Academic Integrity Events Held at the TNMU Institute of Pharmacy

The TNMU Institute of Pharmacy hosted a series of educational and communication activities aimed at increasing awareness among students and academic staff regarding the principles of academic integrity.

A meeting was held with fifth-year Pharmacy students, attended by the Head of the Center for Academic Integrity, Associate Professor Iryna Stechyshyn, and the guarantor of the educational and professional program “Pharmacy,” Associate Professor Halyna Kozyr. During the discussion, key challenges and modern approaches to fostering a culture of integrity among students were addressed.

Academic staff also took an active part in the events, attending lectures and participating in professional discussions on ensuring integrity in teaching and research as part of Integrity Week 2025, “Integrity Up!”.

At the Department of Pharmacy Management and Drug Technology, an online seminar titled “Information and Patent Search for Conducting Research” was held for full-time and part-time fifth-year students. The seminar was chaired by Associate Professor Maryana Demchuk, the head of the department.

During the event, students learned about the main strategies for searching relevant literature to substantiate the relevance of a research project and prepare a qualification thesis, particularly the first chapter — a literature review. Special attention was paid to the requirements of the Higher Attestation Commission of Ukraine regarding the correct formatting of various types of sources (articles, monographs, dissertations, online resources).

A separate part of the seminar was dedicated to patent search. Students were shown the capabilities of the Ukrpatent platform, including simple and advanced searches for invention patents, utility models, and industrial designs; filtering by keywords, applicant, inventor, International Patent Classification, submission and publication dates; and viewing patent status, invention descriptions, and utility model claims.

The seminar also highlighted the specifics of information retrieval in international and national databases:

• PubMed — use of MeSH terms, Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT), filters by year, publication type, and study design;
• Scopus — advanced search, citation analysis, journal metrics, authors’ h-index, and selecting the most influential sources;
• V. I. Vernadskyi National Library of Ukraine — searching dissertations, abstracts, and scientific collections of particular relevance for research work.

Associate Professor Olena Pokotylo demonstrated to students the capabilities of the AI assistant Perplexity for optimizing literature searches. She emphasized the principles of ethical AI use, including the use of such tools to navigate research topics and identify relevant scholarly sources. At the same time, it was stressed that AI tools should serve as supplementary resources rather than a replacement for students’ independent analytical work, critical thinking, and proper referencing of primary sources.