rogers and Draper (2003)
 suggested “anonymization” of subjects
of the case studies.;
 believe that the main harm arising from
recognition of subject of case study is
“the experience of violation of privacy
that comes from having information that
was given in confidence disclosed in the
public arena” (par.13); and that
 the only justifiable argument for use of
cases in research publications is “public
interest”
Confidentiality: Use of cases in
teaching and research
publications
 Rogers and Draper (2003) in
summary:
 Whenever possible, obtain consent,
and this requirement should be
present in a journal’s instruction for
authors.
 When consent cannot be given,
clarify the standards to be used in
determining whether publication that
would violate privacy would serve
public interest or not.
Confidentiality: Use of cases in
teaching and research
publications
 Rogers and Draper (2003) in
summary:
 Use of cases for research publication
must not exploit the subject (patient)
and must see to it that harm to that
subject is avoided.
 As much as possible, anonymize the
subject of the case studies by
adopting a “stylized presentation
format” where readers “imagine”
rather than identify a case.
THANK YOU
AND

GOOD DAY!