Ethics

The principles of professional and research ethics (“ethos” - moral character) and deontology (“deon” - duty and “logos” - science) are mandatory for all members of the Doctoral School of Electronics, Telecommunications and Information Technology, regulating the compliance with moral norms and principles:

• professional liberty,
• personal autonomy,
• justice and equity,
• non-discrimination and equal opportunity,
• elimination of conflict of interest,
• professionalism,
• rectitude and intellectual honesty,
• transparency,
• responsibility,
• respect and tolerance.

Ethics committees

• Politehnica University of Bucharest Ethics Committee [link] (university level),
• University Ethics and Management Council for integrity and ethical culture (CEMU) [link] (national level),
• National Scientific Research Ethics, Technological Development, and Innovation Council for good conduct in research and development activities (CNECSDTI) [link] (national level).

Universal ethical principles

• Autonomy principle: respect the right of each person to freely decide their choices, objectives, and own projects, without foreign interference, based on his/her own beliefs and values. Respect the informed consent in research.
• Dignity principle: respect the person as supreme and incomparable value; never treat the person as only means of reaching egotistical objectives, but as the highest goal. We have the right to expect the same treatment. Dignity means mutual respect and tolerance, interdiction of defamation, disinformation, denigration, scientific and administrative information transparency, rectitude and intellectual honesty.
• Benevolence principle: do good and, if you cannot do good without doing harm at the same time, then it is preferable not to act. We have the duty to respect professional integrity, not to cause pain without reason to people and animals, to pursue through the whole activity the wellbeing of the university community and society in general.
• Precautionary principle: we must not act in ways that can be harmful in the future, even if we cannot precisely predict the damage or who will be affected.
• Equity principle: we must share the goods and the university services in an equitable (unbiased) way, not discriminate against people, appreciate them according to merit, needs, contribution and responsibility considering the available resources, eliminate conflicts of interests.

Ethical principles used to exploit scientific research results

• Respect the intellectual property: respect the contribution of all authors of a scientific paper, e.g. who had a significant intellectual contribution, contributed to the review of the content, etc. by crediting them as co-authors.
• Correct source crediting: any information, study, material, idea etc. previously published, which does not belong to the person concerned, can be used only by citing the source(s):
  • All external sources used must be mentioned and cited accordingly.
  • Direct citation: identical imported text (verbatim) from another source is placed in quotation marks, ending with an indication of the source where it comes from.
  • Paraphrasing or summary: if information from other sources, such as ideas, processes, arguments, conclusions, etc. is rephrased or summarized, this is done by mentioning the source where they come from.
  • Data, results, information, graphs, tables: the original source must be mentioned each time such information is referenced, adapted, or reused from other sources.
  • Self-citation: the re-use of information previously published by the author must be done with the appropriate citation of the respective source.
  • Inadequate source crediting is not accepted. This refers to the inadequate or incorrect crediting of a source of another author, such as mentioning, as authors, persons who did not contribute to the achievement of those intellectual results or the omission of authors who contributed to the design and creation of materials without their consent or against their will.
• Correct information report: communicate research results in a correct and accurate way, in accordance with reality. Falsification and fabrication of content are not accepted.
  • Content falsification occurs when a person or group of people provides for publication or distribution, materials whose content is explicitly known by the author(s) to be false or untrue at the time of publication.
  • Content falsification is the fabrication or use of irrelevant materials for the content in question that are the intellectual creation of others.
  • Content falsification represents the use of manipulated, adjusted, or artificially generated data without explicitly mentioning these aspects leading to the false representation of the results.
  • Content falsification represents the use of manipulated or artificially synthesized results as real, without mentioning these aspects.
  • Content falsification is the use of presentations, discoveries or statements that are known to be false but are presented in such a way as to appear real.
• Plagiarism is not accepted. It is considered plagiarism:
  • The process of assimilating or representing as personal the intellectual results of others, for example written materials or creative results including published or unpublished materials, data, research proposals, computer programs.
  • Copying identical (verbatim) or almost identical materials made by other people.
  • Paraphrasing parts of materials belonging to other people without citing the source.
  • Copying elements from materials made by others, such as copying equations, tables, graphs, illustrations, presentations, photographs that are not public or cannot be freely used, without citing sources.
  • Identical or almost identical copying of materials or passages belonging to another person with incorrect citation of the source.
• Self-plagiarism is not accepted: identical (verbatim) or almost identical replication of a significant portion of the materials or personal results already published, without citing the source. Self-plagiarism does not apply to publications based on materials already published by the author unless a clear reference is made to their use in the new material.

References

• Professional Ethics and Deontology Code of Politehnica University of Bucharest, from the University Charter [link],
• The practical guide to the Politehnica University of Bucharest Code of Ethics [link],
• The Integrity Guide in Scientific Research developed by CNECSDTI [link],
• Ethics Guide for Authors of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) [link].