Ethics in nursing research and research publications.

Abstract

When we are discussing about ethics in research and research publications, we are speaking about what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is bad. Ethics is the cornerstone in every research. Ethical considerations are needed to guarantee the quality of scientific work. They also make visible researchers’ right to conduct their study. Ethical principles must be on researchers’ mind during the whole research process, and ethics belongs to every phase of the process. Taking care of the ethical questions is the responsibility of the researcher and publisher, but at the same time, it also gives protection for them and most importantly for the study participants. High-quality publication forums publish only ethically approved studies and articles based on them. The approval from ethical board gives both the researchers and study participants verification that the research process is well prepared and it acknowledges the rights a study participant has. The rights are respecting the autonomy of research subjects, avoiding harm and privacy and data protection – not harming her or him, anonymity, how receiving the informed consent to participate and the possibility to discontinue the study without reason. Research integrity is a term that emphasises the honesty and integrity that all researchers are required to adopt in their research activities. Responsible conduct of research and procedures for handling allegations of misconduct in Finland, or the ethical questions have been actual in spring 2018 especially in Europe, when European Union's data protection rules became applicable on 25th of April after a two-year transition period (http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32016R0679). One of the focuses was to set global data protection standards. The importance of the ethical questions is not novel, but it has been acknowledged already decades. For example in Finland, the Ministry of Education and Culture in Finland (Decree 1347/1991) appointed The Finnish Advisory Board on Research Integrity (TENK). It was established to promote the responsible conduct of research, to prevent research misconduct, to promote discussion and to spread information on research integrity in Finland and to monitor international developments in the field of research integrity. In 1994, the Advisory Board formulated the first national guidelines to handle cases of alleged research misconduct. The guidelines were later revised in 1998, 2002 and updated in 2012. (http://www.tenk.fi/sites/tenk.fi/files/HTK_ohje_2012.pdf) The objective of the guidelines is ‘to promote the responsible conduct of research and to prevent misconduct in research in all organizations involved in research work, such as universities, research institutes and universities of applied sciences’. The guidelines include a nine principle list of the responsible conduct of research. The first principle states that (i) the research follows the principles that are endorsed by the research community, that is, integrity, meticulousness and accuracy in conducting research and in recording, presenting and evaluating the research results. And in the second (ii), the methods applied for data acquisition as well as for research and evaluation conform to scientific criteria and are ethically sustainable. When publishing the research results, the results are communicated in an open and responsible fashion that is intrinsic to the dissemination of scientific knowledge. The Advisory Board defines the task to promote the responsible conduct of research for the learned societies in Finland, but this can also be applicable for the NCCS. As an example, it states the responsible publication through a peer review system of scholarly and scientific publications. In the publication, the Advisory Board also discusses about the violations of the responsible conduct of research, such as unethical and dishonest practices that damage research, and in worst cases, these invalidate the research results. It also gives guidelines for handling alleged violations of the responsible conduct of research and defines the process for handling allegations of the responsible conduct of research. Some codes of conduct jointly created and agreed upon are The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity (European Science Foundation ESF & ALL European Academies ALLEA 2017), the Montreal Statement on Research Integrity (World Conference on Research Integrity 2013, Montreal) and the Code of Conduct and Best Practice Guidelines for Journal Editors (Committee on Publication Ethics, COPE 2011). The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity (http://www.allea.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/ALLEA-European-Code-of-Conduct-for-Research-Integrity-2017-1.pdf) gives guidelines for publication and dissemination, which also we in Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences follow. According to it, all authors are fully responsible for the content of a publication, unless otherwise specified. The authors also need to agree about the sequence of authorship and acknowledge the significant contribution from each of the authors. In the manuscript, authors need to acknowledge important work and intellectual contributions of others and cite-related work correctly. The Code of Conduct gives also guidelines for reviewing, evaluating and editing, such as stating the seriously of researchers’ commitment to the research community by participating in the important work of refereeing, reviewing and evaluation. The reviews should be carried out in a transparent and justifiable manner. During the review process, the reviewers and editors may get important information, but they need to respect the rights of authors and seek permission to make use of the ideas, data or interpretations presented. To avoid the sharing of the important information, the double-blind review process is in use. It means that neither authors nor reviewers get to know each other and the process will stay anonymous. Manuscript without ethical discussion and ethical approval will be rejected without even sending them to review process. Also, when the ethical statement is not needed, the authors are obliged to discuss about it and describe why. And when there is a possibility of violation of ethical integrity, a plagiarism checking tool can be implemented via the manuscript central in Journal's homepage. When everybody respects ethical integrity, our journal will stay as a high-level publication as has already been during all its years.