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A developmental university must have well-crafted research ethical standards anchored in principles of democracy, social justice and human rights. Research ethical standards are important as they provide guidelines for researchers to ensure that specific values like integrity, transparency, respect, objectivity and accountability are strictly observed; they generate confidence in and support for research among both domestic and international research communities; and they help establish trust between researchers and research participants.

Ethics is not always dealing with ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, but may sometimes be a choice of a lesser of evils, a nuanced decision dealing with trade-offs or viewed as situational. How do we better equip students to better understand ethical dilemmas and how to approach them? EthicalSystems.org, collects and shares research on ethics which spans a wide variety of topics, including accounting, cheating and honesty, contextual influences, corporate culture, corporate governance, corruption, decision-making, leadership and teaching ethics, among others.

Most scientists and medical researchers behave ethically. However, in recent years, the number of high-profile scandals in which researchers have been exposed as having falsified their data raises the issue of how we should deal with research fraud. There is little scholarship on this subject that crosses disciplines and engages with the broader phenomenon of unethical behaviour within the domain of research. This is partly because disciplines tend to operate in silos and because universities, in which researchers are often employed, tend to minimise adverse publicity.