Code of Ethics

AITS strives to achieve academic excellence by providing the highest quality education and by contributing to original and impactful research to solve industrial and societal problems. Therefore, academic integrity and research ethics of the highest level are expected from each and every member of the AITS community, including students and faculty. Academic integrity means adhering to certain academic values and moral conduct. Research ethics are commonly developed practices for creating awareness among researchers related to principles ensuring the scrutiny of research projects and accountability of people as responsible members of the academic community to serve society well. This policy shall be applicable to all students and faculty of AITS engaged in research related activities.

This policy covers the following:

1. Research Ethics
2. Anti-Plagiarism policy

Research Ethics - General Guidelines

• All faculty members are expected to adhere to core values like honesty, integrity, and sincerity and conduct their research in such a manner that the reliability and trust of the college should not be compromised or affected.
• Researchers should keep and preserve raw data of research activity/project for a minimum period of five years with the college, unless there is a requirement for a longer period stipulated by the college.
• The research aims of any study should benefit both society and industry and should cause no social harm.
• Researchers should choose an appropriate research method based on their informed professional expertise
• Researchers should endeavor to ensure factual accuracy and avoid falsification, fabrication, distortion, suppression, or misinterpretation of data.
• Researchers should be able to extrapolate the consequences of research engagement for all participants and attempt to alleviate the potential disadvantages of participation for any individual or category of person.
• Researchers should make sure to conduct reporting and dissemination responsibly.
• Researchers should ensure that their methodology and findings are open for discussion and peer review.
• Researchers should ensure that any indebtedness to previous research as a source of knowledge, data, concepts, and methodology is fully acknowledged in all outputs.
• Due credit should be given to all the authors depending upon their contribution in the research work. If a student or a faculty has worked in a project, and any publication of that project is published, then histher name should be mentioned in the authorship section of the manuscript, depending on the quantum of their contribution.
• The authorship order should be decided in the early stages of a work. All authors must read the completed papers and must willing to take complete responsibility for the data, interpretations, and conclusions presented in the paper.
• The most significant contributor will be the first author of the manuscript. For all papers coming out of Master's degree or a Ph.D. thesis, the first author should preferably be Masters or Ph.D. student, and the corresponding author should be a supervisor.
• Honorary authorship is not permitted.
• The guidelines of the concerned joumal should be followed for including the manes of all contributors in the paper.
• Particulars of the affiliation of the college should be mentioned as per the prescribed format. Students should publish their approved thesis or dissertation work with the consent of the supervisor, unless otherwise stipulated by the college.
• All potentially patentable inventions shall be disclosed to the college.
• All students/faculty members shall update their affiliation or association with this college on various research platforms like research gate, google scholar, etc.
• To ensure academic integrity and research ethics, two panels, one at School level and another at the college level are formulated.

Creating awareness about academic integrity and research ethics

AITS from time to time, conduct training programs to create awareness as on the promotion of academic integrity and the prevention of plagiarism for the faculty, students and scholars.

Anti-plagiarism Policy

Plagiarism is one of the most serious violations of academic integrity and ethics. Anyone engaged in plagiarism threatens the values and beliefs of the academic integrity of the college and undermines histher individual credibility in the community of research scholars. Plagiarism in any form is not permissible in the college and is a serious misconduct which is subject to strict disciplinary action against the person found guilty. The college has a zero tolerance policy on plagiarism.

Plagiarism is using, presenting, or publishing the work of another person as your own without proper citation or acknowledgement. Plagiarism is the act of using others' words or ideas without proper reference or citation. It is very important to give credit, where it is due, to the other person by acknowledging the source of that information.

All published and unpublished material, materials downloaded from internet, copied from lecture handouts, or any other source, whether in manuscript, printed or electronic fom, is covered by this definition. Following and such other acts as prescribed by the college from time to time shall be considered the act of plagiarism:

• Writing someone else's work as your own
• Paraphrasing or copying ideas from someone else's work without giving due credit.
• Stealing unpublished raw data and publishing it without giving due credit.
• Failing to put the words/idea/ infomation within quotes " ..... "
• Giving incorrect information about the source of the quoted material.
• Changing words but copying the sentence structure of a source without giving credit
• Copying many ideas or words from a source that make up the majority of your work irrespective of whether you have given credit or not.
• Writing or reusing one's own words, images etc. from previously published texts is known as self-plagiarism.
• Images are also a form of scientific data and ideally need to be presented as such. Manipulating an image related to your research and publishing the sane, therefore, will fall under the ambit of research misconduct which comes under plagiarism.
• In the case of images/information of any person, the authors should certify that they have obtained all appropriate consent forms. In the form, the individual/legal guardian should give consent for images and other personal information to be reported. The individual/guardian should be informed that names and initials will not be published and due efforts will be made to conceal the individual's identity, but anonymity cannot be guaranteed.
• The practice of presenting the same research findings in more than one conference (encore abstracts) except (i) the congress pemits it; (ii) copyright requirements are respected; (iii) prior presentations are disclosed; and (iv) repeated presentation is to reach a different audience.

Scope

This policy applies to all the written/unwritten and published/unpublished works produced at and for AITS. The written works include academic and research publications / IPR (research papers, books, articles, assignments, project reports, thesis (Masters, and Ph.D.), research reports, patents, copyrights, design registrations etc. The unpublished works also include experimental data. The plagiarism policy applies to all members of the AITS community including students and faculty. The Deans/IIODs shall also be responsible for disseminating the information about plagiarism.

Reporting instances of plagiarism

• It shall be the responsibility of the supervisor/corresponding author to check the paper/thesis etc. for plagiarism.
• The document should be subjected to appropriate plagiarism software prescribed by the college (e.g., Urkund or Turnitin) and the supervisor should check the content manually too.
• If plagiarism is detected, the head of the department will send his/her report based on software results to the respective faculty members.