PRC flashcards

32 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Research misconduct

Fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in proposing, performing, or reviewing research; excludes honest error and differences of opinion.

Fabrication

Inventing data or results and recording or reporting them as if they were real observations, experiments, or measurements.

Falsification

Manipulating, changing, or omitting research materials, equipment, or data so the research record no longer accurately represents the work.

Plagiarism

Appropriating another person's ideas, processes, results, or words without giving appropriate credit, including unattributed reuse of one's own prior text.

Questionable research practices

Actions that weaken research integrity without meeting misconduct thresholds, such as selective reporting, p-hacking, or undisclosed analytic flexibility.

Authorship criteria

Substantial contribution to conception, design, execution, or interpretation, plus drafting or critical revision and final approval of the submitted version.

Gift authorship

Listing a person as author who made no substantial intellectual contribution, often to secure funding, loyalty, or political advantage.

Ghost authorship

Omitting a person who made substantial contributions from the author list, sometimes with professional writers funded by industry.

Corresponding author

Author designated to handle correspondence and who accepts responsibility for the manuscript's integrity and the accuracy of the published record.

Informed consent

Voluntary agreement by a competent participant after disclosure of purpose, procedures, risks, benefits, alternatives, and right to withdraw.

IRB

Institutional Review Board; independent committee that reviews and approves human-subjects research protocols before enrollment begins.

IACUC

Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee; reviews animal protocols to ensure humane care and regulatory compliance before research begins.

Conflict of interest

A financial or personal interest that could compromise, or appear to compromise, professional judgment in designing, conducting, or reporting research.

Data retention period

Minimum time research records must be kept, commonly 3-10 years and longer for clinical trials, per funder and institutional policy.

Data ownership

Research data generally belong to the institution or funder rather than the individual researcher, who acts as steward.

Peer review

Independent evaluation of a manuscript by experts who assess validity, significance, and clarity, and who must disclose conflicts and keep content confidential.

Retraction

Withdrawal of a published paper when findings are unreliable due to misconduct or honest error, issued by the journal and linked to the original.

Correction (erratum)

Published notice fixing errors that do not invalidate the conclusions, such as mislabeled figures, author names, or citation details.

Duplicate publication

Publishing substantially the same work in more than one journal without disclosure and editorial agreement, which distorts the evidence base.

Salami slicing

Splitting one coherent study into multiple minimal papers to inflate publication counts, obscuring the overall findings from readers.

P-hacking

Repeatedly analyzing or selecting data until a statistically significant result appears, inflating false-positive rates in the literature.

HARKing

Hypothesizing After the Results are Known; presenting post hoc findings as if they were a priori predictions.

Selective reporting

Publishing only favorable outcomes or analyses while omitting others, which biases effect estimates in systematic reviews and meta-analyses.

Preregistration

Publicly registering hypotheses, design, and analysis plan before data collection to reduce flexibility and selective reporting.

Research integrity officer

Institutional official who receives misconduct allegations, conducts inquiries and investigations, and ensures due process for all parties.

Whistleblower protection

Legal and institutional safeguards preventing retaliation against people who report suspected research misconduct in good faith.

Allegation inquiry

Preliminary institutional assessment of whether a misconduct allegation is credible and within scope, preceding a formal investigation.

Research data management plan

Document describing how data will be collected, stored, documented, shared, and preserved, often required at grant application.

FAIR data principles

Data should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable; a framework guiding sharing and metadata practices.

Material transfer agreement

Contract governing sharing of biological or proprietary materials between institutions, specifying permitted use, ownership, and publication rights.

Authorship order convention

First author usually did most of the work; last author often senior or supervising; conventions vary by field and must be agreed early.

Responsible conduct of research

Training and practice covering integrity, data management, authorship, conflicts, mentoring, and protection of human and animal subjects.