New Delhi: The University of Grants Commission, the regulator for Higher Education, has directed all universities and colleges to introduce two Credit Courses for awareness about Publication Ethics and Publication Misconduct, which will be compulsory for all PhD students for pre-registration course work.

The UGC in a letter to all universities has said that these two credit courses – Research and Publication Ethics – will be compulsory for all PhD students for pre-registration course work from the coming academic session.

The Research and Publication Ethics (RPE) credit courses aim at creating awareness about the publication ethics and publication misconduct. The course level is two credit course (30 Hrs).

Eligibility for Research and Publication Ethics (RPE) credit course:  MPhil, PhD students and interested faculty members.

The UGC informed that this course will be available to post graduate students at latter date. Fees applicable as per university rules.

This course will have total 6 units focusing on basics of philosophy of science and ethics, research integrity, publication ethics. Hands on sessions are designed to identify research misconduct and predatory publications. Indexing and citation data bases, open access publications, research metrics (citations, h-index, Impact Factor, etc) and plagiarism tools will be introduced in this course.

The decision was taken by the Commission in its recent meeting.