Ethics & Plagiarism in India & in The Developed World

Ethics seems to be the centre point of any research. Plagiarism seems to be the biggest problem not only in India but also in the developed world. The ethics that need to be followed during publishing articles are overlooked due to the government norms to get the promotion in their profession. Younger generations need to be nurtured to do quality ethical research.The experienced supervisors are very informative and knowledgeable on how to do a research project. The interaction between the supervisor and student is like a ‘Guru and a Shishya’ in olden days where Gurukulas were existing.

India is developing at a rapid rate however; the quality of Indian publications and the research is still lagging behind. Fabrication of data is another disaster of research that is practised which needs to be eliminated. University grants commission has taken up some steps to curb the spread of predatory journals. What I feel is that the research behaviour of the Indian researchers is now at a cross roads. With the liberalization and globalization of Indian drug market India is able to cope up with these drastic changes and still showing growth in the production of generic drugs to supply to the whole world. India is now a global pharmacy of generic drugs. If innovation is added to the reverse engineering Indian pharma industry will grow at a rapid rate and the quality of life of the people around the world will be enhanced.

As a pharmacy graduate I feel that the increasing numbers of start-ups and the return of scientists from abroad to India will make India a better drug manufacturer and I want to be a part of this change. With the advancement of the patenting process similar to the western world Indian researchers are trying to patent their innovations and would like to patent my work as well. With all this chaos in my mind, I am pursuing my PhD. Some say PhD is waste of time as there were no future options for the PhDs as the research done in Indian pharmaceutical industry is just reverse engineering and there is not much value for the PhD because they demand high package and work equally to a 2-3 yr experienced master’s candidate. However, I am determined now to do a quality research that is ethically sound.