Correspondence Address:
Dr. Shishir Singh
Department of Conservative Dentistry and Endodontics, Terna Dental College, Nerul, Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra
India

Full Text

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

The last few weeks have been extremely busy processing the large number of submissions. While going through the various articles, I was most impressed to see the wide variety and type of research being done in our country as well as globally. Indian researchers are not leaving any stone unturned in their quest for acquiring new knowledge using all the latest sophisticated research techniques available for their scientific research.

One important fact that comes to my mind is the ethics and integrity aspects of research. Ethics is derived from the Greek word “ethos” which can mean custom, habit, or character, which are the moral principles that govern a person's behavior while doing any activity differentiating between the right and the wrong, which is applied in the field of research too.

All teachers, academia, and researchers need to practice and educate our young budding researchers on this important facet. There are many reasons why we publish, mainly as it is our responsibility toward the society by contributing to the scientific progress. We all need recognition for our work especially by our peers and finally to promote our work for professional progress in the form of research funding and grants. In our ambition to achieve these goals, some very basic protocols get overlooked. Interestingly, the 2010 Singapore statement describes research integrity in four areas, namely honesty in all aspects of research, accountability in the conduct of research, professional courtesy and fairness in working with others, and good stewardship of research on behalf of others.

We must keep away from unethical actions which can lead to negative outcomes such as a published paper getting retracted. Such a withdrawal has an immense negative impact as they are issued publicly, harming the researcher's publication record. There have been instances that such individuals have to stop doing research. Advocating the values of integrity is no one person's responsibility alone but is a shared responsibility of the researchers, the institutions, the research funders, and the publishers. Instilling these values in our scientific research practices is important to bring out the best in our scientists of tomorrow. One of the best ways is inculcating the concept of open research which constitutes protocols set to improve the accessibility, reproducibility, and integrity of research outputs. There are various processes involved in open research wherein all the steps in the research are shared on an open-access platform. Starting from research-designing protocols, abstracts, policy issues, data sharing to transparency in peer reviewing, and collaborating openly with easy access to the research process is the new normal. Encouraging open research initiatives through proper training and right initiatives is the way forward in the right direction. These can come through proper policy initiatives; using technology to our advantage, following Committee on Publication Ethics guidelines, and creating awareness through various available processes in media are suggested toward achieving the right balance of research ethics and integrity in our scientific deliberations and research. I do hope we all take these points seriously and put them into our research practice to ensure a better tomorrow.