Is it ethical to copy a research idea? I am a high school senior. One of my friends did a research project in a certain field of Computer Science 2 years ago and it won a lot of awards. He is now at university. I read his paper and relevant work in the area and the research area looks really interesting. I want to do research that's closely related to this idea and I have a few ideas on how to extend the research. Is it ethical to do this project? My main concern is that he/other mutual friends will think that I just used the same idea so that I could win as well.
Yes, you can do this. You are not taking his ideas, you are using your own (note you wrote &quot;I have a few ideas&quot;).
Basically, once a paper is published, all the ideas within becomes public knowledge and you are free to build on them. You should still cite the original paper if you are building on their ideas, but your extensions are yours and yours alone.
By the way, many authors will be quite flattered if you work on their ideas - it implies that you find their ideas interesting.