Elements of research misconduct

Abstract

What do scientists, educators, librarians, and game designers all have in common. In the fall of 2010, this team at the University of Florida was awarded a grant from the NSF to support Gaming Against Plagiarism (GAP). The purpose is to develop a self-directed, interactive, online game to educate STEM graduate students to recognize and avoid plagiarism, including falsification and fabrication of data. GAP's intellectual merit lies in its goal of training these students in U.S. institutions to function effectively and ethically as authors within multinational research teams. This talk will discuss the four phases of the game: preliminary content development, design and development, usability, and evaluation. The team conducted a survey to elucidate students' perceptions of plagiarism and research misconduct. The overall results, including Chem.-specific concerns, will be discussed. This grant project highlights the role that subject librarians can "play" in plagiarism and research misconduct awareness campus-wide.