Ethical principles of publishing at the University of Jyväskylä

Ethical principles and legislation are followed in all research activities of the University of Jyväskylä. These principles guide publishing activities at the University of Jyväskylä from an ethical point of view. They are followed throughout the University's scientific community, regardless of discipline.

The Rector has approved these Ethical principles of publishing at the University of Jyväskylä 12 June 2020. These principles replace the Ethical principles of publishing signed by the Rector on 15 May 2014.

Introduction and application

The Universities Act (24.7.2009/558 2§) obliges that “the universities shall arrange their activities so as to ensure a high international standard in research, artistic activities, education and tuition in conformity with research integrity”.

University of Jyväskylä is committed to the Finnish National Board on Research Integrity’s (TENK) guidelines The Finnish code of conduct for research integrity and procedures for handling alleged violations of research integrity in Finland (2023, the so called RI-guidelines) and the supplementary recommendation Agreeing on authorship. Recommendation for research publications (2019), and to promote good scientific practice in all its research activities. “Each individual researcher and research group member is primarily responsible for complying with the principles of the responsible conduct of research. Nonetheless, the responsibility also rests on the whole research community: research groups and their principal investigators, the directors of research units in accordance with the management system."

According to the University of Jyväskylä Regulations, 48§: “In addition to the University staff and students, the University community comprises grant researchers, emerita and emeritus professors or other persons with similar contracts, the staff of the group companies of the University and other persons working for the benefit of the University.”

TENK obliges universities to ensure that members of the university community have sufficient expertise in matters related to good scientific practice.

General principles of research integrity

According to TENK's Code of Conduct for Research Integrity (RI Guidelines), the basic principles of research integrity are reliability, honesty, respect, and accountability.

Reliability in ensuring the quality of research, reflected in the design, the methodology, the analysis and the use of resources.
Honesty in developing, undertaking, reviewing, reporting and communicating research in a transparent, fair, full and unbiased way.
Respect for colleagues, research participants, society, ecosystems, cultural heritage and the environment.
Accountability for the research from idea to publication, for its management and organisation, for training, supervision and mentoring, and for its wider impact.

Ethical principles of publishing

The principles of good scientific practice presented in the RI guidelines of TENK, apply also to publishing activities.

The TENK requires that:

respect the work of colleagues and acknowledge their achievements and refer to them in an appropriate manner,
agree on co-authorship and the order of authors according to the Finnish authorship recommendations. International guidelines on authorship apply in Finland only on the basis of a prior agreement between the authors,
communicate about their research in an honest and open manner irrespective of publication format or channel,
inform their partners without delay if they intend to publish material related to their collaboration,
specify funding sources and declare potential conflicts of interest separately for each author.

According to the RI guidelines of TENK, research integrity is violated by:

plagiarism or other inadequate or inappropriate references to previous results,
denigrating or deliberately neglecting to mention other researchers’ contributions,
manipulating authorship by other means,
failure to declare significant conflicts of interest.

Alleged violations are investigated in accordance with TENK guidelines.

TENK has defined the principles related to authorship in its recommendation Agreeing on authorship of scientific publications (2018).

According to these recommendation, “the rights, responsibilities and obligations of the participants in a research project must be agreed upon in a way that all parties approve of immediately at the start of the project”.

Any questions regarding the authorship of a PhD dissertation must be agreed upon well in advance, and the result recorded in the supervision document of the doctoral student.

It is good to be aware of the differences between the disciplines involved, and to negotiate at an early stage how these differences can be reconciled.

“When the authorship of an individual publication is decided, it is important that the practice agreed upon is generally accepted in the discipline in question and that everyone involved is aware of the decision. Especially in multi-disciplinary and international projects it is essential to be aware of the differences between the disciplines involved.”

Furthermore, “in connection with collective work, it is agreed which criteria will be used to define the editor, editor-in-chief or member of the Editorial Board, or to take into account the contribution, for example in the acknowledgements of the publication.”

The disputes are resolved in accordance with the procedure presented in RCR guidelines of TENK.

According to TENK, “author refers to someone who has made such a substantial contribution to the creation of a scientific article or similar publication that they should be included in the list of authors and contributors”.

“Discipline-specific practices vary regarding who is entitled to be included in the list of authors. In addition to writing the text of the published article, the following are all contributions: conceptualising and planning the research, production, analysis or interpretation of the research data, development of data or methods used in the work, editing a collective work, and (for example) creating images to illustrate the research. How these contributions are acknowledged in the publication must be discussed and agreed upon.”

In its recommendation, TENK refers to the ICMJE guidelines of the International Committee of Medical Journals Editors, or the so-called Vancouver recommendations.

The ICMJE guidelines recommend basing authorship on the following four criteria:

Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work AND
Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content AND
Final approval of the version to be published AND
Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.