In today’s rapidly evolving academic landscape—shaped by open access, preprints, and AI-generated content—researchers face both unprecedented opportunities and challenges in maintaining the integrity, originality, and impact of their published work. Here are several strategies they can adopt to ensure their contributions remain respected and credible:

Maintain High Ethical Standards

Researchers must adhere strictly to ethical research and publication practices. This includes:

• Proper citation and acknowledgment of sources
• Transparent methodology and data sharing
• Disclosure of conflicts of interest

Use Reputable Platforms

Choosing credible, peer-reviewed journals and well-regarded preprint servers helps establish legitimacy. Platforms with clear review policies, DOIs, and indexing in recognized databases can ensure work is traceable and preserved.

Register and Timestamp Work

Using tools like ORCID, DOI registration, and preprint servers with time-stamping helps establish priority and originality. It ensures a clear public record of when and by whom research was first shared.

While AI can assist in writing or data analysis, researchers must:

• Clearly disclose any AI-generated content or assistance
• Ensure all AI outputs are reviewed and verified for accuracy
• Avoid plagiarism or content that misrepresents human authorship Promote and Engage

Sharing research through academic social networks (like ResearchGate), institutional repositories, and public forums increases visibility. Engagement through webinars, collaborations, and conferences can enhance the impact and recognition of original work.

Dear Rohit Bansal , let me recommend this related research question with many answers, resources and good discussion...

Hope it will help to your research.

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Scientific_Integrity_on_ResearchGate

Speaking about ethics, this is very good example of non-ethical behaviour of Xiaoyi Zhang

"At the same time, I am also a staff member of an academic institution specializing in academic research. If you have academic journals that require collaboration, we can have in-depth exchanges. Whatsapp:+8618284529771, Email: [email protected]"

It is scam, leading to paper mills activity! Be careful! This is fake profile!

In my view, it is necessary to set strict standards in research and educational institutions on the one hand, while on the other hand it is necessary to spread ethical awareness and adherence to scientific integrity.

Dear Rohit Bansal , I was right about fake profile. ResearchGate has banned this profile!

Publication ethics, retraction notices, and hindsight

"Academic research from years past has increasingly come under scrutiny for a variety of reasons. While it is imperative that flawed studies based on obvious research misconduct receive notices of retraction or expressions of concern, it is unclear to what extent these corrective actions apply to published research that is historical, based on clearly unethical human experimentation, and already de facto retracted based on unanimous views within the academic community. The controversy over the use of unethically obtained specimens and data derived from them for research and education is not new to bioethics, but the US Public Health Service project, the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis (TS), has not been subjected to such scrutiny. We identified 19 articles published under 13 different journal titles between 1936 and 1973 that detailed the results of TS. We examined journal records and found that none of the 19 selected publications derived from TS ever received a retraction notice or expression of concern. Only one of these publications has an accompanying commentary for its online publication context. We discussed various options for potentially amending journal archives containing TS publications, reviewed guidelines from CIOMS, COPE, and ICMJE. We suggest that academic journals establish a clear policy and guidelines on publications based on unethical research, for issuing a retraction for unethical research, as clear as the policy for research misconduct, and that a grace period be introduced into academic publishing to cover unethical research. To promote the publication ethics of correcting the scientific record, we urge the original or successor journals that published TS to consider adding notices to the articles as they deem appropriate."

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/17470161251353298#core-bibr5-17470161251353298-1

Unreliable

Csaba Szabo Columbia Univ. Press (2025)

"Pharmacologist Csaba Szabo is alarmed by the reproducibility crisis in biomedical science. According to reports, attempts to replicate biomedical work succeed in only 10–40% of cases — a dismal statistic. In Unreliable, Szabo guides readers through the issues that have led to this, including methodological flaws, structural problems in science and the hyper-competitive environment for grants. His engaging book is stuffed with facts and evidence.

The author pays special attention to scientific fraud, both by individuals and in the form of mass-produced fraudulent research churned out by paper mills. Dodgy papers are too often included in systematic reviews and meta-analyses, which could lead to people receiving ineffective treatments. Pharmaceutical companies, publishers and universities are failing to effectively promote and enforce integrity in science...

Szabo explores how these failures have hindered scientific progress and impeded the development of new treatments, and he introduces readers to the “science sleuths” who tirelessly uncover misconduct. He proposes comprehensive reforms, from scientific training to the grant system through the publication process, to address the root causes of the crisis. Written in clear language and leavened with a keen sense of irony, Unreliable is an essential account of the reproducibility crisis that gives readers an inside look at how science is actually done."

https://cup.columbia.edu/book/unreliable/9780231216241/

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-02198-2

Oxford University Press to stop publishing China-sponsored science journal

Oxford University Press (OUP) will no longer publish a controversial academic journal sponsored by China’s Ministry of Justice after years of concerns that several papers in the publication did not meet ethical standards about DNA collection.

A statement published on the website of Forensic Sciences Research (FSR) states that OUP will stop publishing the quarterly journal after this year...

In recent years there has been increasing scrutiny about the ethical standards of genetic research papers from China. Last year, a genetics journal from a leading scientific publisher retracted 18 papers from China due to concerns about human rights...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/29/academic-paper-uyghur-genetic-data-retracted-ethical-concerns

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/jul/16/oxford-university-press-stop-publishing-china-sponsored-academic-journal-forensic-sciences-research

it is imperative to implement regulatory frameworks that ensure AI is used responsibly in peer review and scientific publishing. Institutions and journals must establish clear guidelines on the extent to which AI generated critiques should influence editorial decisions. Transparency in AI-assisted review processes is essential to prevent misuse and to uphold ethical standards in research evaluation...

Article The risks of artificial intelligence in research: ethical an...

When I use a word . . . Academic sleuths

"Recent years have seen the emergence of academic sleuths, also known as research integrity sleuths, who devote time to detecting misconduct in academic research publications. The origin of the word “sleuth” has been traced back to a Norwegian word for a track or trail, slōð, but its earlier IndoEuropean roots have not been documented. I hypothesise a root, SLEIS, related to LEIS, also thought to have meant a track or trail. The word “sleuth-hound,” which originally meant a bloodhound, was used to mean a detective in the middle of the 19th century and before long was contracted to “sleuth.”..."

https://www.bmj.com/content/390/bmj.r1838.short

Maintaining the Integrity of the Biomedical Research Record Through Timely, Appropriate Corrective Action

Researchers, academic institutions, and journals have an ethical obligation to correct the research record expeditiously and publicly to maintain the integrity of science...

"Maintaining an accurate public biomedical research record is integral for protecting human health, preserving the integrity of subsequent research, and restoring public confidence in the scientific enterprise. Researchers, academic institutions, and journals have an ethical obligation to correct the research record expeditiously and publicly so that unreliable data are identified and, when possible, replaced by accurate and verifiable data. The current situation in which many institutions hesitate or decline to recommend corrections or retractions, authors resist needed corrections or retractions, and journals fear offending someone in the research ecosystem, is unproductive and unsustainable. A new direction is needed — one in which the primary objective of all the participants in the research enterprise is to ensure the reliability of published data and the integrity of science."

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-law-medicine-and-ethics/article/maintaining-the-integrity-of-the-biomedical-research-record-through-timely-appropriate-corrective-action/CF0AF9317947FD8EC5B126E3ABA92C7C

The unethical burden of public engagement and the ‘alt-output’ problem

Photo essays, podcasts, and other ‘impactful’ outputs are on the rise. While funders cheer innovation and community engagement, communities in crisis settings feel over-researched and under-served. Birte Vogel, Larissa Fast and Jessica Field argue that as local researchers absorb the backlash when visual storytelling meets extraction fatigue, it is time to rethink the ethics of this...

"We make several recommendations around how to approach the different planning, drafting, and practice stages of crisis zone research ethics in our recent policy brief on The Ethics of Research Collaborations in Conflict and Disaster Settings. But, to address concerns around over-research and alt-outputs specifically, we have three urgent recommendations..."

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2025/09/08/the-unethical-burden-of-public-engagement-and-the-alt-output-problem/