Different aspects of scientific misconduct among Iranian academic members

Abstract

Objective: Publications and research experiments are a major part of daily activities of the university academic members. Research misconduct, specifying its frequency and identifying the related behaviours is controversial. In recent years, there have been reports of scientific misconduct by Iranian academics. We examined the frequency of research misconduct by academic members in Mashhad University of Medical Sciences in Iran. Method: 157 academic members participated in this study. A validated questionnaire according to Martinson study was used. Results: Our results showed that the most frequently admitted research misconduct was “inaccurate assignment of authorship credit” by 35% of academic members and 54.8% of their colleagues. All the respondents mostly emphasized their colleagues’ engagement in research misconduct rather than themselves. Almost 43% of the respondents had engaged in at least one of the top ten scientific plagiaristic behaviours listed in the table of results. Conclusion: Nearly 43% of the Iranian academic members had engaged in at least one of the top ten misbehaviours over the past three years. A relatively high proportion of misconduct behaviours should be addressed in the scientific community by all relevant institutions and factors and by scientific journal editors.