Publication Ethics Observance in Pharmaceutical Academic Staffs Papers in Tabriz Pharmacy School

Abstract

Introduction: The ethics of publication is based on the principles and rules adopted by the Committee on Publication Ethics. The committee was founded in 1997 by a small group of editors of medical journals in the UK, but now has more than 9,000 members from all over the world and in all disciplines. Aim: The aim of this study was to review the observance of publishing ethics in the articles published by faculty members of the Faculty of Pharmacy of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences in 2011-2017. Materials and Methods: In this study articles of the Faculty of Pharmacy of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, which were indexed on the Scopus site from 2011 to 2017, included 1862 articles were evaluated. Then, 600 papers were randomly selected for review and finally 60 articles from 2015 to 2017 that published in Pharmaceutical Science Journal of faculty of pharmacy were evaluated for plagiarism. Results: 7.5% of all papers were completely extracted from the student's thesis. 6.9% of them do not comply with some principles, such as the guest's entry. 1.4% of articles include some of the faculty members' family relationships. Out of 621 articles, in 18 (20%) the name of the supervisor was replaced by the student of the thesis as the first author. The highest amount of plagiarism was cited in 60 articles surveyed in a similarity ratio of 30-50 % with a frequency of 46 percent. The error rate of plagiarism of articles in the findings and discussion and conclusion simultaneously equal to 10% and individually in the results was 18.38% and, in the discussion, and conclusion was 10%. Conclusion: Despite a small number of deviations from observance of publishing ethics in published articles, the overview of observance of publication ethics in the researchers of Tabriz Faculty of Pharmacy is desirable.