Questions tagged [ethics]
On making a decision based on morals or common ethical codes instead of etiquette, rules, institutional or government policy, or technical or procedural reasons.
1,992
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Seeking Guidance on Comparing Algorithm Performance Metrics in Research Compilation
I am currently working on a research problem where the existing literature proposes an algorithm that is tested on data generating 100,000 integer values within the range of 0 to 20. The common ...
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Can I publish a part of my master thesis without having my master thesis supervisor as a co-author?
I completed my master degree at one of the top universities in Europe more than 5 years ago. Me and my supervisor had some conflicts at the end of my thesis submission and then he was not interested ...
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ethics form withdrawn during the international research funding process
I am working at a teaching-focused university. Recently I secured some research grants from my native country. This small private research group supports early-career researchers and just sent the ...
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Is failing to cite similar work in a conference submission considered unethical?
My team and I recently encountered a situation where another research team, also funded by the same agency as us, had a paper accepted at a conference. Upon reviewing their paper, we noticed ...
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What should I do if I suspect one of the journal reviews I got is AI-generated?
I’ve submitted a paper to a reputable journal and received two reviews asking for a revision. One of the reviews is on-topic and helpful. The other, however, I suspect was generated by an AI based on ...
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How do I start a priority dispute?
I'm hoping to get advice on this issue. Here's a rough chronology:
A few years ago, I published a method on arXiv and presented it at a few conferences. I tried publishing the work in a journal, but ...
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Forgot to give a copy of consent form to participants throughout qualifier project and dissertation data collection. What are my next steps?
I'm a 4th year doctoral candidate who recently finished data collection for my dissertation. However, I have some bad news that wasn't pointed out to me until I trained a prospective research ...
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How to mark paper as mainly my work before moving institutions
I have a paper that has some important work. I recently graduated and am about to work at a top 5 tech firm's AI research division. As part of the interview, they seemed really excited about this work ...
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Problems evaluating a system with unexplainable results
I am writing a master's thesis in a Machine Learning domain.
I created a system and I am now testing it.
I designed most of my system while validating on benchmark set A. The results are good and ...
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Consequences of publishing work using text from millions of Sci-Hub articles
I have a project that involves large-scale text embedding of biological literature. In this case, each biology article would be given a set of numbers (embedding) based on the text in the article. We ...
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My paper was accepted by a Journal four years ago, but it has not been published yet. They didn't answer my last e-mail about it. What can I do?
It is a very important journal in the field. My paper is a letter explaining that an article previously published in that journal had a mistake, and that the correction reverts the result. The paper ...
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How to not feel guilty when reporting possible misconduct during exam/coursework as a teacher?
I am teaching a small class in my university. This is my first time, and as I am still a PhD student and the university was missing a teacher, I ended being selected to present it.
It is a programming ...
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Removing name post-publication (moral objection to research)
I've been struggling with this issue for quite some time. I'm a postdoc who recently switched fields. I transferred from a field that had numerous ethical complications to a field that has almost no ...
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How can I appeal an apparently unethical decision to take down a job posting early?
I've found a call for PhD students or data scientists at a certain university. The instructions were very clear that applications would be accepted until Oct 12th 2023, and only then they would be ...
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Student requests my presence while doing evaluation without grades
As a private tutor, a student has requested my presence during an evaluation that does not involve assigning grades. I'm unsure about the ethical implications of this. Could the community provide ...
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Is it unethical to change the affiliation of a published chapter from my PhD thesis after candidature?
I completed my PhD research at the University, submitted my thesis draft for examination, and began working at a company co-founded by my PhD supervisor. Before completing my thesis examination, I ...
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Is it unethical to use ChatGPT to create abstracts?
I am interested in knowing whether it is ethical to use ChatGPT to write the abstract for a schoolwork/paper I wrote. The paper itself is my original work. Is it OK to use ChatGPT to help with an ...
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What response is reasonable to expect of a school child in the event that they have seen an exam question prior to the exam? [closed]
It is in the news that a child was stripped of their exam result after it emerged that while reviewing for the exam, they had found the same question online. It seems that they were not aware it was ...
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Realized error in testing of machine learning paper
I submitted a paper in a major machine learning conference recently. The paper submission deadline passed ~2 weeks ago and the appendix submission deadline passed ~1 week ago. I just realized an issue ...
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What to do if a paper is going to be published with my name included when they ignored repeated measures?
I told these people there was not much to report about their data because they had a very small number of independent samples with a lot of repeated measures. Their measures were all categorical too. ...
maglorismyspiritanimal
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I feel so overwhelmed by my professors' work. When and how to approach them for undergraduate project?
I am a 3rd year Undergraduate Student looking to work on mini-Projects/Projects under professors in my department. I am interested in Signal Processing and Communication Systems, and while I have done ...
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Is research done by breaking copyright publishable?
I was playing around with some data that I got with a license not to use the data in this manner on my own time. I found some results that are better than those published in my field in a non-trivial ...
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How to resolve accidental double submission
I submitted a paper a couple months ago. I wasn't super happy with the results I published and ended up rewriting major sections of the paper (mainly for clarity rather than content). I got some ...
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Phd supervisor enrolling new phd to further develop my material without telling me
I am doing a Ph.D. in chemistry/material science in Sweden and during my first two years I developed a novel material that has great potential for commicialization for medical applications.
My ...
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I'm changing PhD programs, and I got a terrible recomendation letter form my advisor. I found out by accident. What do I do now? I'm shocked
I’ll try to not be too specific for the sake of anonymity. I’m a STEM PhD student at one of the top-15 universities in the US. My own advisor said that I did great academically and made good progress ...
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Ethically correct way to involve student in research and publication
My collaborator has a PhD student (just starting their 2nd year) who as part of their project runs computer simulations, as directed by their supervisor. These brought up a result that is (1) ...
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Conference abstract - refer to paper under review
I am currently revising a journal article ("paper 1") that came back as "major revision". I intend to submit an abstract to a conference ("paper 2"). Paper 2 presents ...
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3
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After I put a paper on arXiv proving X, I found out someone had previously proved X already. What next?
I recently put a paper on arXiv proving X. Shortly after, I received an email from L letting me know that my result was proven quite a while ago by G. I was not aware of the paper by G and there is no ...
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Authorship Disputes and Contributions in Collaborative Research Projects
Background
My colleague (referred to as X) and I collaborated on two research endeavors, termed A and B. While our overarching goals aligned, our specific inputs varied due to individual commitments, ...
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Is it ethical to present the performance of an implementation that uses undisclosed optimizations?
Our research group sometimes does the following:
There is some problem P, and we are writing a paper about a novel technique T.
In one of the sections of the paper, we try to empirically show that T ...
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In the United States, are there any ethical oversights on self-funded and published research?
I'm currently working on my CITI ethical human research certification. Given its dense nature my mind started to wander and I had the realization that all the protocols and ramifications I've so far ...
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Tricky situation with affiliation [closed]
I would like to hear an advice for a slightly complicated situation.
I'm currently a postdoc working on a revolutionary project during the last year. During this year, my boss gave me a real hard time ...
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Coauthor copying text - is it plagiarism, and what should I do?
Someone I coauthored a paper with a couple of years ago has recently posted a new preprint (with some new authors) in which several paragraphs have been copied from this earlier paper; at least two ...
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Does publishing in Russian journals or collaborating with Russian researchers on a paper harm my reputation? [duplicate]
Ever since the escalation of the war in Ukraine in 2022, numerous institutions have reacted to the event in different ways. Some cut partnerships with Russian scholars completely while others took a ...
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A top German professor practises scientific misconduct according to his own institute's guidelines. What should be done about this?
There is a person who is a very big name in a certain field of a certain science subject. He is a professor at a top German university and also runs a research institution.
He gets his postdocs and ...
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Coworker hiding and stealing lab material
We found out that a graduate student coworker was hiding materials and even throwing them away when they realised they might get caught.
With this they were not only stealing but also actively ...
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Is declining an offer to give a talk at a conference halfway around the world a bad idea?
My group leader was supposed to give an invited presentation (all expenses paid) at a conference halfway around the world. Due to personal reasons he can't go (more or less last minute, the event is ...
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Conference witholding reviewer feedback until registration - possible predatory conference?
I recently submitted a paper to a CS conference which was accepted after about ~2 weeks. Upon acceptance they notified me that reviewer feedback was withheld until registration was completed (~$490).
...
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Famous professor refuses to cite my paper that was published before him in the same area
I wrote a paper that had a similar idea to a paper that a famous professor wrote. I put my paper in arXiv. He put his paper on arXiv after me. I asked him to cite my paper, but he outright refused to ...
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Using a publicly available dataset in my paper
I would like to publish a journal paper and an ArXiV preprint, where I validate my results using the dataset available here (scroll down to the Files section).
I would like to submit my paper to IEEE ...
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Someone claim to "independently discovered the same thing (two years after me)"
I emailed an famous professor a paper (say paper B) that corrects a critical mistake in their old, well-received paper (say paper A). I invite them to coauthor. They neither agree nor disagree. They ...
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Collaboration outside PI's lab and ethics dilemma
I am currently a Postdoc at the University of A. I did my PhD (in Computer Science, if it matters) at the University of NotA. All my Postdoc funding (salary, etc.) comes from my current PI's grant.
I ...
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Does the editorial board of a journal have the ethical right to refuse publication for insulting the reviewer?
In their response to a review, the authors insult the reviewer, question their professional knowledge and the comments made regarding the finalization of the publication.
The reviewer cannot refuse ...
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PhD Supervisor using my fundings?
I'm in the middle of my Ph.D., and I came to the realization that my supervisor might be doing something unethical (not illegal thought).
I have a large fund to cover expenses related to training and ...
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Drop from co-authorship of manuscript
I was on a internship abroad. We started a topic that is also carried out by their other student. The new research was repetitive, so I decided to take my time and automate the process. I spent some ...
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I got caught cheating on an online exam and I feel so guilty. What do I do?
What happened:
I got caught cheating on an online exam consisting of 25 multiple-choice questions and a written part of my exam worth 55/80 marks. I had access to a one-page cheat sheet, but I still ...
user174253
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Is it ethical to re-submit a manuscript without addressing comments from a particular reviewer while asking the editor to exclude them?
We have a manuscript that has been rejected from different journals twice: once after initial review, once after the editor felt we didn't address the reviewer comments appropriately.
In both cases ...
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Author contributions: Listed as "writing original draft" despite not writing anything
I am the first author for a review paper with ~10 authors. I wrote the full first draft entirely alone (about 8,000 words and 200+ references). Then, I opened the (very polished) draft to all authors ...
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Should I disclose my academic dishonesty on grad applications?
I just graduated in May this year (2023), and in my last semester of senior year, I was caught cheating on an exam and have academic dishonesty on my record, and I'm trying to apply for accelerated ...
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Referee for two papers by the same author: can I let them know?
I am a referee for two papers by the same author: can I acknowledge in the second report (the first was almost ready when I was invited to referee the second one) my report to the first paper?
To give ...
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