– Department of Science and Technology, Saadane Tabatabainia: Scientific frauds and research misconducts are one of the plagues of the world of science. Plagiarism, shadow writing, manipulating or creating data to achieve desired results, plagiarism or using other people’s ideas and data without citation, the existence of article or thesis sales centers are among the things that undermine public trust in science and the activities of academics.
Dealing with these abuses is the responsibility of an institution Institute It is not special, but it is necessary that academic and research institutions, devices judicial And even the cultural officials should cooperate with each other in this field; To the extent that the observance of scientific ethics becomes a culture.
In the past few days, we published a report about underground research networks (link) and proposing scientific fraud to faculty members and researchers. In this report, we intend to examine the performance of various departments and institutions active in the field of combating scientific fraud.
In order to prevent these violations and scientific misconducts, more than seven years ago, in 2016, the law on preventing and dealing with fraud in the preparation of scientific works was approved in the Islamic Council of Parliament, and in 2018, the executive regulations of this law were promulgated. In this law, the Ministry of Science and the Ministry of Health are required to form ministerial working groups and universities and research centers are required to set up research ethics working groups at the level Institute have been Investigating and diagnosing the causes and areas of violations and applying preventive measures, promoting ethics in research, planning to increase the level of awareness of faculty members, students and staff. Institutereview and expert reports of committing research violations, etc. are among the duties of these working groups. Also, in order to prevent such violations, education to faculty members, researchers and students and making them aware of scientific violations should also be considered in these working groups.
Each of the universities and institutions of higher education and research, both governmental and non-governmental, approved by the Development Council of the Ministry of Science and Health and other legal authorities and seminaries licensed by the Development Council of Theological Seminaries are required to register and matching Dissertations, treatises and proposals in systems Irandak are registration and matching These documents are done to prevent duplication and plagiarism.
performance Irandak In the register and Similarities done is published regularly and the performance of various institutions in the implementation of this law is fully known. The latest published statistics of registration performance by various institutions in the academic year 140 are as follows:
Institutions’ performance in registering theses, dissertations, etc suggested Based on their organizational affiliation in the academic year 1402-1403
The Executive Regulations of the Prevention and Combating Fraud Law had a legal defect. in bylaws Executive approved in 2018 in the explanation Institute Irandak the term “Irandak and Institutions equal to it” was mentioned and this issue was the reason for the implementation of the “registration” and “identification» Dissertations, treatises and proposals, various institutions, including the Ministry of Health, Azad University, and the seminary, have started parallel institutions. Irandak do To solve this problem, the Cabinet of Ministers in March 1401 of this section of bylaws corrected the executive and stated that “Irandak The sole custodian of the register and identification It is theses”.
But the problem of parallel institutions Irandak Not yet resolved. According to the report that was published by the Research Center of the Islamic Council in August of this year, despite the amendment of the Executive Regulations of the Law in the Council of Ministers, the problem of parallel institutions with Irandak It has not yet been resolved and remains in effect. It is also mentioned in this report that the Ministry of Health, Islamic Azad University and Seminary in two issues identification And the pious record and suggestedhave had the lowest performance in the academic year 1401-1402.
This issue shows that collecting research data in a system, integrating them and matching They have not been as successful as they should be to prevent duplicate research and academic plagiarism.
Setting up a system of teaching and testing ethics in research
In order to implement the law on preventing and combating fraud, one of the measures taken in the Ministry of Science, in addition to holding workshops on ethics in research, is the launch of the “Ethics Training and Examination System (AVA)” under the supervision of the Iranian Research Institute of Science and Information Technology, since February 1402. is
This system seeks to teach research ethics to researchers by providing educational packages to users, and then evaluates the person’s knowledge in this field through a test.
Completing this course and obtaining an ethics certificate is currently not mandatory for researchers, but it is going to be mandatory for all faculty members and graduate students to obtain an ethics certificate from the Ava system soon.
Based on the information provided by Iran Research Institute of Information Science and Technology (Eindhoven) provided to Mehr news agency; From the beginning of the launch of the Ava system in February 1402 until the end of September 1403, a number of 1225 users have registered in this system, of which 40% are students, 44% are faculty members, and 11% are university graduates.
The number of users of the Ava system until September 1403
Among the people registered in this system, 531 people have participated in the exam and 300 research ethics certificates have been issued to people. 60% of the issued certificates (182 certificates) were for faculty members and 33% (99 certificates) were for students; Also, 4% of graduates and 3% of other users have received a certificate of ethics training in research.
Certificates issued in the Ava system based on user roles
Dealing with scientific misconduct in working groups and ethics committees in research
Another issue that must be done to prevent and deal with fraud is to punish the wrongdoers. This duty is the responsibility of ethics committees in research in universities.
Universities and higher education and research institutions, both governmental and non-governmental, approved by the Development Council of the Ministry and other legal authorities and seminaries licensed by the Development Council of Theological Seminaries are required to form ethics committees or working groups in research. Institutional According to the ministry, according to their organizational structure, they do not have the possibility to form a research ethics working group, they should also be subordinate to the research ethics working group of one of the public universities.
The Ministry of Science’s Vice-Chancellor for Research has provided Mehr news agency with information on the performance of ethics working groups in research in the years 1396 to 1402.
Based on these data; from 1396 to 1402; in 185 disciplinary committees vote Issued to students.
Also, in this period of time, 237 cases in the disciplinary board of faculty members led to vote has been
The comparison of the statistics of faculty members’ and students’ cases shows that both in research ethics working groups and in disciplinary boards, the number of cases of faculty members is more than that of students.
The performance of ethics working groups in research in the Ministry of Health
One of the actions taken by the Ministry of Health in this field is that researchers have been required to obtain the “Code of Ethics in Research” before starting research work. According to the information of the National System of Ethics in Biomedical Research of the Ministry of Health, 113 thousand 809 research projects and 182 thousand 410 theses have been approved in this system.
In July of this year, the ministerial working group on ethics in the research of the Ministry of Health published a report on the performance of the secretariat of this working group in 1402, but no information is available about the working group’s performance in previous years. According to this report; In 1402, out of 450 requests sent by medical sciences universities, 301 permits were issued for conducting research ethics workshops, and an average of 4.5 workshops were held in each medical science university of the country.
In this report, it is stated that out of 129 violations reported to the Ministerial Working Group on Ethics in Research in 1402, research violations were confirmed in 116 cases, and violations were not proven in 13 cases.
The performance statistics of the ethics working group in the research of the Ministry of Health in 1402
Are the judicial officials of the Ministry of Science and the Ministry of Health active?
Another part of the duties specified by the law on preventing and combating fraud in the preparation of scientific works is related to the appointment of special judicial officers, who are required to conduct the necessary investigations in the field of crimes that are the subject of this law; But information about the officers judicial Not published.
Dealing with scientific fraud requires information
According to Mehr, despite the fact that the Ministry of Science and the Ministry of Health have done their work in the field of preventing and dealing with fraud to some extent, there are still questions regarding the published statistics; Why is the number of ethics cases in the research of faculty members more than that of students? Why in 1401 the statistics of the cases resulting in vote Are there more students in disciplinary committees than in other years? Why are the performance statistics of the ethics committees in the research of the Ministry of Science and the Ministry of Health not published regularly and periodically?
Another important question that exists is that in the past, the Legal Vice-Chancellor of the Ministry of Science announced its performance in the seal of the sales units of articles and theses, but no statistics of the performance of this Vice-Chancellor in this field have been published in the past two years.
Publishing regular and up-to-date statistics on the performance of various institutions in the field of dealing with The surfers Science can be a sign of the importance of this issue in the eyes of officials Z be related A more serious attention to this issue can separate the accounts of healthy researchers and those who have engaged in scientific misconduct and warn those who decide to commit fraud.
Fighting scientific frauds and misbehavior Research cannot happen behind closed doors; Dealing with these behaviors requires clarification and informing the media. Reporting on this issue does not call into question the performance of all researchers and academics, but rather indicates a comprehensive effort to de-pestify science.
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