Pathology of Academic Research Ethics: A Phenomenological Study

Ethics in research has some requirements for the practical application of ethics in scientific research. All scientific research may be exposed to ethical challenges. Therefore, the present qualitative research has been conducted with the aim of pathology of research ethics in universities.
The present study is applied in terms of objectives, and was conducted via the qualitative approach and using the descriptive phenomenological method. The population of the research consisted of all faculty members of Azerbaijan Shahid Madani University, among whom 13 participants were selected via the convenience sampling method until theoretical saturation. The research method was in-depth semi-structured interviewing technique. The data obtained from interviews were analyzed and categorized via Colaizzi's seven steps method.
After filtering the data, three main themes and 14 subthemes were extracted. Main themes are as follows: problems and damages of research ethics in universities, reasons for the occurrence of existing problems in the field of academic research ethics, and strategies for improving the state of academic research ethics.
In the field of academic research ethics, there are some structural and cultural weaknesses. There are structural weaknesses because the academic system has provided grounds for faculty members who have no choice to do research and write articles for survival and promotion in this system, and indices of professional ethics and research ethics have not been explained appropriately for them, there are weaknesses.