Students Ethics in the Academic Research Real Behavior versus Expectations

Abstract

Ethics and academic are practically two inseparable concepts, as from the ancient times the erudite and wise leaders of the community were preaching for ethical behavior. Thus having an ethical code of conduct is common practice for the academic world for centuries. However, this code is evolving with the socio-economic changes, as what is right and correct in the present era exceeds common sense and has to cover a lot of situations, peculiarities and special categories of people. Moreover, as the academic curricula has developed, there are more dimensions that need to be taken into consideration for ethical assessment. One of these dimensions is research. Considering that research most of the times involves people and their data, the ethical part is of paramount importance in all three stages – design methodology, data collection and dissemination. In the academic world, research is conducted both by professors and students, the former having more information on what it means to do ethical research. This is the reason for which the present paper focuses on the later – students – as they are required to respect the same codes of ethics, but lack the knowledge in doing that. As it will be shown later in the article, is important first to see what students know about research ethics and then try to build from that towards the current requirements of the university in which they study, the domain in which they specialize and the law of their country.