Research ethics customs and responsibilities vary from discipline to discipline. Conducting exemplary research depends on knowing the ground rules just as it does on the research process itself and the faculty mentor relationship. Some research conventions are much the same regardless of one’s field.  Others can be very different, depending on whether you’re a computer scientist, historian or biologist.  Using the Internet, you can find the code for your discipline and explore codes for related fields with which you may interact professionally.

Four websites, maintained by universities in the United States and Canada, will lead you online to many of the relevant codes of ethics for the graduate disciplines at North Carolina State University. Of general interest is the American Statistical Association’s ethics page at http://www.tcnj.edu/~ethcstat/.

http://onlineethics.org/codes/codes.html
Ethical codes and guidelines for engineering, technical, computer and physical sciences; access to life sciences and health care codes.
Online Ethics Center for Engineering and Science, Case Western Reserve University

http://csep.iit.edu/codes/codes.html
More than 850 codes of ethics for professional societies, corporations, government and academia; full range of disciplines; index.
Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions, Illinois Institute of Technology

http://www.chem.vt.edu/ethics/index.html
Online ethical codes of conduct in the sciences, institutional policies, professional societies and publishing guidelines.
Department of Chemistry, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

http://www.ethics.ubc.ca/resources/professional/codes.html
Codes of professional ethics for disciplines ranging from anthropology to marketing to social work; includes both American and international codes.
Centre for Applied Ethics, University of British Columbia

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Resource Guide in Research Ethics