The Journal of Microbiology and Biology Education is not a likely source of content for this blog, but their 2014 Special Issue (Vol. 15, Issue 2) is particularly interesting, due to its focus on research ethics.
Though primarily addressed to scientists in the fields of Microbiology and Biology, the issue contains many useful insights about research integrity that are applicable to all of the academe. There are six main sections:
- Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) education, defined as education about “who, what, where, when, by whom, and how to evaluate what has been accomplished”;
- Ethics in Science, where C. K. Gunsalus’ essay on the “integrity mindset” and the discussion of cross-cultural issues in research ethics education, by Elizabeth Heitman are particularly interesting;
- Research Community, which focusses on ethics in academic publishing (featuring an article by Adam Marcus & Ivan Oransky of Retraction Watch);
- New Perspectives on Research Integrity, including an article by Janet D. Stemwedel who looks into Life after Misconduct;
- Ethics in the Classroom, in which I found Kelly C. Smith’s description of an “ethics boot camp” especially useful;
- Instructional Approaches to Ethics, which seems to focus rather sharply on the Life Sciences.
As I write this post, I cannot help thinking how useful a similar special issue might be focusing on topics such as TESOL and Applied Linguistics (if you do happen to know of one, by the way, please let me know!). In the meanwhile, you can find the link to the table of contents of JMBE below:
Journal of Microbiology and Biology Education: Special Issue on Scientific Ethics
Featured Image by Anna Creech (eclecticlibrarian @ Flickr) | CC BY-NC-SA
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