Scientific integrity and copyright in codes of professional ethics

Abstract Scientific integrity presupposes respect for ethical and legal principles for the design, development and publication of research. The objective of this study was to analyze compliance with Brazilian and international regulations on scientific integrity and copyright described in the codes of professional. It is a documentary and descriptive research in which 11 codes of ethics of regulated professions in the field of health and human sciences were selected and analyzed. The results show that the codes of professional ethics with the highest number of cited descriptors were the ones that best met the national and international norms on research ethics. There was, however, no code that adequately covered all the Brazilian and international standards used as reference for analysis. It was concluded that these documents should be reformulated with the objective of empowering professionals and researchers from different fields of knowledge to act in a way that respects scientific integrity and copyright.