The present cases of scientific misconduct are only the tip of the iceberg. In Japan, government, founding bodies, universities, and scientific community do not establish the managing system to protect scientific integrity. Japan dose not have a similar organization of the ORI (Office of Research Integrity) in USA. Now a few researchers have a concern for research evaluation and scientific misconduct. In future, these topics, especially scientific integrity becomes more important one. This paper described on occurrence of scientific misconduct case, its definition, authorship, and duplicate publication. We also emplhasized to identify misconduct cases in order to distribute reliable information to scientific community and also general public.

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Ethical problems in science and technology are very important recently. Three kinds of ethical problem should be distinguished : system security problem, new technology problem, and life-style choice problem. Engineering ethics education should be based on these three kinds. Also important is the problem of science-technology relation. Sciece and technology used to be separate, but now they are mixed. Patent and priority is almost one thing in 21st century science and technology, especially information technology and bio-science. Citizen participation to scince and technology is one of the most important issues in science ethics and engineering ethics.

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Observance of ethical standard in publication of scientific information is important for editors, reviewers and authors, and especially in issuing medical journals careful attention must be paid to ethics because of its speciality. Basically medical journals are published for medical scientists for the purpose of mutual understanding and education. Alternatively, once they were published, the articles might be utilized for either assessment of medical administration or judgement of medical treatment. Recently, moreover, various informations are easily given to patients and their family, in proportion as the progress in internet systems. These situations could cause new ethical innovation in this field. In terms of responsibilities of editors and reviewers, ethical problems are observed at the time of acceptance. that is, which is more harmful to accept sub-standard article or reject novel and original articles. As for peer review, it must be discussed whether or not double blind system is better than single blind system. On the other hand, in both experimental and clinical research, authors should conduct ethical standards with the permission of institutional research board (IRB) and should keep the rules for good clinical practice (GCP) in clinical trials of newly developed agents. In terms of duplicate publication, author never submit a manuscript already reported elsewhere. It is strongly prohibited by international copyright laws, ethical conduct, and cost-effective use of resources. For reference, the present state of the issue of Japanese Journal of Gastroenterological Surgery, one of the standard medical journals in Japan, was reported here.

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Inventer's ethics is reflected in a patent publication. A patent aplication in misappropriation or liable to contravene public order, morality or public health could not be patented. And inventer should also avoid describing matters contrary to ethics as a engineer. With a progress of biotechnology it is becoming to be necessary to balance the strength between patent inforcement which is too strong in monopoly right and life ethics.

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It seems that there has been no unfair and unethical conducts except plagiarism among Japanese social scientists and humanists. But, it does not show their academic cleanness. They always deal with human beings and society, while natural scientists try to invent a new material and to discover a new fact or rule. Social scientists and humanists have to make their originality through quoting authorities' opinions and comparing with foreign countries. There is some room leading to any unfair and unethical research conduct.

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Translator's abstract : The world will have ISO 15489, the first international standard for records management. It describes how records management programs should be established, how they may be structured, and how they may be monitored and audited. The standard has two parts : a high-level description of the broad principles and requirements and a technical report that outlines a variety of possible procedures and practices that comply with the standard. It helps records managers improve exiting programs as well as develop new ones. This article examines its content and how it can be used for assessment.

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[in Japanese]

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