The article analyses publication ethics in the contemporary world. The first part of the article is devoted to the scientific ethics. Publication ethics is a part of scientific ethics and should be considered in the context of history of science and the development of moral principles in this field. The authors describe the main issues of scientific ethics in the second part of the 20(th) century. Many moral problems and dilemmas in this field were caused by the development of science and technology. Mass destruction weapons and the invention of nuclear bombs have made scientific community and government officials recognize the possible negative impact of the modern science and technology on humankind and the environment. At the same time, medical science began to contradict medicine as the profession. The main scientific aim is new scientific knowledge whereas human health and life are professional goals of medicine. The researches that Nazi scientists conducted were crimes against humanity. Since then research ethics has attracted public's attention to experiments involving humans. Today many international and governmental documents protect human participants and animals. The rapid development of science has made research ethics and then publication ethics very topical. The Committee on Publication Ethics, one of the most important organizations in the field of publication ethics, was founded by the editors of medical journals. The authors describe the concepts of scientific ethics and sociology of science by R. Merton, S. Fuller and J. Ziman. According to these concepts, publication activity of scientists is one of the most important factors that influence scientists' wages and funding their projects. That is why there are too many violations of publication ethics. The second part of the article analyses main violations of publication ethics and among them are 1) conflict of interests; 2) data fabrication; 3) plagiarism; 4) self-plagiarism, duplicated publications and "salami slicing"; 5) violations of authorship; 6) violations of journals' policies, criteria of publication, publication fees and others. The authors concluded that violations of publication ethics are very widespread in the world scientific community and sometimes it is very difficult to detect the violations and punish the guilty. At the same time, violations of publication ethics can prevent the violations in research ethics and other important fields of scientific ethics.