The Institute organized a half a day workshop and discussion on “Academic Ethics”. This workshop was part of the institutes initiative in maintaining the highest level of academic integrity, by sensitizing and engaging its researchers and faculty in discussions regarding scientific ethics. This workshop was attended by over 175 researchers and faculty of the institute.

Dr. Maria Thaker, who is a faculty at the Centre for Ecological Sciences at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore tackled issues related to scientific ethics and plagiarism. The discussions enabled researchers to deliberate on what plagiarism is, what is considered data fudging or massaging and other ethical breaches that are generally made knowingly or unknowingly. This was followed by a short demonstration of plagiarism detection software, which the institute subscribes to, “iThenticate”, by Mr. Anand Bajpai, Area Manager, Turnitin. This enables researchers and faculty to achieve and maintain ethical standards for publications that are directly or indirectly result from the research/ projects conducted by the institute. The two sessions were followed by an interactive session, where several interesting questions on the moral codes involved in doing scientific research, the nitty-gritties of what is considered plagiarism, and how to avoid these slip-ups was brought up by the researchers.