16. Scientific Misconduct
PJR follows the guidelines provided by the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), the World
Association of Medical Editors (WAME), the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors
(ICMJE) and the Higher Education Commission, Pakistan (HEC) for dealing with scientific
misconduct.
The following examples and forms of misconduct have been taken from WAME, originally with
minor modification from the ORI publication Analysis of Institutional Policies for Responding to
Allegations of Scientific Misconduct:
• Falsification of data: ranges from fabrication to deceptive selective reporting of findings and
omission of conflicting data, or willful suppression and/or distortion of data.
• Plagiarism: The appropriation of the language, ideas, or thoughts of another without
crediting their true source, and representation of them as one's own original work.
• Improprieties of authorship: Improper assignment of credit, such as excluding others,
misrepresentation of the same material as original in more than one publication, inclusion of
individuals as authors who have not made a definite contribution to the work published; or
submission of multi-authored publications without the concurrence of all authors.
• Misappropriation of the ideas of others: an important aspect of scholarly activity is the
exchange of ideas among colleagues. Scholars can acquire novel ideas from others during the
process of reviewing grant applications and manuscripts. However, improper use of such
information can constitute fraud. Wholesale appropriation of such material constitutes
misconduct.
• Violation of generally accepted research practices: Serious deviation from accepted
practices in proposing or carrying out research, improper manipulation of experiments to
obtain biased results, deceptive statistical or analytical manipulations, or improper reporting
of results.
• Material failure to comply with legislative and regulatory requirements affecting
research: Including but not limited to serious or substantial, repeated, willful violations of
applicable local regulations and law involving the use of funds, care of animals, human
subjects, investigational drugs, recombinant products, new devices, or radioactive, biologic, or
chemical materials.
• Inappropriate behaviour in relation to misconduct: this includes unfounded or knowingly
false accusations of misconduct, failure to report known or suspected misconduct, withholding
or destruction of information relevant to a claim of misconduct and retaliation against persons
involved in the allegation or investigation.
Misconduct also includes redundant publication and duplicate publication, lack of declaration
of competing interests and of funding/sponsorship, and other failures of transparency to be
forms of misconduct.
Reponses to possible misconduct
All allegations of scientific misconduct are taken very seriously at PJR. We follow the guidelines
prescribed by the previously mentioned organisations. The manuscript processing will be
halted while the fact-finding investigation is being carried out.
[1] WAME. Recommendations on Publication Ethics Policies for Medical Journals [Internet].
2015 [cited 28 December 2015]. Available
