Ethical Issues in Scientific Publications: Types and Reasons of Scientific Misconduct in Medical Research

Nowadays, the role of scientific publications in the development of countries is crucial and significant. So, most people and organizations try to increase the number of scientific publications to promote their national and international level. In this case, it is possible to ignore the standards and ethical issues in writing and publishing of scientific literature. This, especially in the medical field, sometimes has been found to cause irreparable damage to the scientific prestige of the scientific community. In this study, each of the scientific misconducts considered and provided some strategies to prevent of this phenomenon. The main issues that were discussed include authorship (ghost and guest authors), plagiarism, overlapping publications (duplicate submission, redundant publication), data fabrication and falsification and conflict of interest. At the end, Duties and Responsibilities of Medical Journal Editors are presented to prevent the occurrence of these misconducts.