The results of well-conducted research activities should not only satisfy the intellectual curiosity of those who worked on them, but also be utilized as collective knowledge. It is expected that the application of the findings should lead to a richer overall life. Therefore, research results must be communicated to many people through oral or poster presentations, publication, and the Internet. The following are considerations one must be careful about:
1) Avoid making research results excessively appealing
When publishing study outcomes, it is important to express them accurately. Don’t overstate your conclusions, not to mention, don’t fabricate or falsify data. The report should also specify the circumstances under which the work was conducted so that anyone can replicate it.
Some research could produce patentable results. When applying for a patent, consult with your research mentor or a patent expert.
2) Contributors
In general, only those who have worked on the study together are authors of its publication. If you did not, but otherwise helped in some way, your name should be given in the acknowledgments.
3) Research funding
When you receive a grant from a school or foundation for your work, you need to record it in the acknowledgments.
The rules for including co-authors and acknowledgments may differ depending on the publication medium, the practices of your research field, and the policies of your school. Consult with your research leader before publishing your research to find out how to proceed.
4) Examples of Research Misconduct
- Mr. A found an interesting study on a website. He conducted the same experiment but did not quote the earlier work and published his results as if he had discovered the method.
- Mr. B took over his senior’s research at school and published everything including what his colleague had found as if he himself had found it.
- Mr. C asked to try a prototype designed by his classmates. They didn’t fully explain however the possible dangers in advance.
- Ms. D assumed that the measurement device that she had built displayed the correct value. She did not calibrate it to actually obtain the correct value and published the data as it was.
- Mr. E used frogs to study the effects of pesticides, but he did not study methods in advance that do not use vertebrates.
- Ms. F went to collect fossils and found interesting ones being sold at a souvenir shop. She then bought them and reported it as if she had found them in the field.
- When collecting personal information through a survey questionnaire, we did not obtain informed consent from the research subjects and processed the data in a way that identified individuals.
- Mr. G was going to present his research results in English, but the day of presentation turned out to be the same day of a school event, so he asked his friend who is good at English to do it for him.