Grey Areas in Scientific Publication

Publication ethics accounts for applicability of moral principles in the publication process. Publishing an article depends largely on trust and is a mode of knowledge enhancement. Academic publication encompasses the quality of the scientific work of the author/s and the institutions that support them. It is a cross-linked ethical behaviour of all individual bodies involved in the act of publishing: the author, the journal editor, the peer reviewer, the publisher and the sponsored journals. It is their complied trusted actions that were marked with the lineaments of quality of scientific publishing article.

‘In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others. In ethics he is guilty if he only

thinks of doing so’ ........................................................................................ ‘Immanuel Kant’

The act of scientific work is a process of iterative approach to objective truth. Most of time, unsuccessful scientific works are supposed to serve as ‘cannon fodder’ for successful research work, so that chaotic, clouded facts could be clarified. This in turn, results in supplants of flawed observations by fundamentally supported better observations. This reduces fraud work (e.g., data fabrication or data falsification). To reduce the falsification the measurement validation, hypothesis testing, random allocation, blinding of outcome assessment, replication of results, referee and peer review are the secret keys to establish the truthful scientific data. Publication ethical practices must be actively promoted and will be established when editors put trust on peer reviewers to provide fair assessments, authors trust on editors to select appropriate peer reviewers, and readers put trust in the peer-review process. Good decisions and strong editorial processes should be designed to foster a sustainable and efficient publishing system, which will benefit academic societies, journal editors, authors, research funders, readers, and publishers. Observing ethical practice in research publication is vital element in scientific writing.