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Ethical Considerations in Research | Types & Examples

Published on October 18, 2021 by Pritha Bhandari . Revised on May 9, 2024.

Ethical considerations in research are a set of principles that guide your research designs and practices. Scientists and researchers must always adhere to a certain code of conduct when collecting data from people.

The goals of human research often include understanding real-life phenomena, studying effective treatments, investigating behaviors, and improving lives in other ways. What you decide to research and how you conduct that research involve key ethical considerations.

These considerations work to

• protect the rights of research participants
• enhance research validity
• maintain scientific or academic integrity

Table of contents

Why do research ethics matter, getting ethical approval for your study, types of ethical issues, voluntary participation, informed consent, confidentiality, potential for harm, results communication, examples of ethical failures, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about research ethics.

Research ethics matter for scientific integrity, human rights and dignity, and collaboration between science and society. These principles make sure that participation in studies is voluntary, informed, and safe for research subjects.

You’ll balance pursuing important research objectives with using ethical research methods and procedures. It’s always necessary to prevent permanent or excessive harm to participants, whether inadvertent or not.

Defying research ethics will also lower the credibility of your research because it’s hard for others to trust your data if your methods are morally questionable.

Even if a research idea is valuable to society, it doesn’t justify violating the human rights or dignity of your study participants.

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Before you start any study involving data collection with people, you’ll submit your research proposal to an institutional review board (IRB) .

An IRB is a committee that checks whether your research aims and research design are ethically acceptable and follow your institution’s code of conduct. They check that your research materials and procedures are up to code.

If successful, you’ll receive IRB approval, and you can begin collecting data according to the approved procedures. If you want to make any changes to your procedures or materials, you’ll need to submit a modification application to the IRB for approval.

If unsuccessful, you may be asked to re-submit with modifications or your research proposal may receive a rejection. To get IRB approval, it’s important to explicitly note how you’ll tackle each of the ethical issues that may arise in your study.

There are several ethical issues you should always pay attention to in your research design, and these issues can overlap with each other.

You’ll usually outline ways you’ll deal with each issue in your research proposal if you plan to collect data from participants.

Voluntary participation means that all research subjects are free to choose to participate without any pressure or coercion.

All participants are able to withdraw from, or leave, the study at any point without feeling an obligation to continue. Your participants don’t need to provide a reason for leaving the study.

It’s important to make it clear to participants that there are no negative consequences or repercussions to their refusal to participate. After all, they’re taking the time to help you in the research process , so you should respect their decisions without trying to change their minds.

Voluntary participation is an ethical principle protected by international law and many scientific codes of conduct.

Take special care to ensure there’s no pressure on participants when you’re working with vulnerable groups of people who may find it hard to stop the study even when they want to.

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Informed consent refers to a situation in which all potential participants receive and understand all the information they need to decide whether they want to participate. This includes information about the study’s benefits, risks, funding, and institutional approval.

You make sure to provide all potential participants with all the relevant information about

• what the study is about
• the risks and benefits of taking part
• how long the study will take
• your supervisor’s contact information and the institution’s approval number

Usually, you’ll provide participants with a text for them to read and ask them if they have any questions. If they agree to participate, they can sign or initial the consent form. Note that this may not be sufficient for informed consent when you work with particularly vulnerable groups of people.

If you’re collecting data from people with low literacy, make sure to verbally explain the consent form to them before they agree to participate.

For participants with very limited English proficiency, you should always translate the study materials or work with an interpreter so they have all the information in their first language.

In research with children, you’ll often need informed permission for their participation from their parents or guardians. Although children cannot give informed consent, it’s best to also ask for their assent (agreement) to participate, depending on their age and maturity level.

Anonymity means that you don’t know who the participants are and you can’t link any individual participant to their data.

You can only guarantee anonymity by not collecting any personally identifying information—for example, names, phone numbers, email addresses, IP addresses, physical characteristics, photos, and videos.

In many cases, it may be impossible to truly anonymize data collection . For example, data collected in person or by phone cannot be considered fully anonymous because some personal identifiers (demographic information or phone numbers) are impossible to hide.

You’ll also need to collect some identifying information if you give your participants the option to withdraw their data at a later stage.

Data pseudonymization is an alternative method where you replace identifying information about participants with pseudonymous, or fake, identifiers. The data can still be linked to participants but it’s harder to do so because you separate personal information from the study data.

Confidentiality means that you know who the participants are, but you remove all identifying information from your report.

All participants have a right to privacy, so you should protect their personal data for as long as you store or use it. Even when you can’t collect data anonymously, you should secure confidentiality whenever you can.

Some research designs aren’t conducive to confidentiality, but it’s important to make all attempts and inform participants of the risks involved.

As a researcher, you have to consider all possible sources of harm to participants. Harm can come in many different forms.

• Psychological harm: Sensitive questions or tasks may trigger negative emotions such as shame or anxiety.
• Social harm: Participation can involve social risks, public embarrassment, or stigma.
• Physical harm: Pain or injury can result from the study procedures.
• Legal harm: Reporting sensitive data could lead to legal risks or a breach of privacy.

It’s best to consider every possible source of harm in your study as well as concrete ways to mitigate them. Involve your supervisor to discuss steps for harm reduction.

Make sure to disclose all possible risks of harm to participants before the study to get informed consent. If there is a risk of harm, prepare to provide participants with resources or counseling or medical services if needed.

Some of these questions may bring up negative emotions, so you inform participants about the sensitive nature of the survey and assure them that their responses will be confidential.

The way you communicate your research results can sometimes involve ethical issues. Good science communication is honest, reliable, and credible. It’s best to make your results as transparent as possible.

Take steps to actively avoid plagiarism and research misconduct wherever possible.

Plagiarism means submitting others’ works as your own. Although it can be unintentional, copying someone else’s work without proper credit amounts to stealing. It’s an ethical problem in research communication because you may benefit by harming other researchers.

Self-plagiarism is when you republish or re-submit parts of your own papers or reports without properly citing your original work.

This is problematic because you may benefit from presenting your ideas as new and original even though they’ve already been published elsewhere in the past. You may also be infringing on your previous publisher’s copyright, violating an ethical code, or wasting time and resources by doing so.

In extreme cases of self-plagiarism, entire datasets or papers are sometimes duplicated. These are major ethical violations because they can skew research findings if taken as original data.

You notice that two published studies have similar characteristics even though they are from different years. Their sample sizes, locations, treatments, and results are highly similar, and the studies share one author in common.

Research misconduct

Research misconduct means making up or falsifying data, manipulating data analyses, or misrepresenting results in research reports. It’s a form of academic fraud.

These actions are committed intentionally and can have serious consequences; research misconduct is not a simple mistake or a point of disagreement about data analyses.

Research misconduct is a serious ethical issue because it can undermine academic integrity and institutional credibility. It leads to a waste of funding and resources that could have been used for alternative research.

Later investigations revealed that they fabricated and manipulated their data to show a nonexistent link between vaccines and autism. Wakefield also neglected to disclose important conflicts of interest, and his medical license was taken away.

This fraudulent work sparked vaccine hesitancy among parents and caregivers. The rate of MMR vaccinations in children fell sharply, and measles outbreaks became more common due to a lack of herd immunity.

Research scandals with ethical failures are littered throughout history, but some took place not that long ago.

Some scientists in positions of power have historically mistreated or even abused research participants to investigate research problems at any cost. These participants were prisoners, under their care, or otherwise trusted them to treat them with dignity.

To demonstrate the importance of research ethics, we’ll briefly review two research studies that violated human rights in modern history.

These experiments were inhumane and resulted in trauma, permanent disabilities, or death in many cases.

After some Nazi doctors were put on trial for their crimes, the Nuremberg Code of research ethics for human experimentation was developed in 1947 to establish a new standard for human experimentation in medical research.

In reality, the actual goal was to study the effects of the disease when left untreated, and the researchers never informed participants about their diagnoses or the research aims.

Although participants experienced severe health problems, including blindness and other complications, the researchers only pretended to provide medical care.

When treatment became possible in 1943, 11 years after the study began, none of the participants were offered it, despite their health conditions and high risk of death.

Ethical failures like these resulted in severe harm to participants, wasted resources, and lower trust in science and scientists. This is why all research institutions have strict ethical guidelines for performing research.

If you want to know more about statistics , methodology , or research bias , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Normal distribution
• Measures of central tendency
• Chi square tests
• Confidence interval
• Quartiles & Quantiles
• Cluster sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Thematic analysis
• Cohort study
• Peer review
• Ethnography

Research bias

• Implicit bias
• Cognitive bias
• Conformity bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Availability heuristic
• Attrition bias
• Social desirability bias

Ethical considerations in research are a set of principles that guide your research designs and practices. These principles include voluntary participation, informed consent, anonymity, confidentiality, potential for harm, and results communication.

Scientists and researchers must always adhere to a certain code of conduct when collecting data from others .

These considerations protect the rights of research participants, enhance research validity , and maintain scientific integrity.

Research ethics matter for scientific integrity, human rights and dignity, and collaboration between science and society. These principles make sure that participation in studies is voluntary, informed, and safe.

Anonymity means you don’t know who the participants are, while confidentiality means you know who they are but remove identifying information from your research report. Both are important ethical considerations .

You can only guarantee anonymity by not collecting any personally identifying information—for example, names, phone numbers, email addresses, IP addresses, physical characteristics, photos, or videos.

You can keep data confidential by using aggregate information in your research report, so that you only refer to groups of participants rather than individuals.

These actions are committed intentionally and can have serious consequences; research misconduct is not a simple mistake or a point of disagreement but a serious ethical failure.

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Fostering Integrity in Research (2017)

Chapter: 2 foundations of integrity in research: core values and guiding norms, 2 foundations of integrity in research: core values and guiding norms.

Problems of scientific freedom and responsibility are not new; one need only consider, as examples, the passionate controversies that were stirred by the work of Galileo and Darwin. In our time, however, such problems have changed in character, and have become far more numerous, more urgent and more complex. Science and its applications have become entwined with the whole fabric of our lives and thoughts. . . . Scientific freedom, like academic freedom, is an acquired right, generally accepted by society as necessary for the advancement of knowledge from which society may benefit. Scientists possess no rights beyond those of other citizens except those necessary to fulfill the responsibility arising from their special knowledge, and from the insight arising from that knowledge.

— John Edsall (1975)

Synopsis: The integrity of research is based on adherence to core values—objectivity, honesty, openness, fairness, accountability, and stewardship. These core values help to ensure that the research enterprise advances knowledge. Integrity in science means planning, proposing, performing, reporting, and reviewing research in accordance with these values. Participants in the research enterprise stray from the norms and appropriate practices of science when they commit research misconduct or other misconduct or engage in detrimental research practices.

TRANSMITTING VALUES AND NORMS IN RESEARCH

The core values and guiding norms of science have been studied and written about extensively, with the work of Robert Merton providing a foundation for subsequent work on the sociology of science ( Merton, 1973 ). Merton posited a set of norms that govern good science: (1) Communalism (common ownership of scientific knowledge), (2) Universalism (all scientists can contribute to the advance of knowledge), (3) Disinterestedness (scientists should work for the good of the scientific enterprise as opposed to personal gain), and (4) Organized Skepticism (results should be examined critically before they are accepted). Research on scientists and scientific organizations has also led to a better understanding of

counternorms that appear to conflict with the dominant Mertonian norms but that are recognized as playing an inherent part in the actual practice of science, such as the personal commitment that a scientist may have to a particular hypothesis or theory ( Mitroff, 1974 ).

More recent work on the effectiveness of responsible conduct of research education, covered in more detail in Chapter 9 , explores evidence that at least some scientists may not understand and reflect upon the ethical dimensions of their work ( McCormick et al., 2012 ). Several causes are identified, including a lack of awareness on the part of researchers of the ethical issues that can arise, confidence that they can identify and address these issues without any special training or help, or apprehension that a focus on ethical issues might hinder their progress. An additional challenge arises from the apparent gap “between the normative ideals of science and science’s institutional reward system” ( Devereaux, 2014 ). Chapter 6 covers this issue in more detail. Here, it is important to note that identifying and understanding the values and norms of science do not automatically mean that they will be followed in practice. The context in which values and norms are communicated and transmitted in the professional development of scientists is critically important.

Scientists are privileged to have careers in which they explore the frontiers of knowledge. They have greater autonomy than do many other professionals and are usually respected by other members of society. They often are able to choose the questions they want to pursue and the methods used to derive answers. They have rich networks of social relationships that, for the most part, reinforce and further their work. Whether actively involved in research or employed in some other capacity within the research enterprise, scientists are able to engage in an activity about which they are passionate: learning more about the world and how it functions.

In the United States, scientific research in academia emerged during the late 19th century as an “informal, intimate, and paternalistic endeavor” ( NAS-NAE-IOM, 1992 ). Multipurpose universities emphasized teaching, and research was more of an avocation than a profession. Even today, being a scientist and engaging in research does not necessarily entail a career with characteristics traditionally associated with professions such as law, medicine, architecture, some subfields of engineering, and accounting. For example, working as a researcher does not involve state certification of the practitioner’s expertise as a requirement to practice, nor does it generally involve direct relationships with fee-paying clients. Many professions also maintain an explicit expectation that practitioners will adhere to a distinctive ethical code ( Wickenden, 1949 ). In contrast, scientists do not have a formal, overarching code of ethics and professional conduct.

However, the nature of professional practice even in the traditional professions continues to evolve ( Evetts, 2013 ). Some scholars assert that the concept of professional work should include all occupations characterized by “expert knowledge, autonomy, a normative orientation grounded in community, and

high status, income, and other rewards” ( Gorman and Sandefur, 2011 ). Scientific research certainly shares these characteristics. In this respect, efforts to formalize responsible conduct of research training in the education of researchers often have assumed that this training should be part of the professional development of researchers ( IOM-NRC, 2002 ; NAS-NAE-IOM, 1992 ). However, the training of researchers (and research itself) has retained some “informal, intimate, and paternalistic” features. Attempts to formalize professional development training sometimes have generated resistance in favor of essentially an apprenticeship model with informal, ad hoc approaches to how graduate students and postdoctoral fellows learn how to become professional scientists.

One challenge facing the research enterprise is that informal, ad hoc approaches to scientific professionalism do not ensure that the core values and guiding norms of science are adequately inculcated and sustained. This has become increasingly clear as the changes in the research environment described in Chapter 3 have emerged and taken hold. Indeed, the apparent inadequacy of these older forms of training to the task of socializing and training individuals into responsible research practices is a recurring theme of this report.

Individual scientists work within a much broader system that profoundly influences the integrity of research results. This system, described briefly in Chapter 1 , is characterized by a massive, interconnected web of relationships among researchers, employing institutions, public and private funders, and journals and professional societies. This web comprises unidirectional and bidirectional obligations and responsibilities between the parts of the system. The system is driven by public and private investments and results in various outcomes or products, including research results, various uses of those results, and trained students. However, the system itself has a dynamic that shapes the actions of everyone involved and produces results that reflect the functioning of the system. Because of the large number of relationships between the many players in the web of responsibility, features of one set of relationships may affect other parts of the web. These interdependencies complicate the task of devising interventions and structures that support and encourage the responsible conduct of research.

THE CORE VALUES OF RESEARCH

The integrity of research is based on the foundational core values of science. The research system could not operate without these shared values that shape the behaviors of all who are involved with the system. Out of these values arise the web of responsibilities that make the system cohere and make scientific knowledge reliable. Many previous guides to responsible conduct in research have identified and described these values ( CCA, 2010 ; ESF-ALLEA, 2011 ; IAC-IAP, 2012 ; ICB, 2010 ; IOM-NRC, 2002 ). This report emphasizes six values that are most influential in shaping the norms that constitute research practices and relationships and the integrity of science:

Objectivity

Accountability, stewardship.

This chapter examines each of these six values in turn to consider how they shape, and are realized in, research practices.

The first of the six values discussed in this report—objectivity—describes the attitude of impartiality with which researchers should strive to approach their work. The next four values—honesty, openness, accountability, and fairness—describe relationships among those involved in the research enterprise. The final value—stewardship—involves the relationship between members of the research enterprise, the enterprise as a whole, and the broader society within which the enterprise is situated. Although we discuss stewardship last, it is an essential value that perpetuates the other values.

The hallmark of scientific thinking that differentiates it from other modes of human inquiry and expression such as literature and art is its dedication to rational and empirical inquiry. In this context, objectivity is central to the scientific worldview. Karl Popper (1999) viewed scientific objectivity as consisting of the freedom and responsibility of the researcher to (1) pose refutable hypotheses, (2) test the hypotheses with the relevant evidence, and (3) state the results clearly and unambiguously to any interested person. The goal is reproducibility, which is essential to advancing knowledge through experimental science. If these steps are followed diligently, Popper suggested, any reasonable second researcher should be able to follow the same steps to replicate the work.

Objectivity means that certain kinds of motivations should not influence a researcher’s action, even though others will. For example, if a researcher in an experimental field believes in a particular hypothesis or explanation of a phenomenon, he or she is expected to design experiments that will test the hypothesis. The experiment should be designed in a way that allows the possibility for the hypothesis to be disconfirmed. Scientific objectivity is intended to ensure that scientists’ personal beliefs and qualities—motivations, position, material interests, field of specialty, prominence, or other factors—do not introduce biases into their work.

As will be explored in later chapters, in practice it is not that simple. Human judgment and decisions are prone to a variety of cognitive biases and systematic errors in reasoning. Even the best scientific intentions are not always sufficient to ensure scientific objectivity. Scientific objectivity can be compromised acci-

dentally or without recognition by individuals. In addition, broader biases of the reigning scientific paradigm influence the theory and practice of science ( Kuhn, 1962 ). A primary purpose of scientific replication is to minimize the extent to which experimental findings are distorted by biases and errors. Researchers have a responsibility to design experiments in ways that any other person with different motivations, interests, and knowledge could trust the results. Modern problems related to reproducibility are explored later in the report.

In addition, objectivity does not imply or require that researchers can or should be completely neutral or disinterested in pursuing their work. The research enterprise does not function properly without the organized efforts of researchers to convince their scientific audiences. Sometimes researchers are proven correct when they persist in trying to prove theories in the face of evidence that appears to contradict them.

It is important to note, in addition, Popper’s suggestion that scientific objectivity consists of not only responsibility but freedom . The scientist must be free from pressures and influences that can bias research results. Objectivity can be compromised when institutional expectations, laboratory culture, the regulatory environment, or funding needs put pressure on the scientist to produce positive results or to produce them under time pressure. Scientists and researchers operate in social contexts, and the incentives and pressures of those contexts can have a profound effect on the exercise of scientific methodology and a researcher’s commitment to scientific objectivity.

Scientific objectivity also must coexist with other human motivations that challenge it. As an example of such a challenge, a researcher might become biased in desiring definitive results evaluating the validity of high-profile theories or hypotheses that their experiments were designed to support or refute. Both personal desire to obtain a definitive answer and institutional pressures to produce “significant” conclusions can provide strong motivation to find definitive results in experimental situations. Dedication to scientific objectivity in those settings represents the best guard against scientists finding what they desire instead of what exists. Institutional support of objectivity at every level—from mentors, to research supervisors, to administrators, and to funders—is crucial in counterbalancing the very human tendency to desire definitive outcomes of research.

A researcher’s freedom to advance knowledge is tied to his or her responsibility to be honest . Science as an enterprise producing reliable knowledge is based on the assumption of honesty. Science is predicated on agreed-upon systematic procedures for determining the empirical or theoretical basis of a proposition. Dishonest science violates that agreement and therefore violates a defining characteristic of science.

Honesty is the principal value that underlies all of the other relationship val-

ues. For example, without an honest foundation, realizing the values of openness, accountability, and fairness would be impossible.

Scientific institutions and stakeholders start with the assumption of honesty. Peer reviewers, granting agencies, journal editors, commercial research and development managers, policy makers, and other players in the scientific enterprise all start with an assumption of the trustworthiness of the reporting scientist and research team. Dishonesty undermines not only the results of the specific research but also the entire scientific enterprise itself, because it threatens the trustworthiness of the scientific endeavor.

Being honest is not always straightforward. It may not be easy to decide what to do with outlier data, for example, or when one suspects fraud in published research. A single outlier data point may be legitimately interpreted as a malfunctioning instrument or a contaminated sample. However, true scientific integrity requires the disclosure of the exclusion of a data point and the effect of that exclusion unless the contamination or malfunction is documented, not merely conjectured. There are accepted statistical methods and standards for dealing with outlier data, although questions are being raised about how often these are followed in certain fields ( Thiese et al., 2015 ).

Dishonesty can take many forms. It may refer to out-and-out fabrication or falsification of data or reporting of results or plagiarism. It includes such things as misrepresentation (e.g., avoiding blame, claiming that protocol requirements have been followed when they have not, or producing significant results by altering experiments that have been previously conducted), nonreporting of phenomena, cherry-picking of data, or overenhancing pictorial representations of data. Honest work includes accurate reporting of what was done, including the methods used to do that work. Thus, dishonesty can encompass lying by omission, as in leaving out data that change the overall conclusions or systematically publishing only trials that yield positive results. The “file drawer” effect was first discussed almost 40 years ago; Robert Rosenthal (1979) presented the extreme view that “journals are filled with the 5 percent of the studies that show Type I errors, while the file drawers are filled with the 95 percent of the studies that show non-significant results.” This hides the possibility of results being published from 1 significant trial in an experiment of 100 trials, as well as experiments that were conducted and then altered in order to produce the desired results. The file drawer effect is a result of publication bias and selective reporting, the probability that a study will be published depending on the significance of its results ( Scargle, 2000 ). As the incentives for researchers to publish in top journals increase, so too do these biases and the file drawer effect.

Another example of dishonesty by omission is failing to report all funding sources where that information is relevant to assessing potential biases that might influence the integrity of the work. Conversely, dishonesty can also include reporting of nonexistent funding sources, giving the impression that the research

was conducted with more support and so may have been more thorough than in actuality.

Beyond the individual researcher, those engaged in assessing research, whether those who are funding it or participating in any level of the peer review process, also have fundamental responsibilities of honesty. Most centrally, those assessing the quality of science must be honest in their assessments and aware of and honest in reporting their own conflicts of interest or any cognitive biases that may skew their judgment in self-serving ways. There is also a need to guard against unconscious bias, sometimes by refusing to assess work even when a potential reviewer is convinced that he or she can be objective. Efforts to protect honesty should be reinforced by the organizations and systems within which those assessors function. Universities, research organizations, journals, funding agencies, and professional societies must all work to hold each other to honest interactions without favoritism and with potentially biasing factors disclosed.

Openness is not the same as honesty, but it is predicated on honesty. In the scientific enterprise, openness refers to the value of being transparent and presenting all the information relevant to a decision or conclusion. This is essential so that others in the web of the research enterprise can understand why a decision or conclusion was reached. Openness also means making the data on which a result is based available to others so that they may reproduce and verify results or build on them. In some contexts, openness means listening to conflicting ideas or negative results without allowing preexisting biases or expectations to cloud one’s judgment. In this respect, openness reinforces objectivity and the achievement of reliable observations and results.

Openness is an ideal toward which to strive in the research enterprise. It almost always enhances the advance of knowledge and facilitates others in meeting their responsibilities, be it journal editors, reviewers, or those who use the research to build products or as an input to policy making. Researchers have to be especially conscientious about being open, since the incentive structure within science does not always explicitly reward openness and sometimes discourages it. An investigator may desire to keep data private to monopolize the conclusions that can be drawn from those data without fear of competition. Researchers may be tempted to withhold data that do not fit with their hypotheses or conclusions. In the worst cases, investigators may fail to disclose data, code, or other information underlying their published results to prevent the detection of fabrication or falsification.

Openness is an ideal that may not always be possible to achieve within the research enterprise. In research involving classified military applications, sensitive personal information, or trade secrets, researchers may have an obligation not to disseminate data and the results derived from those data. Disclosure of results

and underlying data may be delayed to allow time for filing a patent application. These sorts of restrictions are more common in certain research settings—such as commercial enterprises and government laboratories—than they are in academic research institutions performing primarily fundamental work. In the latter, openness in research is a long-held principle shared by the community, and it is a requirement in the United States to avoid privileged access that would undermine the institution’s nonprofit status and to maintain the fundamental research exclusion from national security-based restrictions.

As the nature of data changes, so do the demands of achieving openness. For example, modern science is often based on very large datasets and computational implementations that cannot be included in a written manuscript. However, publications describing such results could not exist without the data and code underlying the results. Therefore, as part of the publication process, the authors have an obligation to have the available data and commented code or pseudocode (a high-level description of a program’s operating principle) necessary and sufficient to re-create the results listed in the manuscript. Again, in some situations where a code implementation is patentable, a brief delay in releasing the code in order to secure intellectual property protection may be acceptable. When the resources needed to make data and code available are insufficient, authors should openly provide them upon request. Similar considerations apply to such varied forms of data as websites, videos, and still images with associated text or voiceovers.

Central to the functioning of the research enterprise is the fundamental value that members of the community are responsible for and stand behind their work, statements, actions, and roles in the conduct of their work. At its core, accountability implies an obligation to explain and/or justify one’s behavior. Accountability requires that individuals be willing and able to demonstrate the validity of their work or the reasons for their actions. Accountability goes hand in hand with the credit researchers receive for their contributions to science and how this credit builds their reputations as members of the research enterprise. Accountability also enables those in the web of relationships to rely on work presented by others as a foundation for additional advances.

Individual accountability builds the trustworthiness of the research enterprise as a whole. Each participant in the research system, including researchers, institutional administrators, sponsors, and scholarly publishers, has obligations to others in the web of science and in return should be able to expect consistent and honest actions by others in the system. Mutual accountability therefore builds trust, which is a consequence of the application of the values described in this report.

The purpose of scientific publishing is to advance the state of knowledge through examination by peers who can assess, test, replicate where appropriate, and build on the work being described. Investigators reporting on their work thus

must be accountable for the accuracy of their work. Through this accountability, they form a compact with the users of their work. Readers should be able to trust that the work was performed by the authors as described, with honest and accurate reporting of results. Accountability means that any deviations from the compact would be flagged and explained. Readers then could use these explanations in interpreting and evaluating the work.

Investigators are accountable to colleagues in their discipline or field of research, to the employer and institution at which the work is done, to the funders or other sponsors of the research, to the editors and institutions that disseminate their findings, and to the public, which supports research in the expectation that it will produce widespread benefits. Other participants in the research system have other forms of accountability. Journals are accountable to authors, reviewers, readers, the institutions they represent, and other journals (for the reuse of material, violation of copyright, or other issues of mutual concern). Institutions are accountable to their employees, to students, to the funders of both research and education, and to the communities in which they are located. Organizations that sponsor research are accountable to the researchers whose work they support and to their governing bodies or other sources of support, including the public. These networks of accountability support the web of relationships and responsibilities that define the research enterprise.

The accountability expected of individuals and organizations involved with research may be formally specified in policies or regulations. Accountability under institutional research misconduct policies, for example, could mean that researchers will face reprimand or other corrective actions if they fail to meet their responsibilities.

While responsibilities that are formally defined in policies or regulations are important to accountability in the research enterprise, responsibilities that may not be formally specified should also be included in the concept. For example, senior researchers who supervise others are accountable to their employers and the researchers whom they supervise to conduct themselves as professionals, as this is defined by formal organizational policies. On a less formal level, research supervisors are also accountable for being attentive to the educational and career development needs of students, postdoctoral fellows, and other junior researchers whom they oversee. The same principle holds for individuals working for research institutions, sponsoring organizations, and journals.

The scientific enterprise is filled with professional relationships. Many of them involve judging others’ work for purposes of funding, publication, or deciding who is hired or promoted. Being fair in these contexts means making professional judgments based on appropriate and announced criteria, including processes used to determine outcomes. Fairness in adhering to explicit criteria

and processes reinforces a system in which the core values can operate and trust among the parties can be maintained.

Fairness takes on another dimension in designing criteria and evaluation mechanisms. Research has demonstrated, for example, that grant proposals in which reviewers were blinded to applicant identity and institution receive systematically different funding decisions compared with the outcomes of unblinded reviews ( Ross et al., 2006 ). Truly blinded reviews may be difficult or impossible in a small field. Nevertheless, to the extent possible, the criteria and mechanisms involved in evaluation must be designed so as to ensure against unfair incentive structures or preexisting cultural biases. Fairness is also important in other review contexts, such as the process of peer reviewing articles and the production of book reviews for publication.

Fairness is a particularly important consideration in the list of authors for a publication and in the citations included in reports of research results. Investigators may be tempted to claim that senior or well-known authors played a larger role than they actually did so that their names may help carry the paper to publication and readership. But such a practice is unfair both to the people who actually did the work and to the honorary author, who may not want to be listed prominently or at all. Similarly, nonattribution of credit for contributions to the reported work or careless or negligent crediting of prior work violates the value of fairness. Best practices in authorship, which are based on the value of fairness, honesty, openness, and accountability, are discussed further in Chapter 9 .

Upholding fairness also requires researchers to acknowledge those whose work contributed to their advances. This is usually done through citing relevant work in reporting results. Also, since research is often a highly competitive activity, sometimes there is a race to make a discovery that results in clear winners and losers. Sometimes two groups of researchers make the same discovery nearly simultaneously. Being fair in these situations involves treating research competitors with generosity and magnanimity.

The importance of fairness is also evident in issues involving the duty of care toward human and animal research subjects. Researchers often depend on the use of human and animal subjects for their research, and they have an obligation to treat those subjects fairly—with respect in the case of human subjects and humanely in the case of laboratory animals. They also have obligations to other living things and to those aspects of the environment that affect humans and other living things. These responsibilities need to be balanced and informed by an appreciation for the potential benefits of research.

The research enterprise cannot continue to function unless the members of that system exhibit good stewardship both toward the other members of the system and toward the system itself. Good stewardship implies being aware of

and attending carefully to the dynamics of the relationships within the lab, at the institutional level, and at the broad level of the research enterprise itself. Although we have listed stewardship as the final value in the six we discuss in this report, it supports all the others. Here we take up stewardship within the research enterprise but pause to acknowledge the extension of this value to encompass the larger society.

One area where individual researchers exercise stewardship is by performing service for their institution, discipline, or the broader research enterprise that may not necessarily be recognized or rewarded. These service activities include reviewing, editing, serving on faculty committees, and performing various roles in scientific societies. Senior researchers may also serve as mentors to younger researchers whom they are not directly supervising or formally responsible for. At a broader level, researchers, institutions, sponsors, journals, and societies can contribute to the development and updating of policies and practices affecting research. As will be discussed in Chapter 9 , professional societies perform a valuable service by developing scientific integrity policies for their fields and keeping them updated. Individual journals, journal editors, and member organizations have contributed by developing standards and guidelines in areas such as authorship, data sharing, and the responsibilities of journals when they suspect that submitted work has been fabricated or plagiarized.

Stewardship also involves decisions about support and influences on science. Some aspects of the research system are influenced or determined by outside factors. Public demand, political considerations, concerns about national security, and even the prospects for our species’ survival can inform and influence decisions about the amount of public and private resources devoted to the research enterprise. Such forces also play important roles in determining the balance of resources invested in various fields of study (e.g., both among and within federal agencies), as well as the balance of effort devoted to fundamental versus applied work and the use of various funding mechanisms.

In some cases, good stewardship requires attending to situations in which the broader research enterprise may not be operating optimally. Chapter 6 discusses issues where problems have been identified and are being debated, such as workforce imbalances, the poor career prospects of academic researchers in some fields, and the incentive structures of modern research environments.

Stewardship is particularly evident in the commitment of the research enterprise to education, both of the next generation of researchers and of individuals who do not expect to become scientists. In particular, Chapter 10 discusses the need to educate all members of the research enterprise in the responsible conduct of research. Education is one way in which engaging in science provides benefits both to those within the research system and to the general public outside the system.

A DEFINITION OF RESEARCH INTEGRITY

Making judgments about definitions and terminology as they relate to research integrity and breaches of integrity is a significant component of this committee’s statement of task. Practicing integrity in research means planning, proposing, performing, reporting, and reviewing research in accordance with the values described above. These values should be upheld by research institutions, research sponsors, journals, and learned societies as well as by individual researchers and research groups. General norms and specific research practices that conform to these values have developed over time. Sometimes norms and practices need to be updated as technologies and the institutions that compose the research enterprise evolve. There are also disciplinary differences in some specific research practices, but norms and appropriate practices generally apply across science and engineering research fields. As described more fully in Chapter 9 , best practices in research are those actions undertaken by individuals and organizations that are based on the core values of science and enable good research. They should be embraced, practiced, and promoted.

The integrity of knowledge that emerges from research is based on individual and collective adherence to core values of objectivity, honesty, openness, fairness, accountability, and stewardship. Integrity in science means that the organizations in which research is conducted encourage those involved to exemplify these values in every step of the research process. Understanding the dynamics that support – or distort – practices that uphold the integrity of research by all participants ensures that the research enterprise advances knowledge.

The 1992 report Responsible Science: Ensuring the Integrity of the Research Process evaluated issues related to scientific responsibility and the conduct of research. It provided a valuable service in describing and analyzing a very complicated set of issues, and has served as a crucial basis for thinking about research integrity for more than two decades. However, as experience has accumulated with various forms of research misconduct, detrimental research practices, and other forms of misconduct, as subsequent empirical research has revealed more about the nature of scientific misconduct, and because technological and social changes have altered the environment in which science is conducted, it is clear that the framework established more than two decades ago needs to be updated.

Responsible Science served as a valuable benchmark to set the context for this most recent analysis and to help guide the committee's thought process. Fostering Integrity in Research identifies best practices in research and recommends practical options for discouraging and addressing research misconduct and detrimental research practices.

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Improving research integrity: a framework for responsible science communication

• Ilinca I. Ciubotariu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-6549-0771 1 , 2 &
• Gundula Bosch 2  

BMC Research Notes volume  15 , Article number:  177 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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Research integrity, an essential precept of scientific inquiry and discovery, comprises norms such as Rigor, Reproducibility, and Responsibility (the 3R’s). Over the past decades, numerous issues have arisen that challenge the reliability of scientific studies, including irreproducibility crises, lack of good scientific principles, and erroneous communications, which have impacted the public’s trust in science and its findings. Here, we highlight one important component of research integrity that is often overlooked in the discussion of proposals for improving research quality and promoting robust research; one that spans from the lab bench to the dissemination of scientific work: responsible science communication. We briefly outline the role of education and institutions of higher education in teaching the tenets of good scientific practice and within that, the importance of adequate communications training. In that context, we present our framework of responsible science communication that we live by and teach to our students in courses and workshops that are part of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health R 3 Center for Innovation in Science Education.

Introduction

Science has a credibility problem. The underlying issues are multi-factorial such as inadequate training in rigorous research methods, irreproducibility of results, logical fallacies and statistical mistakes during data analysis and interpretation, erroneous communication, sloppy literature outputs, and outright misconduct (e.g., [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 ]). The result is an ongoing pandemic of retractions [ 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 ]. That in turn can undermine public confidence in research outcomes and transparent policy [ 11 , 12 , 13 ], along with societal factors such as geography or culture [ 14 ]. It is of utmost importance to properly train the next generation of scientists and protect the integrity of the central principles of scientific inquiry and discovery.

This commentary discusses the role of institutional graduate programs in promoting good research practice through teaching the core values of reliable science, while at the same time, focusing on a framework for embracing responsible scientific communication.

The role of institutional graduate education programs in promoting research integrity

There have been numerous calls to reform biomedical and health science education at the graduate level [ 15 , 16 , 17 ]. Yet frequently, established programs fail at conveying skill training in fundamental key competencies that are crucial to preparing graduates for the complexities of present-day workplaces: critical, interdisciplinary, and creative thinking [ 18 ]. At the R 3 Center for Innovation in Science Education (R 3 ISE) at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (BSPH), we develop interdisciplinary graduate- and post-graduate level programs and resources that emphasize precisely these competencies by taking a unique approach to scientific competency training. In the United States and through a growing international network of partner institutions, we spearhead reform efforts to educate future practitioners across the science and health disciplines in applying the philosophical foundations of science to their research; engaging in interdisciplinary collaboration; communicating effectively; and committing to the highest standards of scientific integrity. Program participants are trained in the epistemology of reliable evidence generation; applied logic; practical ethics; robust methodological approaches; and effective communication, all based on the three “R” norms of good science – Responsibility, Rigor, and Reproducibility (R 3 ) [ 18 ].

Enhancing research integrity through responsible communication

In present times, rapidly evolving scientific evidence, mixed messaging, and sometimes misinformation, can influence the public’s fluctuating trust in science and its products [ 19 , 20 , 21 ]. Trust needs to be rebuilt where it was lost [ 22 , 23 ], and maintained where it began to grow [ 24 ] to help increase acceptance of and adherence to public health guidelines [ 25 , 26 ]. Strictly rigorous and reproducible research practices are herewith a sine qua non , but the appropriate and truthful communication of science, its methods, results and pitfalls, is just as important for enhancing research credibility. It is a scientist’s duty to devote appropriate efforts toward good science communication. Known mistakes in this field—common among amateur and professional science communicators alike—are incomplete background research, hasty assumptions, factual misrepresentations, or overstatements in social media outlets, newspapers, or interviews. In a societal climate where a considerable portion of news consumers in all parts of society is inclined to listen more to rumors and unsubstantiated claims rather than rigorous scientific evidence, a lack of responsible science communication opens the floodgates for the plagues of mis- and dis-information even wider [ 27 , 28 ]. The current times are thus a continuous existential reminder of our duty to provide the public with clear and actionable information.

Appropriate science communication can and needs to adhere to good practice standards. While we concur that scientific communication is not evaluated with the same metrics as the appropriate conduct of science itself [ 29 ], we agree with those members of the science community who call for high quality standards in scientific communication [ 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 ]. Many current coaching efforts to help scientists become better communicators focus on doubtlessly important stylistic and strategic questions, e.g., goal setting, audience orientation, argumentation structure, choice of language, and persuasive messaging [ 34 ]. More comprehensive perspectives are needed in tandem with the growing appreciation for the roles of training in developing competences for science communication [ 35 , 36 , 37 ]. Furthermore, we claim that there is more to it, namely a fundamental, ethical habit of mind: Responsibility .

The notion of responsibility in the context of science communication

Communicating science responsibly implies that scientists must deliver more than jargon. If we view non-scientists as empty buckets to be impressed by and filled with sophistical information, akin to the well-known deficit model of communication with a one-way flow of information from experts to laypersons [ 38 ], we will rightfully be perceived as arrogant and create alienation rather than alliances. There has been much debate around the deficit model [ 39 ], which initiated a push to incorporate dialogue, context, and public engagement in scientific communication [ 40 , 41 ]. Members of the public are essential in scientists’ efforts to disseminate truthful information. It is important for scientists to actively reach out to the public, instead of merely talking to other specialists [ 42 ]. The words of the late Stephen Hawking come to mind, who stated that “Not only is it important to ask questions and find the answers; as a scientist I felt obligated to communicate with the world while we were learning.” Hawking’s wisdom reminds us that researchers need more confidence to explain that science is not a simple, clear-cut issue. Scientific facts are not easy to convey. They are subject to an ever-evolving process that includes constant learning, critical evaluation of new evidence, and revision of existing views and theories. The pitfalls of science such as reproducibility problems, sloppy literature, at times dubious review processes, and a rising number of retracted articles can pose a true challenge to bringing the actual nature of science across: namely the quest for truth, while maintaining the highest standards of integrity. The consequences are—not rarely—citizens who distrust the scientific process and its practitioners.

These expectations may seem understandably daunting. Most scientists have never received a formal education in this domain. Without a guiding framework that helps master challenging situations, many scientists may avoid commenting on the ambiguities that are inherent to the scientific process [ 43 ]. They might react helplessly when consulted to contradict misinformation or become defensive when asked to comment on cases of sloppy science or even misconduct. Such insecurities, however, give way to conspiracy theorists and spreaders of intentional falsehoods. They can spawn denial, at times even hostility, among many members of society who feel uneasy with the reality that evidence generation in science is not perfect. As scientists, we must learn to confidently explain -and not apologetically defend- that science is a dynamic process involving trial and error that does not allow quick yes-or-no answers [ 44 ].

There is no time to lose. Too long have we scientists been sitting comfortably in our academic ivory towers, hoping that some talented science writer will do the communications job with the “world out there” for us. It really is upon us to improve and prevent the spread of misinformation and misconceptions, an issue that is extremely relevant amidst the current pandemic [ 45 ].

In what follows, we outline some general, value-based guidelines (Fig.  1 ) built on established ethical principles [ 46 , 47 , 48 ] widely accepted in the scientific community that helped us, our students, and colleagues at the BSPH R 3 Graduate Science Program [ 18 , 49 ] in our science communications training and practice efforts. We appreciate the parallels between this and the important Responsible Research and Innovation policy framework set forth by the European Commission, to tackle societal challenges through an engagement of public and responsible actors in science and innovation [ 50 , 51 ]. Similarly, our program puts a strong focus on the ethical underpinnings of scientific conduct of which responsible communication is an integral part. We are not claiming that our approach is the ne plus ultra . Rather, it is meant as a starting point to build upon, since communication is a lifelong learning process.

Responsible Science Communication Framework. This framework applies value-based recommendations on ethical research conduct to practical science communication

Objectivity

In science and science communication alike, “certain kinds of motivation, position, material interests, field of specialty, prominence, or other factors should not influence a researcher’s actions” and decision making [ 46 ]. This includes conflicts of interest, implicit and explicit biases, and unintentional yet still questionable research and communication practices [ 48 , 52 ] to which every human being can fall victim. A responsible science communicator should be aware of those risks. Recognizing the need for constant self-improvement, scientists should do their best to develop a habit of critical self-reflection, good listening, and actively seeking feedback from peers and the public.

Needless to say, intellectual honesty is at the center of doing good science—and so is honest science communication. Science practitioners have a role model function in society and must live up to it. Honesty implies truthfulness and epistemic humility, i.e., staying true to the facts that are known; realizing the limits of one’s expertise by avoiding overstatements; and recognizing gaps and ambiguities in the knowledge base. For instance, honest communication and not withholding conflicting information about vaccines can increase trust in science [ 53 ]. Acknowledgement of findings that do not fit with one’s original hypothesis can mean good things, i.e., steps to a new understanding, and can be communicated accordingly. Following wise advice attributed to Confucius, committing a mistake without correction is like committing another mistake.

Responsible science communication describes facts and realities, not what we desire to see or what sounds opportune. In an era of Open Science [ 54 ], scientists ought to be as transparent as possible with regard to providing open access to all current data, the methods used to obtain the data, as well as valid conclusions given the evidence available at the time [ 55 ]. This pandemic clearly demonstrates the urgent need for increasing scientific cooperation through universal access to scientific progress, which has the power to unite nations [ 56 ]. Practicing openness in science communication also includes revealing potentially confusing data or mistakes, as trial and error is an integral part of the scientific process.

Accountability

Closely related to the value of openness is the notion of accountability. It implies that researchers have an obligation to explain their work and justify their methods, results, and interpretations [ 46 ]. Rigorous conduct of science is of course essential, albeit not enough for accountability to the public. There are a variety of ways by which science professionals can hold themselves accountable to broad audiences. Many journals, grant agencies or conference organizers already request abstracts in lay-terms. Upon publishing preprints, authors could provide non-technical narratives of their findings through virtual open houses, websites, podcasts, community-science forums, OpEds, social media updates or press releases. While unfamiliar at first, those communications formats can provide invaluable opportunities to interact with the sovereign that should not be missed and henceforth enhances research integrity.

The notion of fairness includes “[…] impartial treatment [and the] lack of favoritism toward one side or another” [ 57 ]. To live up to this standard, we need to put value on clear, accessible language that does not discriminate and allows equal opportunities for participation; chooses dialogue over dominance; shows respect and mindfulness in our choice of words; demonstrates appreciative audience orientation and receptiveness to questions; and accepts critique and welcomes others’ viewpoints made in good faith.

Stewardship

Good stewardship in the context of science communication implies that we humbly understand our capacities as scientists as a privilege that is made possible for us by members of the public in the expectation that we make the best use of resources we are given. We are paid for thinking and pursuing interesting questions. Those who fund us, namely the taxpayers, should receive something back outside of research results. Scientists are serving the common good and thus should view intelligible communication as an integral part of their job, their training efforts, as well as their own, continuing education.

There is great power in the ethical core values of good research practice, and we advocate for using them as the basis for our communication efforts as well. Certainly, persuasiveness in expression, careful choice of wording, in combination with effective messaging are integral parts of good communications crafts (wo)manship. Yet, eloquence and elegance in one’s rhetoric cannot replace a critically-thinking, ethics-oriented mindset. Responsibility toward the trust that the public puts in us should be the compass in a scientist's fight against miscommunication, misinterpretation, misstatements, falsehoods, and pseudoscience. We owe it to society. Echoing the words of Atul Gawande [ 58 ], when “you become part of the scientific community, arguably the most powerful collective enterprise in human history, […] you also inherit a role in explaining [the nature of science] and helping it reclaim territory of trust at a time when that territory has been shrinking.”

Availability of data and materials

Not applicable.

Abbreviations

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Rigor, Responsibility, and Reproducibility

R 3 Center for Innovation in Science Education

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful for the input of colleagues and collaborators through the development of the program and this manuscript.

GB was partially funded by the National Science Foundation (1955062) and the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (R25AI159447).

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Your environment. your health., what is ethics in research & why is it important, by david b. resnik, j.d., ph.d..

December 23, 2020

The ideas and opinions expressed in this essay are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of the NIH, NIEHS, or US government.

When most people think of ethics (or morals), they think of rules for distinguishing between right and wrong, such as the Golden Rule ("Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"), a code of professional conduct like the Hippocratic Oath ("First of all, do no harm"), a religious creed like the Ten Commandments ("Thou Shalt not kill..."), or a wise aphorisms like the sayings of Confucius. This is the most common way of defining "ethics": norms for conduct that distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable behavior.

Most people learn ethical norms at home, at school, in church, or in other social settings. Although most people acquire their sense of right and wrong during childhood, moral development occurs throughout life and human beings pass through different stages of growth as they mature. Ethical norms are so ubiquitous that one might be tempted to regard them as simple commonsense. On the other hand, if morality were nothing more than commonsense, then why are there so many ethical disputes and issues in our society?

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One plausible explanation of these disagreements is that all people recognize some common ethical norms but interpret, apply, and balance them in different ways in light of their own values and life experiences. For example, two people could agree that murder is wrong but disagree about the morality of abortion because they have different understandings of what it means to be a human being.

Most societies also have legal rules that govern behavior, but ethical norms tend to be broader and more informal than laws. Although most societies use laws to enforce widely accepted moral standards and ethical and legal rules use similar concepts, ethics and law are not the same. An action may be legal but unethical or illegal but ethical. We can also use ethical concepts and principles to criticize, evaluate, propose, or interpret laws. Indeed, in the last century, many social reformers have urged citizens to disobey laws they regarded as immoral or unjust laws. Peaceful civil disobedience is an ethical way of protesting laws or expressing political viewpoints.

Another way of defining 'ethics' focuses on the disciplines that study standards of conduct, such as philosophy, theology, law, psychology, or sociology. For example, a "medical ethicist" is someone who studies ethical standards in medicine. One may also define ethics as a method, procedure, or perspective for deciding how to act and for analyzing complex problems and issues. For instance, in considering a complex issue like global warming , one may take an economic, ecological, political, or ethical perspective on the problem. While an economist might examine the cost and benefits of various policies related to global warming, an environmental ethicist could examine the ethical values and principles at stake.

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Many different disciplines, institutions , and professions have standards for behavior that suit their particular aims and goals. These standards also help members of the discipline to coordinate their actions or activities and to establish the public's trust of the discipline. For instance, ethical standards govern conduct in medicine, law, engineering, and business. Ethical norms also serve the aims or goals of research and apply to people who conduct scientific research or other scholarly or creative activities. There is even a specialized discipline, research ethics, which studies these norms. See Glossary of Commonly Used Terms in Research Ethics and Research Ethics Timeline .

There are several reasons why it is important to adhere to ethical norms in research. First, norms promote the aims of research , such as knowledge, truth, and avoidance of error. For example, prohibitions against fabricating , falsifying, or misrepresenting research data promote the truth and minimize error.

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Second, since research often involves a great deal of cooperation and coordination among many different people in different disciplines and institutions, ethical standards promote the values that are essential to collaborative work , such as trust, accountability, mutual respect, and fairness. For example, many ethical norms in research, such as guidelines for authorship , copyright and patenting policies , data sharing policies, and confidentiality rules in peer review, are designed to protect intellectual property interests while encouraging collaboration. Most researchers want to receive credit for their contributions and do not want to have their ideas stolen or disclosed prematurely.

Third, many of the ethical norms help to ensure that researchers can be held accountable to the public . For instance, federal policies on research misconduct, conflicts of interest, the human subjects protections, and animal care and use are necessary in order to make sure that researchers who are funded by public money can be held accountable to the public.

Fourth, ethical norms in research also help to build public support for research. People are more likely to fund a research project if they can trust the quality and integrity of research.

Finally, many of the norms of research promote a variety of other important moral and social values , such as social responsibility, human rights, animal welfare, compliance with the law, and public health and safety. Ethical lapses in research can significantly harm human and animal subjects, students, and the public. For example, a researcher who fabricates data in a clinical trial may harm or even kill patients, and a researcher who fails to abide by regulations and guidelines relating to radiation or biological safety may jeopardize his health and safety or the health and safety of staff and students.

Codes and Policies for Research Ethics

Given the importance of ethics for the conduct of research, it should come as no surprise that many different professional associations, government agencies, and universities have adopted specific codes, rules, and policies relating to research ethics. Many government agencies have ethics rules for funded researchers.

• National Institutes of Health (NIH)
• National Science Foundation (NSF)
• Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
• Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
• US Department of Agriculture (USDA)
• Singapore Statement on Research Integrity
• American Chemical Society, The Chemist Professional’s Code of Conduct
• Code of Ethics (American Society for Clinical Laboratory Science)
• American Psychological Association, Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct
• Statement on Professional Ethics (American Association of University Professors)
• Nuremberg Code
• World Medical Association's Declaration of Helsinki

Ethical Principles

The following is a rough and general summary of some ethical principles that various codes address*:

Strive for honesty in all scientific communications. Honestly report data, results, methods and procedures, and publication status. Do not fabricate, falsify, or misrepresent data. Do not deceive colleagues, research sponsors, or the public.

Objectivity

Strive to avoid bias in experimental design, data analysis, data interpretation, peer review, personnel decisions, grant writing, expert testimony, and other aspects of research where objectivity is expected or required. Avoid or minimize bias or self-deception. Disclose personal or financial interests that may affect research.

Keep your promises and agreements; act with sincerity; strive for consistency of thought and action.

Carefulness

Avoid careless errors and negligence; carefully and critically examine your own work and the work of your peers. Keep good records of research activities, such as data collection, research design, and correspondence with agencies or journals.

Share data, results, ideas, tools, resources. Be open to criticism and new ideas.

Transparency

Disclose methods, materials, assumptions, analyses, and other information needed to evaluate your research.

Accountability

Take responsibility for your part in research and be prepared to give an account (i.e. an explanation or justification) of what you did on a research project and why.

Intellectual Property

Honor patents, copyrights, and other forms of intellectual property. Do not use unpublished data, methods, or results without permission. Give proper acknowledgement or credit for all contributions to research. Never plagiarize.

Confidentiality

Protect confidential communications, such as papers or grants submitted for publication, personnel records, trade or military secrets, and patient records.

Responsible Publication

Publish in order to advance research and scholarship, not to advance just your own career. Avoid wasteful and duplicative publication.

Responsible Mentoring

Help to educate, mentor, and advise students. Promote their welfare and allow them to make their own decisions.

Respect for Colleagues

Respect your colleagues and treat them fairly.

Social Responsibility

Strive to promote social good and prevent or mitigate social harms through research, public education, and advocacy.

Non-Discrimination

Avoid discrimination against colleagues or students on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, or other factors not related to scientific competence and integrity.

Maintain and improve your own professional competence and expertise through lifelong education and learning; take steps to promote competence in science as a whole.

Know and obey relevant laws and institutional and governmental policies.

Animal Care

Show proper respect and care for animals when using them in research. Do not conduct unnecessary or poorly designed animal experiments.

Human Subjects protection

When conducting research on human subjects, minimize harms and risks and maximize benefits; respect human dignity, privacy, and autonomy; take special precautions with vulnerable populations; and strive to distribute the benefits and burdens of research fairly.

* Adapted from Shamoo A and Resnik D. 2015. Responsible Conduct of Research, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press).

Ethical Decision Making in Research

Although codes, policies, and principles are very important and useful, like any set of rules, they do not cover every situation, they often conflict, and they require interpretation. It is therefore important for researchers to learn how to interpret, assess, and apply various research rules and how to make decisions and act ethically in various situations. The vast majority of decisions involve the straightforward application of ethical rules. For example, consider the following case:

The research protocol for a study of a drug on hypertension requires the administration of the drug at different doses to 50 laboratory mice, with chemical and behavioral tests to determine toxic effects. Tom has almost finished the experiment for Dr. Q. He has only 5 mice left to test. However, he really wants to finish his work in time to go to Florida on spring break with his friends, who are leaving tonight. He has injected the drug in all 50 mice but has not completed all of the tests. He therefore decides to extrapolate from the 45 completed results to produce the 5 additional results.

Many different research ethics policies would hold that Tom has acted unethically by fabricating data. If this study were sponsored by a federal agency, such as the NIH, his actions would constitute a form of research misconduct , which the government defines as "fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism" (or FFP). Actions that nearly all researchers classify as unethical are viewed as misconduct. It is important to remember, however, that misconduct occurs only when researchers intend to deceive : honest errors related to sloppiness, poor record keeping, miscalculations, bias, self-deception, and even negligence do not constitute misconduct. Also, reasonable disagreements about research methods, procedures, and interpretations do not constitute research misconduct. Consider the following case:

Dr. T has just discovered a mathematical error in his paper that has been accepted for publication in a journal. The error does not affect the overall results of his research, but it is potentially misleading. The journal has just gone to press, so it is too late to catch the error before it appears in print. In order to avoid embarrassment, Dr. T decides to ignore the error.

Dr. T's error is not misconduct nor is his decision to take no action to correct the error. Most researchers, as well as many different policies and codes would say that Dr. T should tell the journal (and any coauthors) about the error and consider publishing a correction or errata. Failing to publish a correction would be unethical because it would violate norms relating to honesty and objectivity in research.

There are many other activities that the government does not define as "misconduct" but which are still regarded by most researchers as unethical. These are sometimes referred to as " other deviations " from acceptable research practices and include:

• Publishing the same paper in two different journals without telling the editors
• Submitting the same paper to different journals without telling the editors
• Not informing a collaborator of your intent to file a patent in order to make sure that you are the sole inventor
• Including a colleague as an author on a paper in return for a favor even though the colleague did not make a serious contribution to the paper
• Discussing with your colleagues confidential data from a paper that you are reviewing for a journal
• Using data, ideas, or methods you learn about while reviewing a grant or a papers without permission
• Trimming outliers from a data set without discussing your reasons in paper
• Using an inappropriate statistical technique in order to enhance the significance of your research
• Bypassing the peer review process and announcing your results through a press conference without giving peers adequate information to review your work
• Conducting a review of the literature that fails to acknowledge the contributions of other people in the field or relevant prior work
• Stretching the truth on a grant application in order to convince reviewers that your project will make a significant contribution to the field
• Stretching the truth on a job application or curriculum vita
• Giving the same research project to two graduate students in order to see who can do it the fastest
• Overworking, neglecting, or exploiting graduate or post-doctoral students
• Failing to keep good research records
• Failing to maintain research data for a reasonable period of time
• Making derogatory comments and personal attacks in your review of author's submission
• Promising a student a better grade for sexual favors
• Using a racist epithet in the laboratory
• Making significant deviations from the research protocol approved by your institution's Animal Care and Use Committee or Institutional Review Board for Human Subjects Research without telling the committee or the board
• Not reporting an adverse event in a human research experiment
• Wasting animals in research
• Exposing students and staff to biological risks in violation of your institution's biosafety rules
• Sabotaging someone's work
• Stealing supplies, books, or data
• Rigging an experiment so you know how it will turn out
• Making unauthorized copies of data, papers, or computer programs
• Owning over $10,000 in stock in a company that sponsors your research and not disclosing this financial interest
• Deliberately overestimating the clinical significance of a new drug in order to obtain economic benefits

These actions would be regarded as unethical by most scientists and some might even be illegal in some cases. Most of these would also violate different professional ethics codes or institutional policies. However, they do not fall into the narrow category of actions that the government classifies as research misconduct. Indeed, there has been considerable debate about the definition of "research misconduct" and many researchers and policy makers are not satisfied with the government's narrow definition that focuses on FFP. However, given the huge list of potential offenses that might fall into the category "other serious deviations," and the practical problems with defining and policing these other deviations, it is understandable why government officials have chosen to limit their focus.

Finally, situations frequently arise in research in which different people disagree about the proper course of action and there is no broad consensus about what should be done. In these situations, there may be good arguments on both sides of the issue and different ethical principles may conflict. These situations create difficult decisions for research known as ethical or moral dilemmas . Consider the following case:

Dr. Wexford is the principal investigator of a large, epidemiological study on the health of 10,000 agricultural workers. She has an impressive dataset that includes information on demographics, environmental exposures, diet, genetics, and various disease outcomes such as cancer, Parkinson’s disease (PD), and ALS. She has just published a paper on the relationship between pesticide exposure and PD in a prestigious journal. She is planning to publish many other papers from her dataset. She receives a request from another research team that wants access to her complete dataset. They are interested in examining the relationship between pesticide exposures and skin cancer. Dr. Wexford was planning to conduct a study on this topic.

Dr. Wexford faces a difficult choice. On the one hand, the ethical norm of openness obliges her to share data with the other research team. Her funding agency may also have rules that obligate her to share data. On the other hand, if she shares data with the other team, they may publish results that she was planning to publish, thus depriving her (and her team) of recognition and priority. It seems that there are good arguments on both sides of this issue and Dr. Wexford needs to take some time to think about what she should do. One possible option is to share data, provided that the investigators sign a data use agreement. The agreement could define allowable uses of the data, publication plans, authorship, etc. Another option would be to offer to collaborate with the researchers.

The following are some step that researchers, such as Dr. Wexford, can take to deal with ethical dilemmas in research:

What is the problem or issue?

It is always important to get a clear statement of the problem. In this case, the issue is whether to share information with the other research team.

What is the relevant information?

Many bad decisions are made as a result of poor information. To know what to do, Dr. Wexford needs to have more information concerning such matters as university or funding agency or journal policies that may apply to this situation, the team's intellectual property interests, the possibility of negotiating some kind of agreement with the other team, whether the other team also has some information it is willing to share, the impact of the potential publications, etc.

What are the different options?

People may fail to see different options due to a limited imagination, bias, ignorance, or fear. In this case, there may be other choices besides 'share' or 'don't share,' such as 'negotiate an agreement' or 'offer to collaborate with the researchers.'

How do ethical codes or policies as well as legal rules apply to these different options?

The university or funding agency may have policies on data management that apply to this case. Broader ethical rules, such as openness and respect for credit and intellectual property, may also apply to this case. Laws relating to intellectual property may be relevant.

Are there any people who can offer ethical advice?

It may be useful to seek advice from a colleague, a senior researcher, your department chair, an ethics or compliance officer, or anyone else you can trust. In the case, Dr. Wexford might want to talk to her supervisor and research team before making a decision.

After considering these questions, a person facing an ethical dilemma may decide to ask more questions, gather more information, explore different options, or consider other ethical rules. However, at some point he or she will have to make a decision and then take action. Ideally, a person who makes a decision in an ethical dilemma should be able to justify his or her decision to himself or herself, as well as colleagues, administrators, and other people who might be affected by the decision. He or she should be able to articulate reasons for his or her conduct and should consider the following questions in order to explain how he or she arrived at his or her decision:

• Which choice will probably have the best overall consequences for science and society?
• Which choice could stand up to further publicity and scrutiny?
• Which choice could you not live with?
• Think of the wisest person you know. What would he or she do in this situation?
• Which choice would be the most just, fair, or responsible?

After considering all of these questions, one still might find it difficult to decide what to do. If this is the case, then it may be appropriate to consider others ways of making the decision, such as going with a gut feeling or intuition, seeking guidance through prayer or meditation, or even flipping a coin. Endorsing these methods in this context need not imply that ethical decisions are irrational, however. The main point is that human reasoning plays a pivotal role in ethical decision-making but there are limits to its ability to solve all ethical dilemmas in a finite amount of time.

Promoting Ethical Conduct in Science

Do U.S. research institutions meet or exceed federal mandates for instruction in responsible conduct of research? A national survey

 Read about U.S. research instutuins follow federal manadates for ethics in research 

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Most academic institutions in the US require undergraduate, graduate, or postgraduate students to have some education in the responsible conduct of research (RCR) . The NIH and NSF have both mandated training in research ethics for students and trainees. Many academic institutions outside of the US have also developed educational curricula in research ethics

Those of you who are taking or have taken courses in research ethics may be wondering why you are required to have education in research ethics. You may believe that you are highly ethical and know the difference between right and wrong. You would never fabricate or falsify data or plagiarize. Indeed, you also may believe that most of your colleagues are highly ethical and that there is no ethics problem in research..

If you feel this way, relax. No one is accusing you of acting unethically. Indeed, the evidence produced so far shows that misconduct is a very rare occurrence in research, although there is considerable variation among various estimates. The rate of misconduct has been estimated to be as low as 0.01% of researchers per year (based on confirmed cases of misconduct in federally funded research) to as high as 1% of researchers per year (based on self-reports of misconduct on anonymous surveys). See Shamoo and Resnik (2015), cited above.

Clearly, it would be useful to have more data on this topic, but so far there is no evidence that science has become ethically corrupt, despite some highly publicized scandals. Even if misconduct is only a rare occurrence, it can still have a tremendous impact on science and society because it can compromise the integrity of research, erode the public’s trust in science, and waste time and resources. Will education in research ethics help reduce the rate of misconduct in science? It is too early to tell. The answer to this question depends, in part, on how one understands the causes of misconduct. There are two main theories about why researchers commit misconduct. According to the "bad apple" theory, most scientists are highly ethical. Only researchers who are morally corrupt, economically desperate, or psychologically disturbed commit misconduct. Moreover, only a fool would commit misconduct because science's peer review system and self-correcting mechanisms will eventually catch those who try to cheat the system. In any case, a course in research ethics will have little impact on "bad apples," one might argue.

According to the "stressful" or "imperfect" environment theory, misconduct occurs because various institutional pressures, incentives, and constraints encourage people to commit misconduct, such as pressures to publish or obtain grants or contracts, career ambitions, the pursuit of profit or fame, poor supervision of students and trainees, and poor oversight of researchers (see Shamoo and Resnik 2015). Moreover, defenders of the stressful environment theory point out that science's peer review system is far from perfect and that it is relatively easy to cheat the system. Erroneous or fraudulent research often enters the public record without being detected for years. Misconduct probably results from environmental and individual causes, i.e. when people who are morally weak, ignorant, or insensitive are placed in stressful or imperfect environments. In any case, a course in research ethics can be useful in helping to prevent deviations from norms even if it does not prevent misconduct. Education in research ethics is can help people get a better understanding of ethical standards, policies, and issues and improve ethical judgment and decision making. Many of the deviations that occur in research may occur because researchers simply do not know or have never thought seriously about some of the ethical norms of research. For example, some unethical authorship practices probably reflect traditions and practices that have not been questioned seriously until recently. If the director of a lab is named as an author on every paper that comes from his lab, even if he does not make a significant contribution, what could be wrong with that? That's just the way it's done, one might argue. Another example where there may be some ignorance or mistaken traditions is conflicts of interest in research. A researcher may think that a "normal" or "traditional" financial relationship, such as accepting stock or a consulting fee from a drug company that sponsors her research, raises no serious ethical issues. Or perhaps a university administrator sees no ethical problem in taking a large gift with strings attached from a pharmaceutical company. Maybe a physician thinks that it is perfectly appropriate to receive a $300 finder’s fee for referring patients into a clinical trial.

If "deviations" from ethical conduct occur in research as a result of ignorance or a failure to reflect critically on problematic traditions, then a course in research ethics may help reduce the rate of serious deviations by improving the researcher's understanding of ethics and by sensitizing him or her to the issues.

Finally, education in research ethics should be able to help researchers grapple with the ethical dilemmas they are likely to encounter by introducing them to important concepts, tools, principles, and methods that can be useful in resolving these dilemmas. Scientists must deal with a number of different controversial topics, such as human embryonic stem cell research, cloning, genetic engineering, and research involving animal or human subjects, which require ethical reflection and deliberation.

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Nih clinical research trials and you, guiding principles for ethical research.

Pursuing Potential Research Participants Protections

“When people are invited to participate in research, there is a strong belief that it should be their choice based on their understanding of what the study is about, and what the risks and benefits of the study are,” said Dr. Christine Grady, chief of the NIH Clinical Center Department of Bioethics, to Clinical Center Radio in a podcast.

Clinical research advances the understanding of science and promotes human health. However, it is important to remember the individuals who volunteer to participate in research. There are precautions researchers can take – in the planning, implementation and follow-up of studies – to protect these participants in research. Ethical guidelines are established for clinical research to protect patient volunteers and to preserve the integrity of the science.

NIH Clinical Center researchers published seven main principles to guide the conduct of ethical research:

Social and clinical value

Scientific validity, fair subject selection, favorable risk-benefit ratio, independent review, informed consent.

• Respect for potential and enrolled subjects

Every research study is designed to answer a specific question. The answer should be important enough to justify asking people to accept some risk or inconvenience for others. In other words, answers to the research question should contribute to scientific understanding of health or improve our ways of preventing, treating, or caring for people with a given disease to justify exposing participants to the risk and burden of research.

A study should be designed in a way that will get an understandable answer to the important research question. This includes considering whether the question asked is answerable, whether the research methods are valid and feasible, and whether the study is designed with accepted principles, clear methods, and reliable practices. Invalid research is unethical because it is a waste of resources and exposes people to risk for no purpose

The primary basis for recruiting participants should be the scientific goals of the study — not vulnerability, privilege, or other unrelated factors. Participants who accept the risks of research should be in a position to enjoy its benefits. Specific groups of participants  (for example, women or children) should not be excluded from the research opportunities without a good scientific reason or a particular susceptibility to risk.

Uncertainty about the degree of risks and benefits associated with a clinical research study is inherent. Research risks may be trivial or serious, transient or long-term. Risks can be physical, psychological, economic, or social. Everything should be done to minimize the risks and inconvenience to research participants to maximize the potential benefits, and to determine that the potential benefits are proportionate to, or outweigh, the risks.

To minimize potential conflicts of interest and make sure a study is ethically acceptable before it starts, an independent review panel should review the proposal and ask important questions, including: Are those conducting the trial sufficiently free of bias? Is the study doing all it can to protect research participants? Has the trial been ethically designed and is the risk–benefit ratio favorable? The panel also monitors a study while it is ongoing.

Potential participants should make their own decision about whether they want to participate or continue participating in research. This is done through a process of informed consent in which individuals (1) are accurately informed of the purpose, methods, risks, benefits, and alternatives to the research, (2) understand this information and how it relates to their own clinical situation or interests, and (3) make a voluntary decision about whether to participate.

Respect for potential and enrolled participants

Individuals should be treated with respect from the time they are approached for possible participation — even if they refuse enrollment in a study — throughout their participation and after their participation ends. This includes:

• respecting their privacy and keeping their private information confidential
• respecting their right to change their mind, to decide that the research does not match their interests, and to withdraw without a penalty
• informing them of new information that might emerge in the course of research, which might change their assessment of the risks and benefits of participating
• monitoring their welfare and, if they experience adverse reactions, unexpected effects, or changes in clinical status, ensuring appropriate treatment and, when necessary, removal from the study
• informing them about what was learned from the research

More information on these seven guiding principles and on bioethics in general

This page last reviewed on March 16, 2016

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• Open access
• Published: 12 August 2021

Strengthening research integrity: which topic areas should organisations focus on?

• Mads P. Sørensen   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2455-2515 1 ,
• Tine Ravn 1 ,
• Ana Marušić   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6272-0917 2 ,
• Andrea Reyes Elizondo   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-5676-2122 3 ,
• Panagiotis Kavouras   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-8004-6196 4 ,
• Joeri K. Tijdink 5 &
• Anna-Kathrine Bendtsen 1  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  8 , Article number:  198 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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• Science, technology and society

The widespread problems with scientific fraud, questionable research practices, and the reliability of scientific results have led to an increased focus on research integrity (RI). International organisations and networks have been established, declarations have been issued, and codes of conducts have been formed. The abstract principles of these documents are now also being translated into concrete topic areas that Research Performing organisations (RPOs) and Research Funding organisations (RFOs) should focus on. However, so far, we know very little about disciplinary differences in the need for RI support from RPOs and RFOs. The paper attempts to fill this knowledge gap. It reports on a comprehensive focus group study with 30 focus group interviews carried out in eight different countries across Europe focusing on the following research question: “Which RI topics would researchers and stakeholders from the four main areas of research (humanities, social science, natural science incl. technical science, and medical science incl. biomedicine) prioritise for RPOs and RFOs?” The paper reports on the results of these focus group interviews and gives an overview of the priorities of the four main areas of research. The paper ends with six policy recommendations and a reflection on how the results of the study can be used in RPOs and RFOs.

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Introduction and literature background.

Scientific research is vital for extending the frontiers of knowledge. Universities and other research performing organisations (RPOs) are the cradle of competence, knowledge, and curiosity, playing a pivotal role in society by informing social, political, and economic decision-making. Research funding organisations (RFOs) contribute to this crucial role of science by setting directions and priorities for research and by allocating the necessary funding. The authority and societal relevance of research depend on the trustworthiness of research results. However, science is fallible, contextually situated, and “never pure” (Shapin, 2010 ), progressing by learning from mistakes and refutations of own hypotheses, being itself a source of uncertainties and dilemmas (Beck, 1992 ). Therefore, it is crucial that the scientific community and the public can have trust in researchers and their organisations, knowing that they have research integrity (RI), defined as “the attitude and habit of the researchers to conduct their research according to appropriate ethical, legal and professional frameworks, obligations and standards” (ENERI, 2019 ).

However, over the last 20 years, an alarmingly high number of RI-related problems have been identified and reported. These include cases of scientific fraud and widespread problems with questionable research practices (Steneck, 2006 ; Fanelli, 2009 ; Bouter et al., 2016 ; Ravn and Sørensen, 2021 ) as well as problems with reliability of scientific results (Ioannidis, 2005 ; Resnik and Shamoo, 2017 ; Baker, 2016 ). Ultimately, such violations of good research practice risk diminishing the public and the research community’s trust in science, its institutions, and its practitioners (Roberts et al., 2020 ; Edwards and Roy, 2017 ). Therefore, for validity as well as trust concerns (Bouter et al., 2016 ), research integrity should be strengthened among researchers and research institutions.

To strengthen RI, international networks have been established, such as the European Network of Research Integrity Offices (ENRIO) and the World Conferences on Research Integrity Foundation (WCRI). These organisations have issued different guidance documents on, for instance, RI principles (the Singapore Statement) (WCRI, 2010 ), RI in international collaborations (the Montreal statement) (WCRI, 2013 ), criteria for advancement of researchers (the Hong Kong principles) (Moher et al., 2020 ), and RI investigations (ENERI and ENRIO 2019 ). There are good examples of RPOs and RFOs successfully implementing RI policies into practice (Mejlgaard et al., 2020 ; Lerouge and Hol, 2020 ). There is also recognition that RPOs need support to put RI principles into practice, as outlined in, for instance, the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity (ALLEA, 2017 ) or in the recommendations from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine ( 2017 ) in the USA. RPOs and RFOs are expected to develop concrete organisational policies that are, or will be, implemented across disciplines in the research ecosystem. However, there is little evidence on how to best address this important task and make abstract RI principles and codes of conduct concrete and relevant for researchers across different disciplines, organisations, and national contexts. A recent scoping review of available evidence showed that most RI practice guidance was developed for research in general, applicable to all research fields (Ščepanović et al., 2021 ). The majority of RI documents were guidelines developed by RPOs, which focused on researchers. Only a few RI practices originating from RFOs were identified. While medical science had many guidance documents and support structures in place (patient-centred data management plans, ethical review boards, etc.), the main research areas of natural science, social science, and the humanities did not have much discipline-specific RI guidance.

If we look at factors influencing the implementation of practices for RI in RPOs and RFOs, there is a great deal of evidence on factors negatively influencing RI but only a few studies on how to make a positive change in research environments at the institutional level (Gaskell et al., 2019 ). A Cochrane systematic review of interventions to promote RI (Marušić et al., 2016 ) showed that only a few have been shown to be effective. There was only low-quality evidence on training students about plagiarism, and no studies at that time showed successful interventions at the organisational level (Marušić et al., 2016 ). More recently, Haven et al. ( 2020 ) showed that a transparent research climate is important for enhancing RI.

A study of RI-related changes in a research organisation showed that the responses of researchers were influenced not only by academic and professional training and experience, but also by the micro-organisational context in which the change was implemented (Owen et al., 2021 ). Furthermore, developing skills for RI and advocating and supporting RI implementation with specific interventions may not be sufficient and should be complemented by periodic formal research assessment exercises to ensure that the RI practices have been fully implemented (Owen et al., 2021 ). Economic modelling of institutional rewards for research further suggests that research institutions should balance both an “effort incentive policy” (to increase research productivity) and an “anti-fraud policy” (to deal with misconduct) (Le Maux et al., 2019 ).

The point of departure for our focus group study is the idea that research organisations need to have a clear plan for how to promote RI (Mejlgaard et al., 2020 ). This plan must describe which policies and actions an organisation will apply to promote RI and point to relevant guidelines that can support researchers across main areas of research. The first step in such a plan is to identify the most relevant topics. Some topics have already been identified by the research community, such as training and mentoring for RI, improving research culture, protecting both whistleblowers and researchers under allegation for misconduct (Forsberg et al., 2018 ), as well as research methodology and reporting/publishing (EViR Funders’ Forum, 2020 ).

Our focus group study is part of the EC-funded project “Standard Operating Procedures for Research Integrity” (SOPs4RI), which aims to support transformational RI processes across European Research. Footnote 1 Ahead of the focus group study, a wide, three-round Delphi consultation of research policy experts and institutional leaders was conducted to identify priority topics for RI promotion plans (Labib et al., 2021 ). This resulted in two lists of RI topics, with nine topics for RPOs and 11 topics for RFOs identified as important. Footnote 2

However, neither the Delphi study (Labib et al., 2021 ) nor any other studies tell us anything about disciplinary differences in the relevance of these RI topics. We know from the literature on, for example, epistemic cultures that there are notable differences in how research processes are carried out and what constitutes scientific knowledge (e.g., Knorr Cetina, 1999 ; Knorr Cetina & Reichmann, 2015 ). These differences also lead to variation in the perception of questionable research practices (QRPs) across research areas (e.g., Ravn and Sørensen, 2021 ). Therefore, we might expect disciplinary differences in requirements for research integrity guidelines and organisational support. However, so far, we know very little about what such differences entail. In the present paper, we attempt to fill this knowledge gap by examining how to best promote RI across the main areas of research. Footnote 3 We conducted 30 focus group interviews across Europe in an attempt to answer the question, “Which RI topics would researchers and stakeholders from the four main areas of research (humanities, social science, natural science incl. technical science, and medical science incl. biomedicine) prioritise for RPOs and RFOs?” The paper reports on the results of these focus group interviews and gives an overview of the priorities of the four main areas of research. The paper ends with policy recommendations and a reflection on how the results of our study can be used in RPOs and RFOs.

Research and interview design

Through a focus group study design, we aimed to explore how the main areas of research (humanities, social science, natural science incl. technical science, and medical science incl. biomedicine) perceived and prioritised a number of different RI topics relevant for RPOs and RFOs, respectively (based on Labib et al., 2021 and Mejlgaard et al., 2020 ). The focus group interviews consisted of three parts (cf. Document S3 : Moderator/interview guide). First, some open questions were introduced that related to the different main areas of research’s needs for RI support. Then, a discussion followed on selected RI topics. Finally, a sorting exercise was introduced where nine and 11 topics for RPOs and RFOs, respectively, were sorted and ranked. Here, based on discussion and consensus within the group, participants were asked to place the topics within one of three categories: “very important”, “somewhat important”, and “of none or minimal importance” for enhancing RI within their main area of research. The exercise was carried out via pre-printed, laminated cards (see examples in Document S5 ). On one side of the card was the name of the RI topic under discussion—on the other side the subtopics associated with this topic. In this way, the interviewees could use the subtopics to understand the meaning of the topic, discuss the importance of it for their research area and, finally, place it in one of the three categories. Table 1 shows the topics, including subtopics, that were sorted and ranked, and this paper reports on the results of this sorting exercise.

Sample and recruitment strategy

The comprehensive study consists of 30 focus group interviews across eight European countries. Footnote 4 The interviews were conducted between December 2019 and April 2020. 14 of the focus groups concentrated on RPOs and involved researchers exclusively, 16 groups focused on RFOs and included researchers as well as relevant stakeholders. A total of 147 researchers and stakeholders participated in the study. Footnote 5 Table 2 displays the distribution of participants in relation to research area, gender, and academic level. Table S1 and Table S2 give a more detailed overview of the composition of each focus group.

See Table S4 for further information on number of invitations send out, acceptance rates, and cancellations.

Study participants were recruited based on a number of sampling criteria to ensure overall variation in research areas and disciplines as well as in stakeholder representation in the mixed focus groups. For both the researcher-only groups (targeting RPOs) and the mixed groups (targeting RFOs), sample homogeneity was employed with regard to area of research. Furthermore, the RPO groups were composed of researchers with shared methodological and epistemic approaches in terms of “research orientation”. In the humanities-groups focusing on RPOs, one group was composed of language disciplines, one of historical disciplines, and the last one of communication disciplines. In the social sciences, the groups were divided between qualitative researchers (two groups) and quantitative researchers (one group). In the Natural science groups, three groups were composed of researchers doing laboratory/experimental/applied/field research and one group with researchers who work theoretical. Finally, in the medical science groups, two groups conducted basic research and two groups were clinical/translational/public health in character. The exact disciplines represented in these groups are shown in Table S1 .

In the 16 groups focusing on RFOs, four groups were conducted per main area of research (humanities, social science, natural science incl. technical science, and medical science incl. biomedicine). All groups consisted of both researchers and relevant stakeholders. In the composition of these groups, variation in stakeholder representation was key. Stakeholders included research integrity and research ethics committee members, public and private funders, representatives from RPO-management and industry, trade unions, publishers, etc (see Table S2 for a full account of participants).

The following sample criteria were also applied to enhance representation and diversity and to introduce heterogeneity into the groups to counterbalance group homogeneity:

One stakeholder employed in a high-level management position in a research-funding organisation (RFO) and one stakeholder from a research integrity office (RIO) should be included in each of the groups.

Both senior/permanent position holders and junior researchers/non-permanent position holders should be represented in the groups. Interdependent participants (e.g., a lab leader and an employee from the same lab) should not be recruited to the same group.

The gender composition of the focus groups should be balanced.

Two to three different disciplines should be represented in each focus group.

Minimum two types of stakeholders should be included in a mixed focus group. Stakeholders must have discipline-specific knowledge.

The selected disciplines should be broadly representative of research being conducted in the four main areas.

Not all focus groups meet all sampling criteria (see Table S1 and Table S2 ). However, across the complete sample, variation is accomplished as to the number of criteria stipulated. Overall, the focus group study applied a purposeful sampling strategy (Patton, 1990 ) based on the number of pre-selected criteria outlined above. Moreover, the study used snowball/chain sampling. Relevant volunteers from existing networks, together with new volunteers recruited at, for instance, conferences were asked to act as gatekeepers and assist with the recruitment of relevant researchers and stakeholders within their organisations and institutions. This strategy was supplemented by an approach where participants were chosen from institutional webpages and invited by e-mail.

Ethical considerations

Ethical approval.

Ethical approval was obtained from the Research Ethics Committee at Aarhus University (ref. no 2019-0015957). In addition, a national approval was obtained in Croatia.

Risk and inconveniences

The focus group study posed a small risk of discovering sensitive information, for instance concerning research misconduct cases. In the focus group introduction, the focus group facilitators emphasised the issue of confidentiality, and by signing the informed consent form, participants agreed to maintain the confidentiality of information discussed during the focus group interview.

Informed consent

The informed consent form followed the guidelines of Aarhus University. For the face-to-face interviews, consent forms were signed before the commencement of the interviews. For the online focus group interviews, consent was given verbally and subsequently provided in a written version.

Data management and privacy

The focus group invitation letter included a link to the privacy policy specifying the procedures for data management and privacy in compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Coding and analytical strategy

Recording and transcription.

All interviews were performed in English, recorded, and transcribed to enhance accuracy and reliability. All transcribed interviews were coded in the software programme NVivo (ver. 12), which is designed to facilitate data management, analysis, and reporting. The coding process mainly followed a deductive coding strategy and was directed by a set of pre-defined categories that relate to the list of RI topics and subtopics explored through the moderator/interview guide (cf. Document S3 , Table 1 , and Sørensen et al., 2020 ). The coding process also made use of a more explorative approach, where new topics and cross-cutting themes emerged through an inductive coding procedure. The data was coded through the process of first- and second-cycle coding (Saldana, 2013 ) by one of the authors but discussed collectively.

Analytical strategy and construction of heat maps

The analytical strategy prioritised within-case analyses of each of the discussed RI topics in order to understand its uniqueness in relation to the different main areas of research, the specific dynamics and correlations at play as well as context-dependent implications that may reflect national and institutional variance of particular importance. The analytical strategy also included a thematic across-case comparison that added to and supported the explanatory force of the individual within-case analyses by ocusing on identifying differences and similarities across the main areas of research. To visualise the prioritisation of topics qua the sorting exercise and associated discussions, 10 heat maps were constructed through two rounds of coding. In the first round, two researchers analysed the outputs from the sorting exercises—pictures (cf. Document S5 ) and transcriptions—in order to place each topic in one of the five categories applied: “very important”, “important”, “somewhat important”, “of minimal importance”, and “not important”. Footnote 7 This was done for each of the 30 focus groups. In the second round, disparities in the coding were analysed and discussed. After this, both coders’ final codings were given a score (1–5; the lowest category “not important” got the score 1, the next-lowest category 2, etc.). Subsequently, the average score was calculated and used as the basis of the heat maps (Figs. 1 – 10 ).

The heat map displays the results of the sorting exercise of nine RI topics (horizontal rows) across the 14 RPO focus groups (vertical columns). The horizontal column on the left side with hexagons shows the combined results for all 14 RPO focus groups. The color chart at the top explains what the heat map colors mean. The construction of the heat maps is explained in the “Methods” section.

The heat map displays the results of the sorting exercise of nine RI topics (horizontal rows) across the three humanities RPO focus groups (vertical columns). The horizontal column on the left side with hexagons shows the combined results for all three RPO focus groups. The color chart at the top explains what the heat map colors mean. The construction of the heat maps is explained in the “Methods” section.

The heat map displays the results of the sorting exercise of nine RI topics (horizontal rows) across the three social science RPO focus groups (vertical columns). The horizontal column on the left side with hexagons shows the combined results for all three RPO focus groups. The color chart at the top explains what the heat map colors mean. The construction of the heat maps is explained in the “Methods” section.

The heat map displays the results of the sorting exercise of nine RI topics (horizontal rows) across the four natural science RPO focus groups (vertical columns). The horizontal column on the left side with hexagons shows the combined results for all four RPO focus groups. The color chart at the top explains what the heat map colors mean. The construction of the heat maps is explained in the “Methods” section.

The heat map displays the results of the sorting exercise of nine RI topics (horizontal rows) across the four medical science RPO focus groups (vertical columns). The horizontal column on the left side with hexagons shows the combined results for all four RPO focus groups. The color chart at the top explains what the heat map colors mean. The construction of the heat maps is explained in the "Methods" section.

The heat map displays the results of the sorting exercise of 11 RI topics (horizontal rows) across the 16 RFO focus groups (vertical columns). The horizontal column on the left side with hexagons shows the combined results for all 16 RFO focus groups. The color chart at the top explains what the heat map colors mean. The construction of the heat maps is explained in the “Methods” section.

The heat map displays the results of the sorting exercise of 11 RI topics (horizontal rows) across the four humanities RFO focus groups (vertical columns). The horizontal column on the left side with hexagons shows the combined results for all four RFO focus groups. The color chart at the top explains what the heat map colors mean. The construction of the heat maps is explained in the “Methods” section.

The heat map displays the results of the sorting exercise of 11 RI topics (horizontal rows) across the four social science RFO focus groups (vertical columns). The horizontal column on the left side with hexagons shows the combined results for all four RFO focus groups. The color chart at the top explains what the heat map colors mean. The construction of the heat maps is explained in the “Methods” section.

The heat map displays the results of the sorting exercise of 11 RI topics (horizontal rows) across the four natural science RFO focus groups (vertical columns). The horizontal column on the left side with hexagons shows the combined results for all four RFO focus groups. The color chart at the top explains what the heat map colors mean. The construction of the heat maps is explained in the “Methods” section.

The heat map displays the results of the sorting exercise of 11 RI topics (horizontal rows) across the four medical science RFO focus groups (vertical columns). The horizontal column on the left side with hexagons shows the combined results for all four RFO focus groups. The color chart at the top explains what the heat map colors mean. The construction of the heat maps is explained in the “Methods” section.

In this section, we present the results of the sorting exercise that was carried out as part of the 30 focus group interviews. We present the results in two subsections. First, we report on the results from the 14 focus groups focusing on topics for RPOs. Then, we present the results from the 16 focus groups that discussed RFO-related topics. In both subsections, we first show the combined results of all the focus groups within the subsection in a heat map. After this, we present the results per main area of research (humanities, social science, natural science, and medical science), reported in one heat map per main area. Finally, we end both subsections with a table that summarises the most important RI topics for the four main areas of research.

Research performing organisations

This subsection presents the results from the 14 focus groups that discussed a set of nine research integrity topics for RPOs. 67 researchers took part in the interviews, which were carried out in eight different countries. The interviewees represented key approaches and core disciplines within the four main areas of research. Table S1 describes the 14 focus groups in detail, including the number of interviewees in each group, approaches and disciplines represented, seniority level, gender balance, and the country where the focus group interview was conducted.

The combined results of the RPO focus groups

Figure 1 shows the results of the 14 focus groups that discussed the importance of the nine RPO topics. The heat map depicts the scores from each of the 14 groups as well as the combined score for all groups shown per topic. The combined scores show that two topics (“Supervision and mentoring” and “Research environment”) were considered to be very important, five topics were considered to be important, whereas the two last topics (“Collaborative research among RPOs” and “Declaration of competing interests”) got the combined score “somewhat important”. However, if we look at how the individual groups have scored these two topics, they were found to be “very important” in four and six groups, respectively. Our focus group interviews thus confirmed the importance of the RPO topics listed in Table 1 .

The results per main area of research for RPOs

If we look separately at the four different main areas of research, there are, however, also notable differences in the perception of the importance of individual topics. Figure 2 shows the results of the sorting exercise in the humanities focus groups. Apart from “Collaborative research among RPOs”, all topics were perceived to be important. The topic “Research Environment” was considered the most important topic.

Across the humanities groups, the topic “Responsible supervision and mentoring” was seen as a foundation for a solid research culture, as expressed by this interviewee, for example: “It holds up the quality. So I think that it’s very, very important that we have a good sense that responsibility is key in, when you supervise, when you mentor …” (Senior-level researcher in history of ideas, focus group 1). On the other hand, the topics “Research ethics structures” and “Data practices and management” were assessed rather differently among the three groups. For some, ethics does not play any role: “The actors I look at, they’re all dead so [all laugh]” (Assistant professor in archaeology, focus group 1). For others, it is seen as fundamental: “I mean it’s such a crucial, but basic thing, I think that its, yer, having a framework in place that is ethical” (Postdoc in theoretical linguistics, focus group 11).

These differences also reflect variances in experiences and needs of the different disciplinary subfields within the humanities. As a main research area, the humanities consist of many different disciplinary fields that vary in the methods they use and, in some cases, even belong to different epistemic cultures (Knorr-Cetina, 1999 ; Ravn and Sørensen, 2021 ). There are, in other words, differences in the way in which they “do research” and understand what good research is, and these differences show themselves in dissimilar needs for guidelines and SOPs. Accordingly, the interviewees in the humanities groups would like RPOs to consider disciplinary differences when formulating research integrity policies and guidelines in order to make sure that the policies are relevant: “… we are always held to standards that have nothing to do with our practice” (Senior-level researcher in history of ideas, focus group 1). According to the interviewees, this would also help RPOs ensuring legitimacy of its policies and procedures.

Differences in the way research is carried out can probably also explain why “Collaborative research among RPOs” got a low score in the humanities groups. Across the humanities, publications on average have fewer co-authors than publications within other main areas of research (Henriksen, 2016 ).

The need for thinking about disciplinary differences was also relevant among the focus group interviews with social scientists. In these interviews, eight of the nine topics were assessed as important or very important (Fig. 3 ). For example, expressed in this way concerning “Research environment”: “it’s very important because it creates a culture […]. If an institute or I’m new at some place and already their culture has integrity then I might learn by doing from them.” (Postdoc, focus group 16) “Research ethics structures” was the only topic that the social science groups considered to be of minimal importance for RPOs to develop guidelines and SOPs for. The discussions in the groups showed that this was not because the topic was not considered important per se, but because it was seen as a topic that was already well taken care of by RPOs. “Collaborative research among RPOs” also got a relatively low combined score. However, here, it is important to note the difference between the quantitative group that found this topic very important and the two qualitative groups that found the subject somewhat important.

In the natural science groups (including technical science), all issues except one were considered to be important or very important (Fig. 4 ). The only topic that got the combined score “somewhat important” was “Declaration of competing interests”. However, here, there were noteworthy differences between the four groups. Two groups found it very important, while one group thought this topic was already well covered: “… they [RPOs] all have clear guidelines on what you have to do in case of competing interest. You have different ones but they’re all pretty clear. It’s a very important topic, of course, but it’s being handled in a quite appropriate way as far as I know” (Associate professor in bioscience and engineering, focus group 17). The last group questioned the effect of declarations of competing interests: “I don’t think that declaration is the most important thing. The principle is important but not the declaration. What is declaration? [laughter] If you sign something that you don’t do, it’s not necessary that you’ll follow this […]” (Senior researcher in geoscience, focus group 23).

In contrast to the humanities and the qualitative methods groups within social science, the natural and technical science researchers could relate to most RI topics discussed in the focus groups. In these groups, “classic problems” within RI, such as conflicts on authorship, publication pressure, and problems related to supervision, were discussed across the groups. In addition, problems related to collaborative work, especially between universities and industry, were also pointed out as important, most likely because university-industry collaboration plays an important role within technical science and can sometimes generate conflicts, as this interviewee explains:

So, if you publish anything with [company name] or any of the companies, they will wanna read it, and they have to sign off on specifically what you write, and they will ask you to change some sentences that they don’t like. So, they never changed what they said, but they changed some of the wordings. […] So, I felt like they should just shush, like they shouldn’t have any say in what I write, because it’s my paper, it’s my data, but it’s also their data, and if I work with somebody in the university, they will also have permission to say that, right. We all have to agree on what it is, we say […] (Postdoc in chemistry, focus group 6).

The importance of thinking about disciplinary differences when formulating policies and guidelines for RI topics was also evident in the natural science groups. For example, all three experimental groups perceived “Research ethics structures” to be very important, whereas the theoretical group considered this topic “not important”. One of the interviewees explained the lack of importance of ethics structures for theoretical natural science with a lack of connection between theoretical work and living beings: “… I guess it doesn’t have any importance because it’s theoretical, it’s not on anything living” (Postdoc in chemistry, focus group 6).

Finally, if we look at the results from the medical science focus groups (Fig. 5 ), the interviewees found it particularly important to focus on “Education and training in RI”, “Responsible supervision and mentoring”, and “Research environment”. For example, expressed in this way:

On research environment:

[…] if we don’t support a research culture and a research environment there’s nothing for us to do. […] we have to be fertilised with good energy to make some good projects, and if there’s no culture where there’s fair procedures for appointments, where there’s adequate education and skills training, […] if none of these things are in place, there’s no need for us to do what we’re doing (Associate professor in clinical nursing, focus group 10).

On supervision and mentoring:

Ph.D students are expensive, because we have to send them to courses, conferences all these things, and we have to put so much energy trying to read the articles, to promote their science, and when something goes wrong, we are the main person taking the fall for it. So we need to have our names standing out if we don’t, therefore coaching and supervision is very, very important (Associate professor in oncology, focus group 10).

On education and training:

So, how do we perceive the term responsible science? Each one perceives it in a different way […] For me what we need is education […] (Professor in medical law and ethics, focus group 30).

“Dealing with breaches of RI”, “Research Ethics structures”, and “Data practices and management” were also assessed to be important issues for the RPOs to focus on, whereas the results for the last three topics are less clear. “Declaration of competing interest” got four different scores in the groups. The interviewees saw it as important, but also as a mere formality to declare competing interests: “It’s something that is always written, even though it’s just a little star at the end, ‘if there are any cases of conflict of interest, do not’. […] I think what we’re saying is that it’s important, but what I’m trying to say is, that it’s already written in many of the documents […]” (Associate professor in clinical nursing, focus group 10). “Publication and communication” and “Collaborative research among RPOs” also scored relatively low, but here, there seems to be a difference between the clinical and basic science groups. These topics were perceived as more important by the clinical groups than the basic research groups.

Finally, interviewees pointed out that procedures and standards are often quite different between RPOs and countries. One interviewee expressed it in this way:

Where should she apply for ethics? [There are] some other EU regulations that we have to follow on top of the local, regional, national requirements for ethics, so just to say that the mix of who we are and where we work influences, it makes a lot of, I don’t know, confusion somehow. And I think some rules and guidelines would be beneficial at times (Associate professor in clinical nursing, focus group 10).

This is often a challenge in collaborative projects. Therefore, the interviewees did not just request more guidelines and SOPs, but also a harmonisation across RPOs and countries, as expressed in this way: “If you are going to set up an office of research integrity at the European level (like USA) that would be very interesting. I think that would be a good idea” (Senior researcher in biophysics, focus group 30).

Top-prioritised topics per main area of research for RPOs

As this subsection has shown, there are notable differences between the main areas of research. Therefore, we end this subsection with a table that provides an overview of the top-prioritised topics per main area of research (Table 3 ). The table shows which topics are considered the most important for the different main areas. Only the topics that were found to be “very important” in at least three out of four groups (or two out of three for the main areas, where only three groups were carried out) are included.

Research funding organisations

In addition to the 14 focus group interviews focussing on the RPOs, 16 other focus groups interviews were carried out to discuss the perceived importance of the 11 topics that Labib et al. ( 2021 ) identified as important for RFOs. In this subsection, we report on the results from these focus groups. Also, in these RFO groups, we operated with the four main areas of research and conducted four focus group interviews within each of these main areas. The interviewees were both researchers from the particular main area of research and relevant stakeholders such as people working in management position at RPOs, representatives from funders, RIOs, and so on (see Table S2 for details). We did not divide the groups into different approaches within the four main areas of research but invited the interviewees as representatives of the main area. For example, this means that both qualitative and quantitative researchers took part in all four focus groups interviews within social science.

The combined results of the RFO focus groups

The combined results of the 16 focus groups that discussed the importance of the 11 topics identified by Labib et al. ( 2021 ) are shown in Fig. 6 . This combined heat map shows that nine of the 11 topics are considered to be “important”, while two topics, “Intellectual property rights” and “Collaboration within funded projects” were only regarded as “somewhat important”. Still, these topics were considered “very important” or “important” in seven and eight, respectively, of the 16 groups. The combined heat map thus testifies to a general support of the 11 topics identified by Labib et al. ( 2021 ).

The results per main area of research for RFOs

Despite a general validation of the 11 topics, the focus group interviews also revealed some disciplinary differences in the perception of the importance of the topics. Therefore, we continue this subsection by looking into the four main areas of research’s perception of the importance of the topics. We begin with the humanities and the heat map depicted in Fig. 7 , which shows the importance assigned to the 11 RFO-related topics by the interviewees in the humanities groups. Across the four groups, eight of the topics were found to be either important or very important for funders to focus on to support RI of its beneficiaries. Two topics (“Intellectual property issues” and “Collaboration within funded projects”) were only considered to be “somewhat important”, while “Declaration of competing interests” was found to be of minimal importance.

Even though the interviewees from the humanities were relatively positive towards the idea that RFOs develop their own guidelines and SOPs for at least eight of the 11 topics, it should be mentioned that they also expressed a concern that this might lead to increased bureaucracy, articulated by an interviewee in this way: “Yeah, it’s hard to say because I think that there’s already like a lot of bureaucracy […] I wonder if maybe we need to readdress where the bureaucracy is focused, when it comes to these things” (Associate researcher in digital humanities, focus group 13).

Further, although there are clear patterns in the way in which the humanities prioritise different topics, it is also important to note the relatively large differences between the groups. These differences are larger than within the other main areas of research and show how difficult it is to talk about the humanities as such across disciplinary, institutional, and national differences. When interpreting the differences in the perceptions of the importance of the topics, one also has to take the different subtopics related to each topic into consideration (cf. Table 1 ). Some subtopics might be important for some interviewees, while others are of lesser importance.

Turning now to social science, the first important feature in the heat map (Fig. 8 ) is that it is much greener than the humanities heat map (Fig. 7 ). This points to a generally stronger support within social science to the idea that RFOs can help enhance RI through guidelines and SOPs. Except for the topic “Intellectual property rights”, which the interviewees found it hard to relate to and not especially relevant for their area of research, the combined results show that the interviewees found the rest of the issues “important” or “very important”. Two topics, “Research ethics structures” and “Publication & communication”, were even considered to be “very important” by all groups. Three other topics (“Dealing with breaches of RI”, “Selection & evaluation of proposals”, and “Collaboration within funded projects”) were similarly placed in the “very important” category in three of the four focus groups, showing strong support to the idea that RFOs should make guidelines and SOPs for these topics.

Despite a generally positive-attitude towards RFOs providing guidelines and SOPs to beneficiaries, the interviewees in the social science focus groups also warned against possible negative bureaucratic side-effects of more guidelines and SOPs alongside already existing ones:

P2: […] we are spending more and more human resources and, along with that financial resources to explain how did we spent our money (Management position at university, focus group 22).

P1: I fully agree. And I think we are creating way too much burden, administrating, which could be used for actual productive scientific work (Associate professor of psychology, focus group 22).

If we look at the results from the natural science groups (Fig. 9 ), which in our study also includes technical science, we again see a strong overall validation of the 11 topics identified in the Delphi study. As was the case within social science, all topics are placed in the “very important” category in at least two of the four groups. However, although the overall picture is that all 11 topics are important for the RFOs to address (except “Publication & communication”, which only got the combined score “somewhat important”), the discussions in the four focus groups revealed substantial differences in the perception of the importance of the single topics. In most cases, these differences can be explained with disciplinary, institutional, and especially national differences. For example, the topic “Dealing with breaches of RI” was considered a “very important” topic in three groups, but not in the group that was conducted in Denmark. Here, it was found to be “not important”—not because the topics was not seen as important per see, but because a legal system for handling scientific misconduct is already in place in Denmark. As one of the interviewees explained,

[…] in Denmark we have actually a legal framework for dealing with this. It’s not something we invented at [name of RPO], it’s a standard for all Danish universities. So we also need to respect our system, we might not completely agree with the system, but then we need to work on changing the system but not having this overruled by a funding agency (RIO, focus group 7).

However, not all countries have such systems in place:

[…] from a funder’s perspective if you for instance were funding research in Italy or Greece, then from a funder’s perspective there might be a need for you to deal with breaches of research integrity, because there might not be any system at the university (RIO, focus group 7).

For medical science, including biomedicine, the issue of division of work between RPOs and RFOs was at the centre of the discussions in these groups. For example, a representative from a funder said the following: “[…] [I]t’s important to state that you find this important as a funder, but I don’t think it’s important for the funding agency, whatever the source of money is, to control this, to monitor this. That would be at the university level” (private funding org. representative, focus group 8). Another interviewee said that “[…] research integrity is more handled at the […] university where they already have committees etc. in place to handle this” (Professor of molecular pharmacology, focus group 8).

Although most of the topics were seen as important in themselves, it was pointed out that there must be a balance of responsibilities between RPOs and RFOs. Interviewees emphasised that for topics such as “Research ethics structures”, “Independence”, “Updating and implementing the RI policy”, and “Publication and communication”, funders should be careful not to interfere with the internal affairs of RPOs. Instead of making their own guidelines and SOPs, they could demand that procedures were in place at the beneficiary institutions. One representative from a funder said that they “[…] use the structures that are set in place by the universities” (Public funding org. representative, focus group 19), and another representative from a different funder said that

[…] it would make little sense to make rules that are in addition to or maybe even in conflict with the rules that actually govern whether people do or do not get approval from ethics committees. So I would say no to having separate rules, but yes to stating as a funder that you expect people to adhere to the rules that are already in place (Private funding org. representative, focus group 8).

Across groups, interviewees said that “Declaration of competing interests” and “Selection and evaluation of proposals” were more obvious topics for the funders to develop their own standards for.

Finally, as Fig. 10 shows, three topics got the combined score “somewhat important”. These are “Funders’ expectations of RPOs”, “Collaboration within funded projects”, and “Monitoring of funded applications”. According to the interviewees, these topics are both difficult to implement and to follow up on effectively. The relatively low score of “Monitoring of funded applications” also had to do with a fear of unnecessary paperwork and bureaucracy: “[…] it’s really difficult to do this [monitoring of funded applications] without adding much more paperwork and kind of administrative, you know, also for the researchers […]” (Administrative employee in science communication, focus group 9).

Top-prioritised topics per main area of research for RFOs

We end this subsection by summarising the main results from the focus group interviews on the RFO topics. Table 4 shows the topics that the four main areas of research would particularly like RFOs to focus on. As in Table 3 , the threshold has been set quite high so that the topics included are the ones that at least three out of four groups found very important.

Discussion and recommendations

In the previous section, we presented the results of the sorting exercise conducted in the 30 focus group interviews. In the focus group discussions, the interviewees recognised the importance of the RI topics listed in Table 1 (based on Labib et al., 2021 and Mejlgaard et al., 2020 ). However, the results also revealed differences in the four main areas of research’s perceptions of the importance of the single topics. Some topics were more important for some areas than others were, as summarised in Tables 3 and 4 . These results can help us fill in the knowledge gap identified in the Introduction concerning disciplinary differences in the need for organisational RI support. We therefore in this section first discuss the meaning of these results, before ending with a reflection on the strengths and limitations of our study. The discussion is structured as six recommendations (I-VI).

Consider disciplinary differences

The study clearly shows that research and funding organisations must consider disciplinary differences when formulating research integrity policies. Variation across and within research areas influences RI perceptions and results in different challenges in, for instance, terms of data management, ethical considerations, and authorship distribution, which in turn call for discipline-specific RI support and guidelines. Evidently, RI policies are requested to be sensitive towards disciplinary differences. Attention to such prioritisations will not only assist organisations in maximising their resources and RI efforts; tailored policies and guidelines will also increase their quality and relevance and, as a result, increase their legitimacy among researchers. As shown in the results section, there are also important differences within the main areas of research that need to be considered when RI policy initiatives are designed and implemented. These differences seem to be particularly evident within the humanities but are also identified within social science between qualitative and quantitative research approaches. Differences in the need for RI support and guidance are, for instance, evident in the demand for research ethics structures and requirements as well as publication and communication issues. These needs relate to the nature of one’s research as well as the types of collaborations formed. For the ethical requirements, important variation exists within the humanities as to whether research entails the need to protect human subjects, animals, environment, and data. For example, different ethical issues and needs emerge when you work with children and other vulnerable groups as a linguist, compared to a researcher of medieval history working with 800-year-old texts. Standard ethical requests and ethical review procedures are not always experienced to be in alignment with the performed research and the risks and impacts associated with it, and it is relevant to adapt such requirements to disciplinary contexts and the research activities performed.

RPOs: build a sound research environment

Despite disciplinary variation, the study generally points to the research environment as a key RI topic area for RPOs to address. The research environment – the cultural norms and values of an institution (Valkenburg et al., 2021 , p. 5) and its handling of appointments, incentive structures, conflicts, competition, diversity issues, and so on – is also seen as an underlying construct for managing and cultivating other issues of RI. Issues such as hyper-competitiveness, performance pressures, and power imbalances were emphasised in the focus groups as main obstacles for a sound RI environment. These findings are in line with other recent studies drawing attention to the profound and ensuing effects of strong organisational cultures to the reinforcement of responsible research (Forsberg et al., 2018 ; Haven et al., 2020 ).

It is our opinion, that although individual researchers carry responsibilities and have to live up to professional standards (Steneck, 2006 ), “responsibilisation” of RI is unevenly targeted at the individual researcher rather than linked to institutions and the science system (cf. also Davies, 2019 , p. 1250; Bonn et al., 2019 ). Our study confirms the importance of paying more attention to the institutional level. Therefore, we urge research organisations to think about how they can build a sound research environment. Translated into actions, institutions could, for example, ensure fair and transparent assessment procedures for appointments, assessments, and promotions. They could also address hyper-competition, excessive publication pressure and diversity issues. Moreover, institutions could provide adequate education and skills training at both junior and senior levels and secure mentoring arrangements (Labib et al., 2021 , May 14). Mejlgaard et al. ( 2020 ) point out that such responsible research processes should be supported by transparency, quality assessments, and clear procedures for handling allegations of misconduct (see also www.sops4ri.eu and Lerouge and Hol, 2020 for inspiration for additional actions and tools).

RFOs: adapt RI topics into concrete actions

For RFOs, procedures for managing breaches of RI, securing research ethics structures, and addressing publication and communication issues were pointed out as especially important topics. Therefore, we recommend that RFOs review their evaluation and funding procedures and formulate policies on how funding proposals are selected, reviewed, and monitored. While there is consensus among study participants that RFOs have an important role to play in implementing sound and effective RI policies, the interviewees also emphasised that RFOs should refrain from establishing disparate and parallel RI procedures to those of research organisations. As to the latter, funding organisations could undertake an active role in making sure that RPOs properly address RI issues—that is, by ensuring that they have clear policies, governance structures, and guidelines in place. Increased collaboration and harmonisation on RI practices between RFOs and RPOs constitute an untapped potential for greater attention. The production of further insights into specific policies, good practices, and clearer demarcations of RFO responsibilities within greater scientific systems could accelerate incumbent policies and standards of RI and help sustain the current momentum of “responsibilisation” in scientific governance (Davies, 2019 ) and RI as a new discourse “in the making” (Owen et al., 2021 , p. 10).

Remember organisational and national differences

Besides disciplinary differences for both RPOs and RFOs, it is also important to consider national legislation and organisational differences as such contextual matters are found to have an impact on the importance attached to different RI topics and the level of attention given to established RI practices and procedures. For instance, variations in funding and legal and institutional structures for handling allegations and breaches of research integrity create different requests for change and efforts needed. Our study was designed to elicit understandings about differences between main areas of research and does not provide systematic evidence for differences between types of organisations. Nevertheless, RI institutionalisation has been shown to be highly dependent on micro-organisational structures and effects (Owen et al., 2021 ). In general, RI measures and policies should be created with a view to existing national and organisational RI landscapes and adapted to local contexts. In this regard, we recommend that organisational integrity plans and initiatives are developed in close dialogue with all stakeholders—–management, staff, and researchers from all disciplines—in order to make these policies as useful and effective as possible.

Avoid bureaucracy and unnecessary use of resources

When formulating policies for RI and implementing new procedures, unnecessary use of resources and excessive bureaucracy should be avoided. Across disciplines, institutions, and countries, researchers were concerned with striking a balance between implementing sound and relevant procedures that can stimulate RI practices and avoiding adding unnecessary bureaucracy. Researchers express a willingness to work thoroughly with research integrity issues, but they fear that new policies and standards will be placed on top of already existing requirements. For them, this would imply a loss of valuable research time. On this basis, we recommend that organisations carefully consider existing as well as future policies concerning RI. Duplication and parallel systems should be avoided, and existing policies should be evaluated in terms of cost-benefit analyses. Heightened awareness and dissemination about already established guidance and support structures could also advance the use of existing resources. An overall message was clearly conveyed: RI requirements and tools have to be meaningful, flexible, and practical to wield for researchers if they are to support and promote RI in practice.

Make a plan to improve RI

Finally, based on the study and the five previous recommendations, we recommend that RPOs and RFOs develop a coherent plan for how they want to implement, promote, and sustain RI (see also Mejlgaard et al., 2020 ; Bouter, 2020 ). We acknowledge that research institutions have limited resources and therefore have to prioritise, also when it comes to RI actions and policies. The topics and subtopics assessed and evaluated by researchers and stakeholders in this study could provide a first checklist for not only RPOs and RFOs, but also for smaller units such as research departments or faculties to ensure that relevant guidelines and policies are in place to assist researchers conducting their research according to appropriate ethical, legal, and professional standards (ENERI, 2019 ) and adapt them to organisational and disciplinary needs.

Strengths and limitations of the study

By virtue of the scale and scope of the present study, we have collected an unprecedented amount of data on the disciplinary importance and prioritisation of a large number of RI topics. Apart from its size, the strength of our study is the complexity of its design, comprising 30 focus groups conducted across 8 different countries with researchers as well as other relevant stakeholders. This rigorous approach allowed us to make in-depth explorations of similarities and differences in perceptions of RI topics across the four main areas of research. The voices of 147 researchers and stakeholders carry qualitative weight in exploring existing challenges to fostering RI and in providing nuanced understandings of the different main areas of research’s RI requirements. Although most core disciplines within the four main areas of research were represented in the focus groups, a potential weakness of the study is that not all disciplines were represented. Further, due to the study’s focus on main areas of research (e.g., Humanities), it is not able to give detailed accounts of the need for RI support within specific disciplines (History, Literature studies, etc.).

Data availability

All relevant documents and reports from this focus group study can be accessed via the study’s OSF page: https://osf.io/e9u8t/ Early 2022, all transcripts from the focus group interviews will also be made openly available on this page (in an anonymized form).

SOPs4RI includes a number of sub-studies in addition to the focus group study: two literature scoping reviews (Gaskell et al., 2019 ); an expert interview study with 23 research-integrity experts across RPOs (Ščepanović et al., 2019 ), a Delphi study with a panel of 68 RPO and 52 RFO research-integrity experts (Labib et al., 2021 ), a survey, and a pilot study ( www.sops4ri.eu ).

The Delphi study pointed to 12 topics for RPOs and 11 topics for RFOs to be included in the RI policies of these institutions (see Table 1 Ranked list of RI topics in Labib et al., 2021 ). However, the 12 RPO topics were later merged into 9 topics, presented in Mejlgaard et al. ( 2020 ). It is the list of nine topics that is used for RPOs in this study.

When we here and in the following refer to main areas of research, we mean the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences (including technical science), and medical sciences (including biomedicine). Each of these main areas of research, consists of a number of disciplines. Social science, for example, covers disciplines such as political science, law, economics etc.

The focus group interviews were carried out in Denmark, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Croatia, Italy, and Greece. 22 of them were conducted as face-to-face interviews, while the last eight had to be carried out online because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The interviewees were not payed for participating. They participated because they were interested in the topic of research integrity and/or because they felt obliged to take part in what they felt was an important discussion. After the focus group interviews, they received a small gift (a box of chocolates or a book voucher).

In some cases, participants placed a topic in-between two of the three pre-specified categories. We therefore ended up with five categories in the heat maps.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express our gratitude to the 147 participants in the 30 focus group interviews who took the time to share their knowledge and experiences with us. We would also like to thank the many people who have helped us set up the interviews at the different institutions around Europe. For reasons of anonymity, we cannot mention your names here, but without your help, it would not have been possible to conduct this study. We would further like to thank our SOPs4RI colleagues George Gaskell (London), Rea Roje and Ivan Buljan (Split), Krishma Labib, Natalie Evans and Guy Widdershoven (Amsterdam), Wolfgang Kaltenbrunnen and Josephine Bergmans (Leiden), Eleni Spyrakou (Athens), Giuseppe A. Veltri (Trento), and Anna Domaradzka (Warsaw) for their help and support. Thank you also to Amalie Due Svendsen and Anders Møller Jørgensen (Aarhus), Jonathan Bening (Leiden), Dan Gibson (Leiden), Vasileios Markakis (Athens), and Andrijana Perković Paloš (Split), who helped transcribe the interviews. The SOPs4RI project is funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 824481.

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Sørensen, M.P., Ravn, T., Marušić, A. et al. Strengthening research integrity: which topic areas should organisations focus on?. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 8 , 198 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-021-00874-y

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Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

Research Integrity and Research Ethics in Professional Codes of Ethics: Survey of Terminology Used by Professional Organizations across Research Disciplines

Affiliation Medical student, University of Split, School of Medicine, Split, Croatia

Affiliation Rogor, Zagreb, Croatia

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Department of Research in Biomedicine and Health, University of Split, School of Medicine, Split, Croatia

• Dubravka Komić, 
• Stjepan Ljudevit Marušić, 
• Ana Marušić

• Published: July 20, 2015
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0133662
• Reader Comments

Professional codes of ethics are social contracts among members of a professional group, which aim to instigate, encourage and nurture ethical behaviour and prevent professional misconduct, including research and publication. Despite the existence of codes of ethics, research misconduct remains a serious problem. A survey of codes of ethics from 795 professional organizations from the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Codes of Ethics Collection showed that 182 of them (23%) used research integrity and research ethics terminology in their codes, with differences across disciplines: while the terminology was common in professional organizations in social sciences (82%), mental health (71%), sciences (61%), other organizations had no statements (construction trades, fraternal social organizations, real estate) or a few of them (management, media, engineering). A subsample of 158 professional organizations we judged to be directly involved in research significantly more often had statements on research integrity/ethics terminology than the whole sample: an average of 10.4% of organizations with a statement (95% CI = 10.4-23-5%) on any of the 27 research integrity/ethics terms compared to 3.3% (95% CI = 2.1–4.6%), respectively (P<0.001). Overall, 62% of all statements addressing research integrity/ethics concepts used prescriptive language in describing the standard of practice. Professional organizations should define research integrity and research ethics issues in their ethics codes and collaborate within and across disciplines to adequately address responsible conduct of research and meet contemporary needs of their communities.

Citation: Komić D, Marušić SL, Marušić A (2015) Research Integrity and Research Ethics in Professional Codes of Ethics: Survey of Terminology Used by Professional Organizations across Research Disciplines. PLoS ONE 10(7): e0133662. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0133662

Editor: Jelte M. Wicherts, Tilburg University, NETHERLANDS

Received: December 29, 2014; Accepted: June 30, 2015; Published: July 20, 2015

Copyright: © 2015 Komić et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited

Data Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files. Data are from a publicly available database ( http://ethics.iit.edu/ecodes/ ).

Funding: The author(s) received no specific funding for this work. SLM is a freelancer for Rogor, who did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific role of this author is articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section.

Competing interests: The authors have the following interests: Stjepan Ljudevit Marušić is a freelancer under the trading name 'Rogor', Zagreb, Croatia. There are no patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, as detailed online in the guide for authors.

Introduction

There are many definitions of professional codes of ethics and their functions [ 1 ] but they can generally be described as formal documents sending a message to the professional community about moral standards guiding professional behaviour. These moral standards also address research and publication activities in most professional societies across disciplines [ 1 ]. Judging from the increasing evidence for the seriousness of research misconduct at the global level [ 2 – 4 ], ethics codes have failed miserably in preventing research misconduct, as the practical definition of an ineffective code is that it “has failed to prevent illegal or unethical behaviour… that was prohibited in the code” [ 5 ].

Just as there are many definitions of professional codes of ethics, there are also many definitions of research integrity and misconduct, which vary a lot according to the legislative definitions in different countries [ 4 ]. In general, research integrity can be defined as “research behaviour viewed from the perspective of professional standards” and is different from research ethics, which is “research behaviour viewed from the perspective of moral principles” [ 6 ]. Research integrity (RI) is a part of responsible conduct of research–the ideal behaviour in research, contrasted by deliberate misconduct on the other side of the behavioural spectrum, which includes fabrication, falsification and plagiarism (FFP) as the worst behaviour [ 6 ]. In the middle of this behavioural spectrum are the so-called questionable research practices (QRP), which “violate traditional values or commonly accepted practices, from initial project design through to publication and peer review” [ 6 ]. Questionable research practices include inaccuracy, misrepresentation and bias in research and publishing [ 4 , 6 ].

Despite the importance of research integrity, it is not clear how professions define and communicate this concept to their membership. There is a wealth of research into codes of ethics, particularly in business [ 1 , 7 ] but little data on how current concepts of research integrity and research misconduct are addressed in the codes. A study of 90 codes from 61 scientific professional organizations funded by the National Science Foundation in the USA in 1998 demonstrated that only 39% had general statements on the need to give proper credit in publications and only 17% provided a definition of authorship [ 8 ]. The codes used mostly normative, prescriptive language to describe the “minimum levels of appropriate behaviour” [ 8 ]. A comparison of codes/policies from peer-reviewed journals and professional organizations, showed that 53% of the journals and only 11% of professional codes had authorship definitions [ 9 ]. Professional codes of ethics used a prescriptive language more often than journals (75% vs 18%) in defining authorship [ 9 ]. In a qualitative study of 46 scientific organization codes of ethics [ 10 ], the codes included issues such as honesty in conducting and reporting research; fairness and integrity in authorship; appropriate use of public funds; sharing, preservation and dissemination of research results; and responsibility for the integrity of the published record (for organizations with strong publishing activity).

This article attempts to provide the basic landscape for research integrity in professional codes of ethics across different disciplines. We took advantage of the existence of a large online collection of professional codes of ethics, created and maintained by The Center for the Study of Ethics in the Professions (CSEP) from the Illinois Institute of Technology [ 11 ]. The Codes of Ethics Collection database was started in 1996, when it was developed through a grant from the US National Science Foundation [ 12 ]. The codes are classified into 28 different categories of professional organizations and have been contributed by academic organizations, businesses, industry associations, fraternal organizations, government organizations, non-profit organizations and professional associations.

We searched all codes from the Codes of Ethics Collection database for the corpus of research integrity/ethics terms generated from literature and discussion with experts, and counted these statements. We developed the list of research integrity/ethics terms from the definitions provided in the article by N. Steneck from the Office of Research Integrity of the US Department for Health and Human Services in 2006 [ 6 ]. We first created a list of 23 terms, which were piloted with a group of 5 researchers in the area of research integrity and ethics (listed in the Acknowledgment section: 1 editor of a medical journal and researcher in publishing integrity and ethics, 3 researchers in moral reasoning and research integrity and ethics, and 1 editor and researcher, former Chair of the Committee on Publication Ethics, COPE). After consultations, some of the terms were rephrases and 3 new terms were added. The list was then discussed with the participants of the 3 rd World Congress on Research Integrity (May 2013), where we presented our preliminary analysis [ 13 ]; the discussion resulted in addition of one more term to designate conflict of interest (‘dual relationship’). The final search set included 27 RI concepts (in alphabetical order): 1) Author/Authorship, 2) Bias (including bias due to conflict of interest), 3) Competing interest, 4) Conflict of interest, 5) Contributor/Contribution, 6) Credit, 7) Dishonesty, 8) Dual interest/relationship, 9) Ethics, 10) Fabrication, 11) Falsification, 12) Fraud/Fraudulent, 13) Honesty, 14) Inaccuracy, 15) Integrity, 16) Malpractice, 17) Manipulation, 18) Misconduct, 19) Misrepresentation, 20) Plagiarism, 21) Questionable publication practices (QPP)–duplicate publication, 22) QPP–redundant publication, 23) QPP–repetitive publication, 24) QPP–salami publication, 25) QPP–secondary publication, 26) Questionable research practices, 27) Responsible conduct of research.

For analysis, we classified the terms into three groups, which are usually described to span the whole spectrum of research behaviour–from responsible conduct of research (RCR) over questionable research practices (QRP) to research misconduct (FFP–fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism) [ 6 ]. “Questionable research practices” is the term used by the Office of Research Integrity in the USA to describe “actions that violate traditional values of the research enterprise and that may be detrimental to the research process”, but are not directly damaging to research as is FFP [ 6 ]. The 27 terms identified for this study were arbitrarily divided into these three groups: RCR–‘ethics’, ‘responsible conduct of research’, ‘integrity’, ‘honesty’, ‘authorship’, ‘contributorship’, and ‘credit’; QRP–‘inaccuracy’, ‘misrepresentation’, ‘questionable research practices’, ‘bias’, ‘conflict of interest’, ‘competing interest’, ‘dual interest/relationship’, and ‘questionable publication practices (duplicate, redundant, repetitive and salami publications)’; and research misconduct–‘falsification’, ‘fabrication’, plagiarism’, ‘misconduct’, ‘malpractice’, ‘fraud’, ‘manipulation’ and ‘dishonesty’. We deliberately used overlapping terms and synonyms, as well as terminology related to research ethics, in order to increase the sensitivity of the search, so that we could identify all and any ethics statement that would use these terms in the context of research. Where needed, we used variations of the term to increase the sensitivity of the search (e.g. ‘author’ and ‘authorship’; ‘contribution’, ‘contributor’ and ‘contributorship’; and ‘fraud’ and ‘fraudulent’). Only the statements where the search terms were used to address research activity and not only professional duties were included in the analysis. The last search was performed in October 2013. We did not use any time-limits to the search, so different codes of the same organizations were retrieved. For the code documents with the same title but different dates of issue, only the latest version was analyzed. Documents with different titles from the same professional organization were all analyzed, irrespective of the date of issue. Data extraction and analysis was performed by two authors (DK and AM), with high inter-rater agreement (kappa = 0.997, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.995–0.999). In cases of disagreement, the two raters discussed the discrepancies and made a consensus decision on the inclusion of a statement in the final analysis. We first analyzed the statements mentioning research integrity/ethics terms from all retrieved professional organizations and then performed a separate analysis for research-related professions. Organizations involved in performing or regulating research were identified as those having the term ‘research’ or ‘science’ in their name or the following terms: ‘academy’, ‘alliance’, ‘association’, ‘board’, ‘center/centre’, ‘chamber’, ‘committee’, ‘congress’, ‘council’, ‘federation’, ‘institute’, ‘journal’, ‘society’, or ‘university’.

For statements included in the analysis, we assessed the tone of the language in the statements addressing research integrity/ethics terms, using the method developed by Rose [ 8 ]. The language of a statement was categorized as either aspirational , when it formulated suggestions for best or desired practices, such as using the words “strive to,” “attempt to,” “endeavour to,” or “seek” or prescriptive – normative , when the statement defined minimal standards for practice which should not be failed by any researcher. For example, the statement “ I shall strive to avoid scientific and professional misconduct including , but not limited to fraud , fabrication , plagiarism , concealment , inappropriate omission of information , and making false or deceptive statements .” was considered aspirational, and the statement “ … members shall not commit scientific misconduct , defined as fabrication , falsification , or plagiarism .” was classified as prescriptive. Two authors (SLM and AM) independently coded the language of the retrieved statements. Kappa index for agreement in coding ranged from 0.719 to 1 for individual terms; the median kappa for all coded terms was 0.940 (95% CI = 0.924–1.000). All differences were resolved by discussion and final agreement on the language coding.

The data were presented as frequencies for categorical variables and means or medians with 95% confidence interval (CI) for continuous variables, depending of the normality of data distribution, as tested by D'Agostino-Pearson test (MedCalc statistical software v.13.0.2; Ostend, Belgium). No statistical tests were employed for comparisons among research integrity/ethics terms or organizations since sampling was not performed. Student t-test for independent samples was used to compare the subsample of research-related organizations with the total sample.

Prevalence of research integrity/ethics terms in professional codes of ethics

At the time of the search, the database had a collection of electronic formats of ethic codes from 795 professional organizations. Out of those, 182 (23%) organizations had codes with at least one research integrity/ethics term (full database in S1 File , list of organizations in Table A in S2 File ). Most of the organizations that addressed any research integrity/ethics term in their codes were national societies or associations (n = 142, 78%), followed by international societies/associations (n = 20, 11%); there were 7 government institutions (4%, all from USA), 5 universities/institutes (3%), 5 business corporations (3%) and 3 journals (2%).

The number of terms (concepts) addressed by an organization ranged from 1 to 20, with a median of 2 (95% CI 2–3). The body with the highest number of research integrity/ethics terms addressed (20 out of 27) was the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE), followed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (United States Department of Commerce) which addressed 17 terms, while the Academy for Certification of Vision Rehabilitation and Education Professionals, American Chemical Society, American Sociological Association and United States Fish and Wildlife Service addressed 14 terms each.

Most commonly addressed research integrity/ethics terms (more than 5% of 795 organizations) were ‘inaccuracy’, ‘ethics’, terms related to authorship and credit for research, ‘plagiarism’, ‘conflict of interest’ and ‘integrity’ ( Table 1 ).

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0133662.t001

We separately searched for three terms related to the concept of giving proper credit for research contribution: ‘author(ship)’, ‘contributor(ship)’ and ‘credit’ ( Table 1 ). Whereas ‘authorship’ was defined in a total of 78 statements, 46% of ‘contributor(ship)’ statements (n = 46 of 99) were a part of an authorship definition. ‘Credit for research’ was addressed independently of authorship or contributorship in 42 (52%) of all statements mentioning this concept (n = 81, Table 1 ).

After deduplication of organizations and statements, terms related to deliberate misconduct, including FFP, were addressed by 78 organizations (10%), with a total of 253 statements. Among these concepts, ‘plagiarism’ was the term addressed by most of the organizations (7%) and in the largest number of statements ( Table 1 ). The so-called Questionable research practices, as defined by the Office of Research Integrity in the USA [ 6 ], were addressed by 119 (15%) organizations in 313 statements. Questionable publishing practices [ 6 ], such as ‘duplicate’, ‘redundant’ or ‘secondary publication’ were rarely addressed by professional organizations: only 13 (1.6%) organizations addressed any of these concepts, with a total of 19 statements. Whereas no organizations provided any instruction on ‘salami publications’ or ‘salami slicing’ (least-publishable unit or publishing a single study in several partial publication) [ 6 ], ‘duplicate publication’ (publishing of the same data more than once without reference to the earlier version) [ 6 ] was addressed in 11 statements by 10 (1.3%) organizations ( Table 1 ).

We also analyzed a subset of ethical codes from 158 professional organizations we judged to be directly involved in research ( Table 2 ) (list in Table B in S2 File ). These organizations significantly more often had statements on research integrity/ethics terms than the whole sample of professional organizations: average of 10.4% (95% CI = 10.4-23-5%) on any of the 27 concepts compared to 3.3% of organizations with a statement (95% CI = 2.1–4.6%), respectively (t df = 52 = 4.186, P<0.001). The ranking of most frequently used terms was similar to that observed in the total sample.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0133662.t002

Language of statements addressing research integrity/ethics terms

We analyzed a total of 1072 statements retrieved by individual term searches, representing 652 unique statements because some individual statements addressed more than one RI concept. Overall, 62% of all statements used prescriptive language in describing the standard of practice. For the analysis of statement language tone for individual research integrity/ethics terms the total set of 1072 statements was used.

Terms addressing responsible conduct of research were mostly described in prescriptive language (309 (61%) of the total of 504 statements) ( Table 1 ). The concept addressed with slightly more statements in aspirational than prescriptive language was ‘integrity’ (58% vs 42%, respectively) ( Table 1 ).

Statements describing research misconduct were also written predominantly in prescriptive language (159 (63%) of 253 statements). Whereas the statements on research fabrication, falsification and plagiarism (FFP) were prescriptive in almost three thirds of the statements, the language of statements describing ‘manipulation’, ‘dishonesty’, ‘fraud’ and ‘misconduct’ was mixed, with equal prevalence of the two language tones or small dominance of aspirational (for ‘dishonesty’ and ‘manipulation’) ( Table 1 ).

Prescriptive language also dominated in the statements addressing the so-called questionable research practices, as 190 (61%) statements out of total 313 used the normative tone. The statements related to research misconduct more often included the description of a procedure to address the breach of integrity (15% of the statement for research misconduct vs 2% for responsible conduct of research concepts and 1% for questionable research practices).

Prescriptive language also dominated in the statements from the subgroup of 158 professional organizations directly related to research ( Table 2 ). There were no differences in the prevalence of prescriptive language among statements for research integrity/ethics concepts: average prevalence of 49.0 (95% CI 37.9-60-1%) for the research professional organizations compared to 53.9% (95% CI 43.8–64.0%) for the total sample (t df = 52 = –0.668, P = 0.507).

RI statements in different professional fields

The above analysis included all statements from individual organizations. However, the results we obtained may not be the reflection of the actual visibility or awareness of these concepts in different research disciplines. The Codes of Ethics Collection database organizes ethics codes into 28 categories, where some organizations are included in more than one category. For example, the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) was included in 5 categories: ‘Communications’, ‘Media’, ‘Other Professions’, ‘Science’, and ‘Social Science’s, whereas World Medical Association was included in ‘Health Care’ and in ‘Service Organizations’. Table 3 presents the analysis of research integrity/ethics terms addressed and the language of the statements across different professional disciplines, regardless of their overlap in included organizations, in order to assess the visibility of research integrity/ethics concepts within a discipline rather than in individual professional organizations.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0133662.t003

A median of 15% of organizations in any category (95% CI 10–335) had a statement that addressed research integrity/ethics concepts. This prevalence ranged from 0% in categories ‘Construction Trades’, ‘Fraternal Social Organizations’ and ‘Real Estate’ to 82% in ‘Social Sciences’, 71% in ‘Mental Health and Counselling’, and ‘Science’ ( Table 3 ). Most of the organizations addressing research integrity/ethics concepts in their codes belonged to the research-related organizations as defined in our study ( Table 4 ).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0133662.t004

The average number of research integrity/ethics concepts addressed by a professional discipline was 11.8 (95% CI for the mean 8.9–14.8). No research integrity topics were addressed by organizations in the categories of ‘Construction Trades’ (n = 17 organizations), ‘Fraternal Social Organizations’ (n = 5) and ‘Real Estate’ (n = 6). Organizations in categories ‘Health Care’ addressed 24 (96%), and those in ‘Science’ addressed 24 (89%) out of 27 concepts. The median number of statements per professional discipline was 29 (95% CI 13–42), ranging from 3 for the ‘Finance’ to 478 for the ‘Science’ category. Prescriptive language in the statements predominated across disciplines, with the average percentage of 58.5% (95% CI 47.0%-70.0%).

Although the size of the category, expressed as the number of organizations having a code addressing research integrity/ethics concepts, positively correlated with the number of statements identified for each category ( Table 3 ), there were categories with an exceptionally large number of statements, such as ‘Sciences’, where 46 organizations had 478 statements. The ‘Health Care’ category had 47 organizations, with 280 statements.

In relation to individual concepts, none of the professional disciplines addressed all concepts. The number of organizations addressing an individual research integrity/ethics concept ranged from 2 to 23 (median 17, 95% CI 7–18). RI topics most commonly addressed were: ‘inaccuracy’ (n = 23 professional disciplines), ‘credit’ (n = 21), ‘integrity’ (n = 21), ‘plagiarism’ (n = 19), author (n = 19), ‘contributor’ (n = 19), ‘honesty’ (n = 18), ‘conflict of interest’ (n = 18), ‘falsification’ (n = 18), ‘fabrication’ (n = 18) and ‘misconduct’ (n = 17). ‘malpractice’ and ‘salami publications’ were not addressed by organizations in any of the professional disciplines. The concepts addressed by the fewest organization categories were ‘repetitive publication’ (n = 3, categories ‘Health Care’, ‘Science’, ‘Service Organizations’), ‘secondary publication’ (n = 3, categories ‘Communication’, ‘Health Care’ and ‘Science’) and ‘questionable research practices’ (n = 2, categories ‘Science’ and ‘Education and Academia’).

The subsample of professional organizations directly related to research did not differ from the total sample ( Table 4 ), in the average number of concepts addressed by organizations (average of 12.6%, 95% CI 9.4–15.8%; range 1 to 415), average number of statements per professional organization of 20.0%, 13.1–64.8%), prevalence of statements with prescriptive language (average of 58%, 95% CI 47.0–70.0%), number of statements per professional categories, and number of organizations addressing individual concepts (average of 11.1 organizations, 95% CI 8.8–13.5%).

Our survey demonstrated that the important terms (concepts) concerning the broad field of research integrity and ethics are not in the focus of professional communities, despite high prevalence of research misconduct and violations of responsible conduct of research [ 2 – 4 ]. The fact that only 23% of 795 professional organizations had a code that addressed at least one of the well-known and generally accepted research integrity/ethics terms [ 6 ] is not good news for the scientific community. It is also worrying that even those organizations that defined research integrity concepts in their codes only addressed a small number of important terms, from 2 to 3 per organization. In the subsample of professional organizations directly involved in research (n = 158), codes of ethics on average addressed three times more RI terms that the whole sample. In both groups, the language of the statements on research integrity/ethics terms was predominantly prescriptive, setting minimal standards which must not be failed. In this way, a strong message is sent to its members about expected professional behaviour.

Some professional fields, such as ‘Education and Academia’, ‘Health Care, ‘Mental Health/Counselling’, ‘Science’ and ‘Other Professions’ (as classified in the Collection) had the highest number of organizations and the highest number of statements addressing research integrity/ethics concepts per organization. This indicates that some professions, especially those providing care for human individuals or providing teaching services pay special attention to research as an important aspect of their work. The most commonly addressed research integrity/ethics concepts were ethics and authorship/contributorship/credit from the “positive” spectrum of research behaviour, and inaccuracy, plagiarism and conflict of interest among the” negative” spectrum of research behaviour. These concepts are very old, and provide the base for moral judgments in any profession [ 10 ]. Newer research integrity/ethics concepts, such as ‘responsible conduct of research’ and ‘questionable research practices’, commonly used in research on research integrity [ 6 ], seem not to have found their way into all professions.

A limitation to the study is the fact that the Collection of Codes may not be representative of the research community, which is most acutely concerned with research integrity. However, 475 out of 795 analyzed organizations (60%) had the term ‘association’, ‘federation’, ‘society’, ‘academy’, ‘college’, ‘university’, ‘congress’ or ‘council’, or ‘science’ in their title. Even in this subsample of professional organizations that should address research and publishing activities the prevalence of research integrity statements was only 38%. When we analyzed a subsample of organizations that may be directly related to research (judging from their names) and that addressed research integrity/ethics concepts in their codes, we found a greater number of concepts addressed than in the whole sample. Also, organizations from this subsample were responsible for 82% of the statements addressing research integrity/ethics concepts in the whole sample. However, we would argue that this distinction between research and non-research professional organizations is artificial. Although research is not explicitly mentioned in most of the definitions of professional codes of ethics [ 1 ], it is implicit that a profession should be engaged in collecting evidence and using it for its further development. This is reflected in the definition of profession by Cogan [ 14 ] as a “vocation whose practice is founded upon an understanding of the theoretical structure of some department of learning or science, and upon abilities accompanying such understanding.” This is illustrated by the fact that the organizations from the ‘Government and Military’ and ‘Wildlife and Environmental Stewardship’ categories did not include research-related organizations, but still addressed important research integrity/ethics concepts (9 ‘Government and Military’ organizations addressed 18 concepts in 90 statements and 2 Wildlife and Environmental Stewardship’ organizations addressed 14 concepts in 35 statements). Furthermore, some of the disciplines traditionally considered as research-oriented, had a small prevalence of organizations with a code addressing research integrity/ethics concepts, such as 8% for ‘Engineering’.

Another limitation of the study is the fact that we analyzed only the codes available online. It is possible that professional organizations have relevant guidelines in a printed form or on a web-site different from the one provided in the Collection. For a few that were not transcribed into the database, such as the one from the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, we analyzed the content of the website provided in the link. We did not attempt to retrieve the codes that were available only in a printed version. Our intention was to investigate the codes available in the public domain because one of the important aspects of a profession is to provide service, i.e. have a public purpose [ 1 ]. Our search strategy was designed to be sensitive, so that the statements with any term related to research integrity/ethics could be identified. This resulted in terminological overlaps and synonyms, which were all included in the analysis. We also did not perform a qualitative analysis of the content of the statements, so it is possible that brief and vague statements that included more than one research integrity/ethics term would contribute more to the frequency analysis in this study than a long and detailed statement with a single term. The search strategy also did not have a time limit, which introduced a bias, as our intention was to provide a time–independent landscape of research integrity/ethics concepts in professional organizations. Furthermore, the Collection is dominated by organizations from the USA and thus biased towards scientific communities in developed, high-income countries. In view of this fact, the survey findings are even more worrying because evidence shows that research misconduct is at least as prevalent in low–and middle–income countries as it is in high–income countries [ 4 ], and in some aspects of research misbehaviour, such as authorship [ 3 ] or plagiarism [ 15 ], it can even be a greater problem. Finally, the categorization of codes and language of the statement was a subjective and arbitrary process and thus prone to bias; however, the agreement in coding between two independent reviewers was high, indicating consistency in the applied methodology, and the terminology was developed in collaboration with experts in research integrity research and based on commonly used terms in this community (such as current World Conferences on Research Integrity and past RI research on research integrity conferences [ 6 ]).

The findings of our study should inform professional organizations to revise and update their codes to include current concepts in research integrity and ethics. Such a change will probably not guarantee the change in research behaviour, as the current evidence base for the effectiveness of codes of ethics in changing behaviour is controversial [ 7 ]. However, as professional organizations are moral agents in a self-organized community [ 16 ], they have an influence on the moral judgments of that same community and the public in general through the profession’s engagement in providing a service to the public. Furthermore, as research integrity is behaviour in research related to professional standards and not necessarily only moral standards [ 6 ], it would be easier for the professional organizations and the professional community in general to establish and implement such standard than to ensure strict adherence to moral rules. Most of the professional organizations that had addressed research integrity/ethics concepts in their codes used the prescriptive language in the statements, establishing a norm for a professional behaviour. Such language tone sends a clear signal about the minimal standards for professional practice in responsible conduct of research, i.e. working rules for everyday professional research activities [ 8 , 10 ]. Such language may not be applicable to concepts that are more related to research ethics than to integrity. Research on the codes of ethics in business [ 17 ] showed that the use of language may greatly influence the perception of a code among its users. For example, overuse of grammatical structures such as relational clauses, the passive, nominalisation, grammatical metaphor and modality may communicate an authoritarian message and sense of over-obligation, which establishes a feeling of powerlessness and the inability for open decision making for the individual [ 17 ]. This may deter a professional from using professional codes of ethics, as was shown in a national survey of physicians in the USA, where only one in four practicing physician acknowledged a strong influence of the traditional (Hippocratic) oath or other professional codes in their practice, relying rather on their own personal moral sense [ 18 ].

Professional organizations need also to address how their professional standards in research are presented to the public. The quality of a code of ethics depends on its pubic availability, involvement of the governing structures, readability and tone, non-retaliation and reporting, commitment and values, risk topics, comprehension aids and presentation and style [ 19 ]. The quality of the code has to be integrated in a complex process of code development and implementation, where the success at the level of stakeholders in a profession and the society as a whole are determined by factors both internal and external to the profession. Professional communities should also collaborate across disciplinary borders and share experiences in defining, preventing and dealing with research integrity and research misconduct. A good example of trans-disciplinary collaboration is a recent exercise from the US Institute of Medicine, which worked on a unified code of ethics for health professionals from 18 different disciplines related to health [ 20 ]. Only by taking a serious and conscientious approach to research integrity, professional communities in different disciplines can make their codes of ethics relevant to the changing landscape of science.

Supporting Information

S1 file. database of ethic codes with statements on research integrity terms analysed in the study..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0133662.s001

S2 File. List of all professional organizations (Table A) and professional organizations directly involved in research activities (Table B).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0133662.s002

Acknowledgments

This study was presented in part at the 3 rd World Conference on Research Integrity, Montreal, Canada, 5–8 May 2013.

We thank our colleagues who were involved in the discussion of research integrity concepts: Prof. Matko Marušić, MD, PhD and Mario Malički, MD, from the University of Split School of Medicine, Split, Croatia; Assist. Prof. Darko Hren, PhD, from the University of Split School of Humanities and Social Sciences; Prof. Vedran Katavić, MD, PhD, from the University of Zagreb School of Medicine; Prof. Elizabeth Wager, PhD, from Sideview and Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), UK; and participants at the 3 rd World Conference on Research Integrity, Montreal, Canada, who also made suggestions on research integrity/ethics terminology during poster presentation of the study pilot results.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: AM. Performed the experiments: DK SLM AM. Analyzed the data: DK SLM AM. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: DK SLM AM. Wrote the paper: DK SLM AM. Wrote the first draft of the manuscript: AM.

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• 13. Komić D, Marušić SL, Marušić A. Policies on responsible conduct of research in professional codes of ethics. 3rd World Conference on Research Integrity, Montreal, Canada, 5–8 May 2013, Poster session Tuesday 7 May 2013. Available: http://www.wcri2013.org/program2_e.shtml . Accessed: 27 December 2014.

Research Integrity

Federation University aims to promote and support responsible research practices by providing resources and guidance to our researchers. We aim to maintain a strong research culture which incorporates:

• honesty and integrity
• respect for human research participants, animals and the environment
• respect for the resources used to conduct research
• appropriate acknowledgement of contributors to research, and
• responsible communication of research findings.

Research Integrity training

Research Services provides the Epigeum online  'Research Integrity, Second Edition' programme for use by all research staff and students.

The modules provide practical advice on dealing with the complex issues that can arise while planning, conducting and reporting research. The programme covers every stage of the research process.

Once you have registered, you are able to complete at your own pace.

Completion requirements are as follows:

• Initial completion of ‘Research Integrity, Second Edition’; and then
• Completion of ‘Research Integrity, Concise’ every 3 years.

Completion of these modules will be monitored by Research Services, with compliance checks specifically undertaken for:

• HDR students;
• Researchers undertaking funded research; and
• Applicants to the Human Research Ethics Committee or the Animal Ethics Committee.

Federation University staff can find the Research Integrity Training via Workday .

Federation University students can find the Research Integrity Training on Moodle: https://moodle.federation.edu.au/course/view.php?id=67204

The Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research

The purpose of the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research (the Code) is to guide institutions and researchers in responsible research practices and promote integrity in research. The Code provides information about how to manage research data and materials; publish and disseminate research findings (including proper attribution of authorship); conduct effective peer review; and manage conflicts of interest. The Code also outlines how institutions should manage breaches of the Code and allegations of research misconduct, and explains the responsibilities and rights of researchers who potentially witness research misconduct.

The Code is written specifically for universities and other public sector research institutions. However, all organisations involved in research are encouraged to incorporate it as far as possible in their operating environments.

Compliance with the Code is a prerequisite for National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) funding.

There are many ways in which researchers may deviate from the standards and provisions of this Code, including but not limited to:

• Fabrication of results
• Falsification or misrepresentation of results
• Misleading ascription of authorship
• Failure to declare and manage serious conflicts of interest
• Falsification or misrepresentation to obtain funding
• Conducting research without ethics approval as required by the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Research Involving Humans and the Australian Code of Practice for the Care and Use of Animals for Scientific Purposes
• Risking the safety of human participants, or the well-being of animals or the environment
• Deviations from this Code that occur through gross or persistent negligence
• Wilful concealment or facilitation of research misconduct by others.

Researchers should acquaint themselves with, and meet the requirements of the Code as soon as possible.

Guidance to support the Code

The Code is also supported by a number of Guides that detail how to comply with the principles and responsibilities of the Code:

• Guide to Managing and Investigating Potential Breaches of the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research
• Management of data and information in research
• Peer review
• Disclosure of interests and management of conflicts of interest
• Supervision
• Collaborative research
• Publication and dissemination of research

Research Integrity Advisors

View above listed guides >

As per the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research (‘the Code’), research institutions in Australian must identify and train Research Integrity Advisors (RIAs) who assist in the promotion and fostering of responsible research conduct and provide advice to those with concerns about potential breaches of the Code (R6).

RIAs are people with research experience, knowledge of the University's policy and management structure, and familiarity with accepted practices in research who are appointed to provide advice on research integrity to researchers and students in accordance with the Australian Code for Responsible Conduct of Research and Federation University policy.  An RIA should be your first point of contact with any queries about responsible research conduct. They have familiarity with accepted research practices, including discipline specific practices, and provide impartial advice.

If you have any queries regarding responsible research conduct or you are concerned about a potential breach of the Code, you are encouraged to discuss the matter with a Research Integrity Advisor in the first instance.  They will help you to identify appropriate support or guidance material, help you determine whether to submit a formal compliant and how to do so, or discuss alternative options if appropriate.

Please note, the RIA’s role does not extend to assessment or investigation of a potential breach of the Code.

RIAs can be found in all Research Centres, however concerns can be raised with an RIA from any area.

Contact a Research Integrity Advisor

View the Research Integrity Advisor position description

Please refer to the University's  Research Integrity & Misconduct Procedure .

Any questions, concerns or complaints can be lodged with the Research Integrity Office  [email protected]

Guides and FAQs

Research integrity - relevant policies, procedures and documents.

Authorship Agreement Template

Authorship Decision Support Tool

Research and Research Training Policy

Research Integrity & Misconduct Procedure

Applying for Human Research Ethics Procedure

Applying for Animal Research Ethics Procedure

Authorship Procedure

HDR Supervision Procedure

Intellectual Property Procedure

Research Data Management Procedure

Additional resources

Australian National Data Service - Working with data

Research data management

Section 2 of the  Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research clearly outlines the responsibilities that all researchers have to ensure their data and datasets are properly managed.

The Library has an excellent series of  information pages and plans regarding data management, as well as access to online training guides regarding research data management. All researchers are strongly encouraged to undertake the  Research Data Management Planning exercises (docx, 229kb)

Similarly, The Australian National Data Service (ANDS) has developed an excellent  guide to data management issues.

Further resources

• Australian National Data Service website
• Australian Data Archives website.

Notify the Research Integrity Office of a Potential Breach of the Code

You can call a member of the team listed at the ‘ Contact Us ’ link below, email at us [email protected] , or if you are Federation University staff or student you may also report a potential breach via this link or by scanning this QR code :

You will be asked to provide as much information as you can about the nature of the breach and any supporting evidence.  You have the option to remain anonymous, however doing so may limit the extent to which the case can be examined, and we will be unable to provide you with any feedback or update you on progress of the case.

If you would like advice about a Research Integrity matter, one of our knowledgeable Research Integrity Advisors (RIAs) will be able assist you. Contact details can be found below, in Research Integrity Advisors .  Note, Research Integrity Advisors’ role does not extend to assessment or investigation of a potential breach of the Code, these should be reported to the Research Integrity Office.

Please visit our  Research Services Team webpage for further information on how to get in touch.

Research Integrity: Responsible Conduct of Research

• First Online: 01 October 2023

Cite this chapter

• Amruthesh C. Shivachar   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4111-9863 4  

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1 Citations

The legitimacy of research in any field is boosted by three crucial elements: research ethics, responsible behavior and integrity. These are the very aspects that make up the three faces of a prism lens through which a researcher investigates analyze/solve any research problems. None of these three faces is separable, each one of them is dependent on one another. In general, it is historically assumed in human behavior that “good ethical” thinking will lead to the “responsible conduct or behavior” that will enhance the “integrity” of a person’s character. This notion is intricately applicable to any research endeavor: good research ethics will reflect in the responsible conduct of research (RCR), which in turn establishes research integrity (RI). Therefore, the purpose of this chapter is to review the influence of research ethics and the RCR on RI. The author also thinks this overview will provide a basic knowledge on the global efforts for the development and establishment of universal codes or unified norms for research ethics, and RCR for RI worldwide. By emphasizing the efforts on RCR in different regions and countries, the chapter will guide a beginning researcher such as a graduate student, and an established researcher from deviating from any ethical boundaries.

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Shivachar, A.C. (2023). Research Integrity: Responsible Conduct of Research. In: Jagadeesh, G., Balakumar, P., Senatore, F. (eds) The Quintessence of Basic and Clinical Research and Scientific Publishing. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1284-1_58

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Taking action – case studies in research integrity.

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A series to raise awareness and inspire creative problem solving of the challenges in maintaining integrity in peer review

The NIH defines a breach of review integrity as any violation of

The NIH defines a breach of review integrity as any violation of a core value of NIH peer review . Review integrity concerns not only compromise our NIH peer review process but also raise other questions and potential concerns, including about an inpidual's authority and responsibility as a designated PI on NIH applications and awards. Moreover, review integrity concerns lead to concerns that the relevant institution(s) may not be fully cognizant of their responsibilities and of the potential consequences of integrity breaches, which are leading to violations of the terms and conditions of their NIH awards. When the core values of peer review are compromised, funding decisions may be based on improper or inaccurate information; proprietary information may be compromised; the public may lose trust in science; and patients in clinical studies may be harmed.

Case Studies

The following cases are anonymized, but based on real events.

The Seminar Trip

A cautionary tale about a breach of review integrity in the guise of a normal professional interaction.

The Stealth Grant Writer

An NIH peer reviewer was approached by a well-known professional grant writing service to assist a client in preparing an NIH grant application. The service advertised phenomenal success in securing NIH funding for its clients. What would you do?

Sharing an Application Being Reviewed

Sharing an application with anyone who has not been officially designated to participate in the peer review process is a big no-no. And it is specifically prohibited by NIH peer review policy.

Review Integrity - Abuse of Power

What would you do if, as the Dean of Research at a major university, a group of students, postdocs, and junior faculty reported that they had been pressured into writing reviewer critiques for a senior faculty member?

Embellished Credentials in a Grant Application

What happens when the NIH discovers that an investigator has embellished his or her credentials in an NIH grant application? Or even fabricated credentials?

Undisclosed Conflict of Interest

What happens when it is discovered that one of the reviewers currently set to review an application, had been listed as one of the key personnel on an application with the same PI in another, recent study section?

Asking for Favorable Treatment

What happens when a former colleague contacts you, a reviewer, out of the blue to ask if the application on which he is a principal investigator could be treated favorably at the review meeting? Do you brush off the investigator and figure you will not let the contact influence your review of that application? Or do you instead immediately notify NIH?

This Application Feels Familiar

In this case study, we discuss how plagiarism in the grant application process is handled at NIH and remind the research community about the importance of maintaining confidentiality of the peer review process.

Banned From Supervising, Can’t Go in Lab, but No Impact on NIH Funded Research?

Too often we hear from institutions that a PI has violated the institution’s policies and is no longer permitted to supervise students or staff, but there will be “no impact on NIH-funded work.” We have a problem with this response.

You Can Disagree, Without Being Disagreeable

Unfortunately, we are seeing a number of cases of uncivil behavior coming from inpiduals outside of NIH, directed at NIH extramural staff.

Double Double toil and Trouble

We discuss here what you and your institution should consider when submitting the same applications to multiple funders.

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• Top Stories
• IntegrityIQ becomes first campus company to spin out from Trinity Business School

IntegrityIQ becomes first campus company to spin out from Trinity Business School this year

Posted on: 23 September 2024

IntegrityIQ, the business behind an AI-driven platform designed to address failings in ethics and compliance in large multinationals, is set to become the first campus company to officially spin out of Trinity Business School this year.

It is hoped the move could be the first step in making Dublin a hub for ethics and corporate integrity in Europe.

IntegrityIQ is supported by The Learnovate Centre, a global research and innovation centre in learning technologies in Trinity. In 2023, with Learnovate’s support, the environmental, social and governance (ESG) firm received €365,000 in funding under Enterprise Ireland’s Commercialisation Fund to bring the platform to market – a process due to culminate in September this year.

IntegrityIQ is attracting support from investors both in Ireland and internationally and was last week named a regional finalist in the InterTradeIreland Seedcorn Investor Readiness Competition – one of three Dublin-based finalists in the New Start category. 

The company’s mission is to help large multinationals address failings in ethics and corporate governance that are leading to huge annual losses from fraud, corruption and unethical behaviour.

The firm was founded in 2022 by Dr Daniel Malan and is co-owned by IntegrityIQ  CEO Mark Shields.

Dr Malan is an internationally-renowned expert in the field of Organisational Integrity and Director of the Trinity Corporate Governance Lab at Trinity College Dublin. He has served as co-chair of the Integrity and Compliance Task Force for Business Twenty (B20), the official business dialogue with the G20. He has also been a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Transparency and Anti-Corruption, and an advisory committee member on the Future of Trust and Integrity Project.   

Mark Shields is an award-winning executive specialising in the development of ESG companies from start-up to SME level. Mark’s previous company, CR360, received a number of honours under his stewardship, including the Sunday Times Hiscox Tech Track 100, which recognises the UK’s fastest growing tech companies, and the Queen’s Award for Enterprise: International Trade.

At the core of IntegrityIQ’s business is an AI-driven platform which provides an immersive environment for employees to share perceptions about integrity risks and corporate culture and to sharpen their ethical decision-making skills in a simulated environment. Employees can make protected disclosures via the platform, which will also capture relevant data in real-time for internal and external reporting.

Companies continue to suffer huge losses due to unethical behaviour. Some key statistics include:  

• Companies lose €4.7 trillion globally each year to employee fraud
• Business insiders, or insiders working with outsiders, account for 57% of all fraud cases annually  
• In Western Europe, corruption accounts for the largest proportion of occupational fraud, with only 16% of cases picked up by internal audit and 9% by data monitoring. Some 41% of fraud cases are uncovered following a tip-off.

Ethics officers in large multinationals report challenges around the sourcing of relevant content for ethics and compliance training. Scaling effective programmes is also a challenge with ethics officers reporting that most scalable solutions are ineffective. IntegrityIQ offers an affordable personalised solution at scale.

Dr. Daniel Malan, Founder of IntegrityIQ and Director of the Trinity Corporate Governance Lab at Trinity College Dublin, said: “We are hugely excited by the prospect of becoming the first campus company to officially spin out of Trinity Business School. It has been a fantastic 12 months for Integrity IQ. The €365,000 investment from the Enterprise Ireland Commercialisation Fund put us on a path to market readiness while Learnovate’s technical support helped us refine our AI platform and put us in a position to sign our first contracts with customers.

“Ireland has a strong tradition of corporate governance. Indeed, historical documents indicate that Ireland was the first country in the world to have a corporate governance code. We envisage Dublin as becoming the ethics and corporate governance capital of Europe, with IntegrityIQ being the first company in what we hope will be an entire business ecosystem focused on integrated integrity solutions rather than tick-box compliance.”

Nessa McEniff, Centre Director of Learnovate, said: “Learnovate is delighted that its partnership with IntegrityIQ is culminating with the firm becoming the first campus company to officially spin out of Trinity Business School. We’re proud that our expertise in research and innovation in learning technology has played such a key role in the development of a cutting-edge platform that will educate workers, combat fraud and reduce lost revenues for companies all over the world.”

Mark Shields, Co-Founder and CEO of IntegrityIQ, said: 

“Fraud and unethical behaviour are having a huge negative impact on the bottom lines of so many businesses around the world. Our solution has the potential to make a significant difference by reducing the amounts lost to corruption and fraud through education, training, and an easy-access facility for whistleblowers to make protected disclosures. That’s why we are delighted that IntegrityIQ is on the brink of becoming the first company to officially spin out of Trinity Business School. We look forward to bringing our unique offering to market.”

Prof Laurent Muzellec, Dean of Trinity Business School, said:

“As Dean of Trinity Business School, I am immensely proud to see IntegrityIQ become the first campus company to officially spin out of the School. This achievement not only underscores the strength of our entrepreneurial ecosystem but also reaffirms our commitment to fostering innovation that addresses critical global challenges. IntegrityIQ’s focus on leveraging AI to enhance ethics and compliance aligns with our values of ethical leadership and sustainable business practices. We look forward to watching IntegrityIQ lead the charge in making Dublin a hub for corporate integrity and ethical business solutions in Europe.”

• DOI: 10.62517/jhve.202416203
• Corpus ID: 271553568

Academic Integrity in Digital Media Art Education in the AI Era

• Published in Journal of Higher Vocational… 1 March 2024
• Computer Science, Education, Art
• Journal of Higher Vocational Education

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National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; Policy and Global Affairs; Committee on Science, Engineering, Medicine, and Public Policy; Committee on Responsible Science. Fostering Integrity in Research. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2017 Apr 11.

Fostering Integrity in Research.

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9 Identifying and Promoting Best Practices for Research Integrity

An article about computational science in a scientific publication is not the scholarship itself, it is merely advertising of the scholarship. The actual scholarship is the complete software development environment and the complete set of instructions which generated the figures. — Jonathan Buckheit and David Donoho (1995) , paraphrasing Jon Claerbout

The promotion of responsible research practices is one of the primary responses to concerns about research integrity. Other responses include the development of policies and procedures to respond to allegations of misconduct (covered in Chapter 7 ) and education in the responsible conduct of research (covered in Chapter 10 ). Exploring best practices in research helps to clarify that promoting these practices is not only a moral imperative but is also essential to good science.

Over the past three decades, government agencies, advisory bodies, scientific societies, and others have issued reports, educational guides, and other materials that address the topic of research practices. For example, the 1992 report Responsible Science points to a number of factors that affect research practices, including general scientific norms, the nature and traditions of disciplines, the example of individuals who either hold positions of authority or command respect, institutional and funding agency policies, and the expectations of peers and the larger society ( NAS-NAE-IOM, 1992 ). That committee's review of research practices focused on four areas: data handling (including acquisition, management, and storage); communication and publication; correction of errors; and research training and mentorship. The report explained how commonly understood practices in each of these areas promote research integrity.

A number of other documents and codes of conduct from around the world have specified good or appropriate research practices ( CCA, 2010 ; DCSD, 2009 ; ESF-ALLEA, 2011 ; ICB, 2010 ; IOM-NRC, 2002 ; MPG, 2009 ; NHMRC-ARC- Singapore Statement , 2010; TENK, 2002 ; UA, 2007; UKRIO, 2009 ). In addition, responsible research practices have constituted the primary subject matter for responsible conduct of research education activities, as illustrated by various educational guides ( Gustafsson et al., 2006 ; Steneck, 2007 ; NAS-NAE-IOM, 2009b ; IAP, 2016 ). These materials address the topics covered in Responsible Science —data handling, publication, correcting errors, and mentoring. Some add other topics, including research collaboration, peer review, conflicts of interest, and communicating with the public. Formulations of responsible research practices specific to certain fields address additional requirements, such as protection of human research subjects, care of laboratory animals, and prevention of the misuse of research and technology. For example, the National Institutes of Health ( NIH, 2009 ) has specified nine core areas of responsible conduct of research instruction.

Given the extensive effort to formulate responsible research practices, what does this report hope to add to the discussion? One goal is to reexamine the primary elements of responsible research practices in light of current conditions for doing scientific and scholarly work. A key conclusion of this study is that significant threats to research integrity exist in the United States and elsewhere, arising from a combination of factors present in the modern research environment. As discussed elsewhere, determining the incidence and trends of research misconduct and detrimental research practices is difficult or impossible with the existing data. However, failure to respond effectively, or in some cases an apparent tolerance for detrimental research practices by researchers, research institutions, journals, and funding agencies, has clearly contributed to delays in uncovering misconduct in several well-publicized cases. In some instances, this misconduct occurred over many years, and fabricated results were reported in many papers. And while survey data have limitations, a growing number of studies indicate that the prevalence of detrimental and questionable practices is too high and that the adherence to responsible practices is too low, both in general and in particular fields that are facing problems with irreproducibility of reported results ( John et al., 2012 ).

One reason that holding to best practices is such a challenge and is ultimately so important is that researchers, research institutions, journals, and sponsors may face incentive structures that are not completely aligned with the responsible practice of research. While individual researchers have long been recognized and discussed as potentially conflicted, it is reasonable to apply this perspective as well to other actors. For example, externally funded research is a revenue stream for research institutions and plays a business function in those settings, in addition to providing the necessary funding for scientists to conduct research. The need for institutions to maximize such funding streams may sometimes detract from their ability to uphold best practices. Institutions may not exercise the necessary degree of skepticism and oversight toward researchers who are very successful and valuable to the institution in terms of securing resources or enhancing its reputation.

Likewise, journal publishers and the editors who work for them may have incentives to take actions that are not consistent with best practices for fostering research integrity. In particular, the rise of bibliometric indicators such as the journal impact factor may pose difficulties as journal editors seek to publish the best research but also have an incentive to see the impact factor of their journals rise as far as possible. The inappropriate practice known as coercive citation, in which authors are pressured by journals to cite other papers from the journal, is an example ( Wilhite and Fong, 2012 ).

Finally, sponsors of research and users of research may be subject to pressures or incentives of their own that are not completely aligned with maintaining the integrity of science.

One element of this committee's task was to address the question of whether the research enterprise itself is capable of defining and strengthening basic standards for scientists and their institutions. A critical aspect of this question is that the integrity of the research enterprise is achieved not solely through the integrity of individual researchers and their research practices but through the integrity of the system of which they are a part—the combination of participants and processes that constitute the system as illustrated in Figure 1-1 . The best practices outlined here aim to reflect best practices in the context of the entire system of research and the interdependence of researchers, research institutions, funding agencies, journals, societies, and other participants. Developing this updated framework of responsible research practices will help the research enterprise identify particular practices that should be better understood and adhered to and how such understanding and adherence might be promoted and fostered.

FRAMING BEST PRACTICES FOR RESEARCH INTEGRITY

As described in Chapter 2 , the values of objectivity, honesty, openness, accountability, fairness, and stewardship underlie the effective functioning of research. These values are realized through the norms that apply to research practices. For example, honesty requires that researchers do not alter the data an experiment has produced, and openness means that researchers share the methods they used.

Norms permeate research. Some are formal and explicit, such as the regulatory requirements for treatment of animal and human subjects. Others are informal and sometimes implicit. For example, although there may be no policy that explicitly prohibits practices such as taking undeserved credit for the work of graduate students or postdocs that one is supervising or not extending deserved credit to them, researchers who exploit those who they supervise for personal ends are working against the norms of science.

Norms can be descriptive as well as aspirational. Descriptive norms are those that are generally adhered to and are expected of members of the enterprise. Sanctions may be attached to serious violations of descriptive norms; for example, all those involved expect that researchers will accurately report the results of their research. Aspirational norms are ideals that members of the research enterprise hold and attempt to achieve; for example, researchers seek excellence in the design and execution of their research and seek results that will make significant contributions to the body of knowledge in a field ( Anderson et al., 2010 ).

The best practices described here are aimed at individuals and entities serving different roles within the research system, including researchers, reviewers, institutions, journals, and funders. The committee uses the term best practices here to refer to prescriptive and aspirational norms. The committee has drawn these best practices from the relevant literature, from the experts that it has consulted, and from the accumulated knowledge and experiences of its members. The practices identified encompass principles, strategies, modes of behavior, and activities that preserve the integrity of research and avoid the pitfalls that impede scientific progress. Except where noted, these practices do not require significant additional resources to implement and are indeed practiced in a variety of locations and settings. For most of these practices, the necessary conditions for implementation are recognition on the part of the identified stakeholders that the integrity of research is central to the practice and progress of research, and willingness to act on that recognition. One of the major impediments to such recognition and willingness, of course, is that these practices may not be completely aligned with the perceived self-interests of some stakeholders.

These best practices do not cover every possible ethical situation encountered in research. Nor do they include matters of science and technology policy that are largely administrative, procedural, or discipline specific, such as data retention policies in particular fields or the distribution of research funds. However, the ethical and the administrative overlap in many areas, especially in areas involving obligations of stewardship to the research system as a whole (e.g., in workforce policies), and these overlapping areas are addressed in what follows.

These best practices apply across all areas and forms of research. In contrast, specific codes of conduct are more prescriptive than best practices and can vary from discipline to discipline, such as the number and order of authors on a paper. The application of best practices may also vary in some particulars depending on whether research is undertaken in academia, industry, or government laboratories. The following compilation will strike many readers who are experienced in research as self-evident. These responsibilities are delineated here in part to demonstrate the dense web of relationships and obligations that characterize the research enterprise.

The committee has aimed to describe best practices that are specific enough to be implemented but that may also encompass a number of detailed components. Responsible research practice checklists are provided to enumerate these components.

Researchers

Principal investigators and other scientists (including technicians, undergraduate and graduate students, and postdocs) are the foundation of the research enterprise. The research record begins with their work, and researchers are the primary evaluators and verifiers of work done by others in their respective fields. Every scientific finding a researcher reports contributes to progress in the discipline, and failings made in the conduct or reporting of the research can immensely harm the progress of the field. Every researcher has the responsibility to ensure that these tasks are carried out to the best of his or her ability.

Researchers may play a number of roles during their careers, often simultaneously, including student, trainee, young investigator, principal investigator, department head, reviewer, editor, and administrator. The research process itself includes planning research, performing research, and disseminating results, and researchers have responsibilities at all points during the process. In planning research, they need to consider the effects of research, both positive and negative, on the broader society. It is especially important that they be vigilant about the possibility of unanticipated and potentially dangerous consequences of research, whether on a local or global scale. In interdisciplinary or international research collaborations, investigators may need to engage in continuing discussions about the standards that apply to such efforts.

As they perform research, scientists are expected to maintain high standards of proof and scientific credibility through validation of methods and rigorous confirmation of findings. They should keep clear and accurate records. They should follow the rules and procedures of their institution and laboratory regarding the physical and electronic security of data and the devices on which they are stored. They need to adhere to policies and regulations on the conduct of research related to personal safety. They should be open with supervisors and funders regarding progress, including positive and negative results.

Disseminating research entails responsibilities as well. Researchers should give credit to colleagues for help in completing work, whether in a presentation or a manuscript. They should reveal all methods and corresponding experimental findings that support conclusions as well as any unexplained outlying data that do not fit with the conclusions, allowing others to decide whether the conclusions are still valid despite the outliers.

Best Practice R-1: Research Integrity. Uphold research integrity with vigilance, professionalism, and collegiality

According to one formulation, integrity for the researcher “embodies above all the individual's commitment to intellectual honesty and personal responsibility” ( IOM-NRC, 2002 ). The duty of researchers to uphold research integrity is multifaceted. Fulfilling this duty starts with a broad understanding of scientific methods and the research enterprise as a human institution. Research requires the constant exercise of judgment and is subject to bias, whether conscious or unconscious. Researchers need to be aware of their own personal potential sources of bias in designing, carrying out, evaluating, and reporting their own work. They need to understand that knowledge advances over time, although errors and mistaken interpretations can occur along the way. Researchers who acknowledge and correct their own errors or misinterpretations with equanimity contribute to the progress of science. Likewise, researchers should be fair and generous when critiquing the work of others. Criticisms should focus on errors in the work and disagreements about interpretation, but not on the person.

In addition to meeting their field's standards of integrity and quality in their own work, as specified in the best practices on data handling and authorship, researchers need to promote high standards among colleagues. They should take careful and timely action when a concern about research integrity arises. As a prerequisite, they should understand the definitions of, and policies to address, research misconduct adopted by their institutions and funding agencies. They should be familiar with the appropriate formal procedures for expressing concerns and making allegations, as well as informal rules and steps to help ensure that such concerns and allegations are made responsibly ( Gunsalus, 1998a ). These informal rules include accounting for one's own biases, appreciating that one's knowledge of a situation may be incomplete or incorrect, and getting confidential perspectives on possible misconduct from a trusted advisor before making a formal allegation.

Researchers should maintain an active commitment to openness in research as the essential foundation of academic freedom, not just the integrity and credibility of science. A commitment to openness means both acting and advocating for openness.

Best Practice R-2: Data Handling. Manage research data effectively, responsibly, and transparently throughout the research process. This includes providing free and open access to research data, models, and code underlying reported results to the extent possible, consistent with disciplinary standards, funder requirements, employer policies, and relevant laws and regulations (such as those governing intellectual property)

Effective record keeping and data management while undertaking research, and complete sharing of data, models, and code when publicly reporting results, are fundamental to research integrity. The importance of updating knowledge and practices related to data is increasingly recognized around the world ( NAS-NAE-IOM, 2009a ; KNAW, 2013 ). The pitfalls that can occur when dishonest, closed, or ineffective data management practices are employed are illustrated by the translational omics case and other examples discussed in Chapter 7 and Appendix D .

Researchers need to understand and follow the data collection and analysis standards of their own fields. For example, research data will often contain potential outlying results. While refining data to remove outliers is appropriate, any data refinements should be made to the entire dataset and should similarly improve subdatasets as it does the entire set. The refinement should also be well documented wherever the dataset appears. Some data refinements made after an experiment may be acceptable, since the types of noise that will show up in a dataset may be unclear until after the data are collected, but should be based on an analytic principle that provides an explicit rationale for exclusion. Researchers should guard against the temptation to use a post hoc rationale to make undocumented refinements that strengthen support for a favored hypothesis. Such behavior is a detrimental practice or could even cross the line and become falsification.

In some settings and some cases, data, models, and code may not be made available, or sharing may be delayed due to legal or regulatory restrictions, including those related to privacy, intellectual property protection, and national security classification. For research that does not result in publicly reported results, such as some work performed by industrial or government labs, sharing of data and code is not a requirement but should be undertaken where possible.

In the 21st century, many novel findings and published works are based on nonobvious analysis of large datasets. How to effectively manage these datasets and properly provide them or refer to them during review and publication are challenging issues that are being considered across many fields and disciplines. Internal curation of large datasets may be expensive for research groups, and many journals do not have resources to host the datasets. However, examples of falsification, fabrication, or error discussed in Chapter 7 illustrate that posting of data and code can enable researchers to identify problematic conclusions and correct the research record.

Researchers need to ensure that appropriate statistical and analytical expertise is utilized in the project. The use and misuse of statistical tests such as p -values are current topics of discussion in a number of fields; the American Statistical Association recently released a statement listing six principles on the misconceptions and misuse of the p -value ( Wasserstein and Lazar, 2016 ). Researchers should avoid detrimental practices such as p -hacking, in which statistical and analytical parameters are adjusted until a desired result is achieved ( Nuzzo, 2014 ). Supervisors should stay close to the primary data even if they lack the technical skills to generate those data themselves.

Best Practice R-3. Authorship and Communication. Follow general and disciplinary authorship standards when communicating through formal publications. Describe the roles and contributions of all authors. Be transparent when communicating with researchers from other disciplines, policy makers, and the broader public

Decisions about authorship of research publications are an important aspect of the responsible conduct of research. Although many individuals other than those who conceive of and implement a research project typically contribute to the production of successful research, authors are considered to be the person or persons who made a significant and substantial intellectual contribution to the production and presentation of the new knowledge being published. 1

As discussed in Chapter 3 and Chapter 7 , authorship is also the “coin of the realm” in science—the mechanism through which scientists receive credit for intellectual work. Authorship, particularly lead authorship, carries with it credit that affects careers and promotions. Because of this, authorship often becomes a fraught topic and can invite misconduct and detrimental research practices.

In addition, authorship carries responsibilities. For example, authors are responsible for the veracity and reliability of the reported results, for ensuring that the research was performed according to relevant laws and regulations, for interacting with journal editors and staff during the publication, and for defending the work following publication ( Smith and Williams-Jones, 2012 ). The article or paper presented by researchers “should be complete, and, where applicable, include negative findings and results contrary to their hypotheses” ( NHMRCARC-UA, 2007 ). Publication bias, selective reporting, and poor reporting are serious problems that damage the research record. Authors also need to follow discipline-specific reporting guidelines, such as those covering the registration and reporting of clinical trial results. They are responsible for ensuring that previous work is appropriately and accurately cited. In all fields, responsible authorship involves avoiding detrimental practices such as honorary authorship and duplicate publication, as well as the affirmative responsibility to ensure that all who deserve credit on a paper receive it.

As discussed in Chapter 3 , authorship practices vary among disciplines and within research groups and may change over time; professional and journal standards and policies on authorship also vary (journal best practices are discussed below). Technological changes in how research is done and the prevalence of multidisciplinary and even global research teams have raised challenges for authors, such as an increase in the number of authors per paper and more limited knowledge by all authors of the methods used by other contributors.

Authors should clearly identify which portion of a research project each coauthor performed (see the section on best practices for journals below). Even in cases where this is not required, this information can help readers interpret the work and may also avoid blanket condemnations if the work is later shown to be flawed. If responsibility for an article or other communication is not specified as clearly as possible, all authors can be held accountable for its contents.

Researchers may also need to communicate with specialists from other fields in interdisciplinary studies or may have opportunities to explain their work to policy makers and the broader public. Similar standards of accuracy and transparency should apply. For example, “any attempt to exaggerate the importance and practical applicability of the findings should be resisted” ( ESF-ALLEA, 2011 ). The authors of a research article or other communication have a responsibility to ensure that press releases and other institutional documents describing that work are accurate and unexaggerated. Researchers should work with their institutional media affairs office to avoid unfounded claims and reveal both the positive and the negative aspects of research results. Researchers should also become more sophisticated in distinguishing between reporting research results and advocating policy positions related to their research. Issues of advocacy can be complex, and no hard-and-fast rules cover all situations.

Best Practice R-4: Mentoring and Supervision. Know your responsibilities as a mentor and supervisor. Be a helpful, effective mentor and supervisor to early-career researchers

The 1992 report Responsible Science defines a mentor as “that person directly responsible for the professional development of a research trainee” ( NAS-NAE-IOM, 1992 ). In this report, the term supervisor is used to describe the person directly responsible for the professional development of a trainee. Here, the term mentor refers to a broader group that includes supervisors as well as other more senior researchers who are in a position to contribute to the professional development of trainees and junior researchers. Professional development encompasses the development of technical expertise, socialization in research practices, and adherence to the highest standards of research integrity. The 2002 report Integrity in Scientific Research: Creating an Environment That Promotes Responsible Conduct outlines the responsibilities of supervisors as including “a commitment to continuous education and guidance of trainees, appropriate delegation of responsibility, regular review and constructive appraisal of trainees, fair attribution of accomplishment and authorship, and career guidance, as well as help in creating opportunities for employment and funding” ( IOM-NRC, 2002 ).

Since supervisor-trainee relationships are often complex, it is important that supervisors and trainees clarify their mutual expectations for the relationship ( NAS-NAE-IOM, 2009b ). Conflicts can sometimes occur over the time and opportunities allocated to trainees, credit for and ownership of results, and other issues related to research practices. Supervisors should make sure that trainees are aware of the risks of misrepresenting data, should be aware that subordinates can have an overzealous concern to meet expectations, and should recognize that periods of heightened stress may impair their judgment.

In the context of this report, ensuring that trainees understand and follow best practices in research is an important element of mentorship. This includes checking the work of trainees, particularly work that is being submitted for publication. In several of the individual cases that the committee examined during the study, failures and deficiencies in mentorship and supervision were factors contributing to significant delays in addressing serious problems with data underlying reported results.

Supervisors and other mentors should ensure that trainees receive high-quality instruction in, and appropriate socialization into, the responsible conduct of research. This may involve incorporating activities within the lab as well as institutional and other instruction. A potentially useful practice is to set aside portions of group meetings to discuss issues of research integrity, including group analysis of current examples of detrimental practices. Supervisors should be certain that all persons working under them understand their commitment to responsible research and their expectation for responsible conduct. Students, researchers, and staff should be encouraged to be open about results. Constructive skepticism serves a valuable function in research. “Show me the data” is always a legitimate request. Supervisors should cultivate the expectation that others in the group may be asked to confirm complex experiments or unexpected findings, not as a check on the individual competence or integrity of research group members, but as needed to ensure validity.

In addition to the formal supervisory relationships discussed above, mentoring occurs informally in many cases. Individuals may have multiple mentors, both formal and informal, and all have some responsibility for the appropriate socialization of those they mentor. Mentors should be sensitive to the challenges that mentees belonging to underrepresented groups may be facing. Mentors need to avoid the reality and even the appearance of exploitative practices, such as asking graduate students to babysit or house sit. Although the responsibility of avoiding hypercompetitive research environments characterized by intense resource competition lies mainly with institutions and sponsors, as described below, individual supervisors should do what they can to prevent competitiveness in the lab from reaching the point where it becomes harmful.

Best Practice R-5: Peer Review. Strive to be a fair and effective peer reviewer who provides careful reviews, maintains confidentiality, and recognizes and discloses conflicts of interest

Peer reviewers of grants and journal submissions provide the guiding and corrective machinery that enables the research enterprise to progress. As in other contexts of their work, researchers who serve as reviewers are expected to be honest, objective, and accountable and to preserve confidentiality and protect the ideas of others during the review process. In the context of grant review, peer reviewers are responsible for determining whether a research direction is worthy of funding based on novelty, importance, available data, and whether the proposed methods are suitable for the investigation. For journal submissions, the reviewer's responsibility is to carefully evaluate the experimental design, presented data, and analysis techniques to determine whether they cumulatively support the presented interpretation and conclusions from the data.

Potential reviewers should completely disclose conflicts of interest to the program office for a grant proposal or to the editor for a journal submission. Upholding fairness as a research value, as discussed in Chapter 2 , requires that reviewers be aware of their own biases so as to avoid critiques that are motivated by a desire to defend their own work. The program officer or editor has the responsibility to decide whether a bias or conflict of interest affects a potential reviewer's eligibility.

Reviewers also need to uphold the confidentiality of the review process by not sharing materials or ideas from grants or manuscripts under review. Appropriating ideas from grants or manuscripts under review is a form of plagiarism.

Best Practice R-6. Research Compliance. Understand and comply with relevant institutional and governmental regulations governing research, including those specific to a given discipline or field

Research often involves risks to human subjects and animals, to those in the lab, or to those in the buildings where the research takes place. Because research has a potential for harm, it is regulated by local, state, or federal laws, and human and animal studies are governed by Institutional Review Board and Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee rules, respectively, and regulations imposed by the federal government. Failure to comply with governing rules and regulations can lead to civil—or in some cases criminal—penalties for researchers. Moreover, compliance failures undermine public confidence in the researcher, the institution, the field, and the broader research enterprise.

Researchers have the responsibility to determine what the governing rules are for a designed experiment before the work is conducted. Most institutions have offices that specialize in safety, human experiments, and animal use. These offices should be consulted fully to ensure safety—of the researchers and participants in the experiment or the larger community—and that all governing rules and regulations are satisfied. In some fields, researchers also need to be aware of the risks inherent in doing science, understand the possibilities of harmful consequences that could arise accidentally or through misuse, and take steps to reduce those risks as much as possible.

Finally, researchers need to disclose personal financial interests that might reasonably appear to be related to the research for review by institutional officials at the appropriate time. In many cases, the conflict can be managed through the actions of the researchers involved and through oversight. In some cases, the conflict may not be manageable and must be eliminated or the project may have to be abandoned. Personal financial interests related to the research may have the effect of undermining a reader's view of the credibility of the results, but honesty and objectivity require that they be listed so that others can draw conclusions about the possible effects.

A best practices checklist for researchers is provided in Box 9-1 .

Best Practices Checklist for Researchers.

Research Institutions

As the employers of researchers and the institutional stewards of financial and other resources that support research, universities and other research institutions in the United States have a number of responsibilities (both formal and informal) for ensuring integrity. According to the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council, “Each research institution should develop and implement a comprehensive program designed to promote integrity in research, using multiple approaches adapted to the specific environments within each institution.” ( IOM-NRC, 2002 ) Specific responsibilities include the maintenance of policies and procedures to investigate and address research misconduct—including the responsibility to notify the appropriate federal agency of misconduct investigations involving that agency's funds—and the provision of educational and training programs for students and faculty to raise awareness of research integrity ( IOM-NRC, 2002 ; NAS-NAE-IOM, 1992 ; NSF-OIG, 2013 ; OSTP, 2000 ).

In addition, research institutions carry a range of research-related legal and regulatory compliance responsibilities, such as administering regulations governing research on human subjects and laboratory animals; acting as stewards, as required, of data from federally funded research (see NAS-NAE-IOM, 2009a ); enforcing environmental and hazardous substance regulations; ensuring proper financial accounting of research funds; and implementing general workplace laws and regulations in areas such as discrimination and harassment. The challenges presented by these myriad, often overlapping regulations are many. Institutional leadership must take a role in seeking a responsible compliance environment that is designed to facilitate and support a quality working and learning environment for all.

Some specific policies and practices of research institutions may differ according to whether they are controlled and operated by public or private universities, other nonprofit entities, for-profit companies, or government bodies. Presentations to the committee by corporate representatives indicated that some multinational companies take a very thorough and systematic approach to training and mentoring young researchers ( Williams, 2012 ).

As experience has accumulated over the past several decades, new perspectives have appeared regarding how research institutions can best foster research integrity. For example, the practice of assessing the climate for research integrity in an institution has emerged and is becoming more widely adopted, and its benefits are becoming more clearly understood ( CGS, 2012 ; IOM-NRC, 2002 ). Around the world, more attention is being paid to the role of universities and research institutions in ensuring integrity ( ESF-ALLEA, 2011 ; UUK, 2012 ). The responsibilities of universities and research institutions may change over time due to the challenges raised by new technologies and collaborations ( IOM, 2009 , 2012 ).

Best Practice I-1: Management. Integrate research integrity considerations into overall approaches to research, education, and institutional management

Changes in the funding, structure, and organization of research in the United States and the possible effects of these changes on the incentives of researchers to uphold best practices are discussed in several places in this report. In fulfilling their responsibilities to create an environment where the fundamental values of research are valued and reinforced, institutions need to consider organizational and management issues that have not traditionally been associated with research integrity and have not been traditionally seen as organizational responsibilities. In this regard, institutional leaders and others with research administration responsibilities need to demonstrate through their approach to oversight and implementation of policies that fostering research integrity is a central priority that supports the quality of research. It would be a mistake for institutional and faculty leaders to observe that the institution has basic policies and administrative procedures in place and assume that research integrity issues do not require their attention.

While this is a broad exhortation compared with other best practices presented here, the committee identified several areas for particular focus during the course of the study. To begin, institutions should explicitly evaluate mentoring as part of their evaluation of faculty. Mentoring and supervision of young researchers at U.S. institutions needs systematic attention and improvement. A review of closed Office of Research Integrity (ORI) cases found that almost three-quarters of supervisors had not reviewed source data with trainees who committed misconduct and two-thirds had not set standards for responsible conduct ( Wright et al., 2008 ). Another recent survey of research faculty found that less than a quarter have had opportunities to participate in faculty training to be a better mentor, advisor, or research teacher, and about one-third of faculty did not or could not remember whether they had guidelines related to their responsibilities to PhD students ( Titus and Ballou, 2014 ). Recent work by the InterAcademy Partnership indicates that the need for improved mentoring of young researchers is a global issue ( IAP, 2016 ).

Another imperative is to regularly communicate relevant institutional policies—such as the definition of research misconduct—as well as the rights and responsibilities of researchers directly to young researchers. Compacts between institutions and postdocs, students, and faculty are one mechanism for such communication. The American Association of Medical Colleges has developed several sample compacts, including one between graduate students and their research advisors and one between postdocs and their mentors ( AAMC, 2006 , 2008 ). These are documents of several pages that include bullet points outlining the responsibilities of both parties, such as the responsibility of graduate students to seek regular feedback and the responsibility of graduate advisors not to require students to perform duties unrelated to training and professional development. A particularly important and sometimes vulnerable group is postdocs ( Phillips, 2012 ). Postdocs are formally trainees but are often called upon to be mentors of students or younger postdocs. A 2005 survey of postdocs found that less than half of respondents were aware of institutional policies toward determining authorship, defining misconduct, resolving grievances, or determining the ownership of intellectual property ( Davis, 2005 ).

A related responsibility is for institutions to collect data on career outcomes for recent science and engineering graduate cohorts and postdocs and to provide these data to incoming students and trainees at the front end of their training programs so they are better informed. Providing this information is one indication that the institutions have the students' best interests at heart. To the extent that students have a realistic perspective of their career prospects and the likelihood of being able to pursue research as a career, they will be better equipped to make decisions about how to proceed with their graduate training

Further, institutions might benefit from keeping track of such organizational and funding issues as the number and proportion of soft-money positions in various departments, as well as trends. As explored elsewhere in the report, the combination of increasing emphasis on soft-money positions and declining success rates for grant applications at agencies such as the National Institutes of Health may have a negative impact on researcher incentives to uphold high standards.

Finally, the committee has noted a trend toward institutions and researchers undertaking more aggressive public relations efforts on behalf of their research activities. Institutions and researchers should impose careful quality control on such efforts. One recent study indicates that the quality of media reporting on discoveries is directly related to the quality of press releases ( Schwartz et al., 2011 ). Well-known cases over the years of aggressively promoted results that turned out to be based on fabricated data, such as the Hwang stem cell case, or were otherwise irreproducible, such as the Fleischmanm-Pons “cold fusion” discovery, provide cautionary tales ( Appendix D ; Goodstein, 2010 ). Overhyping may ultimately be both a cause and a consequence of a “winner take all” culture in research where disincentives to cutting corners, or even worse behaviors, are weakened over time ( Freeman and Gelber, 2006 ; Freeman et al., 2001a , b ). It may also damage public trust in researchers and in the research enterprise.

Best Practice I-2: Assessment. Perform regular assessments of the climate for research integrity at the institutional and department levels and address weaknesses that are identified

A baseline expectation is that institutions should create a climate for research integrity and institute supportive policies and practices. The 2002 report Integrity in Scientific Research explains that research organizations “engage in activities that help establish an internal climate and organizational culture that are either supportive of or ambivalent toward the responsible conduct of research” ( IOM-NRC, 2002 ). That report recommended that institutions utilize ongoing self-assessment and peer review in order to evaluate their climate for research integrity and guide continuous improvement. At that time, instruments for that purpose had not been developed.

In recent years, an instrument to assess the organizational climate for research integrity has been developed and validated ( Crain et al., 2013 ; Martinson et al., 2013 ). A recent Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) project worked with a group of universities to integrate “research ethics and the responsible conduct of research (RCR) into graduate education” ( CGS, 2012 ). The participating universities utilized climate assessment as an important tool to identify areas for improvement and to track progress. One participating institution reports that the data produced by the assessment tool helped efforts to improve research integrity approaches gain traction among the faculty ( May, 2013 ).

Institutions can also assess the effectiveness of their own efforts to promote research integrity. Are allegations or concerns addressed in an appropriate and timely way? Are policies related to transparency and data sharing well understood and followed?

Strengthening education and training in the responsible conduct of research, discussed below, is an important approach to addressing issues uncovered in assessment exercises and improving local research climates. As illustrated by several of the cases discussed in Appendix D and in other parts of the report, if detrimental research practices are tolerated at the laboratory or department level, it can lead to a vicious circle where young researchers perpetuate these practices in the belief that they are behaving appropriately. In response, institutions might look for other proactive approaches such as placing succinct posters on bulletin boards to encourage best practices. ORI has produced an infographic on how research supervisors can foster integrity that provides an example of the sorts of information that might be communicated ( ORI, 2016 ). The Singapore Statement on Research Integrity (2010) produced by the Second World Conference on Research Integrity is also available as a single-page pdf. Such posters would perhaps be more effective if they were locally produced by labs or departments.

Best Practice I-3: Performing Research Misconduct Investigations. Perform regular inventories of institutional policies, procedures, and capabilities for investigating and addressing research misconduct and address weaknesses that are identified

Universities and other research institutions are responsible for undertaking fair, thorough, and timely investigations into allegations of research misconduct. A comprehensive assessment of how U.S. research institutions are performing in the area of addressing research misconduct is not possible, because most investigation results and reports are never made public due to confidentiality rules. Over the course of the study, experts who briefed the committee pointed to considerable unevenness in the capabilities of universities to investigate and address allegations of research misconduct ( Garfinkel, 2012 ). In addition, the examples described in other parts of the report, particularly Chapter 7 and Appendix D , illustrate that even the most highly regarded institutions can fail in the performance of basic tasks, such as following appropriate investigation procedures, ensuring that internal committees have the right knowledge and expertise, and ensuring that investigation processes avoid the pitfalls that can result from institutional conflicts of interest.

Regular inventories of institutional policies, procedures, and capabilities can help to ensure that the minimum requirements needed to comply with existing regulations are met, but universities should aim for more than compliance. The requirements of ORI and the National Science Foundation (NSF) should be a floor, not a ceiling.

Ensuring that institutions have the appropriate policies and resources in place to address research misconduct allegations starts with the support and involvement of institutional leaders. Often, concerns can be addressed and questions can be answered at an early stage, obviating the need for formal investigations ( Gunsalus, 1998b ).

Elements that should be part of institutional capabilities include a trained Research Integrity Officer or other professional who can act on allegations, involvement of the institution's general counsel's office, clear policies and procedures that are understood and followed, and support from institutional leadership. In research universities, faculty leaders play a critical role in the effective communication and implementation of these policies and procedures. Institutions should also protect good-faith whistleblowers and prevent negative career consequences for young researchers who become whistleblowers. This demonstrates the institution's moral commitment to its students and employees. As illustrated by the Goodwin case, young researchers who do the right thing by raising concerns or making allegations against superiors may find that their research careers are effectively over, even when they uncover misconduct.

Maintaining confidentiality during an investigation, protecting the accused, and minimizing the negative consequences of investigations for those who are cleared are also essential. Institutions need to communicate with federal agencies such as ORI and the NSF Office of Inspector General, sponsors, and journals, as appropriate, to ensure that these entities can fulfill their responsibilities related to the stewardship of funds and correcting the research record.

Institutions also need to have policies and mechanisms in place that allow them to call in external sources of expertise, particularly when their financial, reputational, or other interests may be affected by an allegation. Incorporating external members on the institutional committees that undertake research misconduct investigations is one mechanism for accomplishing this. In some particularly serious or problematic cases, an institution may decide that all members of such a committee should come from outside the institution, although considerations of logistics and cost would make it difficult to institute this as a normal practice. The University of Illinois requires that all investigation committees should include at least one external member ( University of Illinois, 2009 ). In addition, institutions may ask external experts to review the mission statements of investigation committees at the start of the process and the draft reports of committees to help ensure that the appropriate questions and issues are addressed. It is not clear how common external review is currently.

Regular evaluations of capabilities, incorporating perspectives external to the institution, can also help institutions improve their systems and processes over time. For example, in addition to designated institutional points of contact for allegations of misconduct, such as Research Integrity Officers, some institutions have found additional resources, such as ombudsmen and hotlines, to be helpful. In managing a system with multiple entry points, it is necessary to clearly define roles and coordinate responses so that those who are bringing their concerns to the institution do not receive incorrect or conflicting advice. Mediation mechanisms can be put in place for disputes that arise between colleagues or between subordinates and superiors. Ideally, enhanced communication and related interventions will allow many issues and concerns to be addressed before research misconduct occurs. Ensuring that this information is widely disseminated through posting on bulletin boards in labs and through other mechanisms is also important.

Best Practice I-4: Training and Education. Strive for continuous improvement in RCR training and education

The development of RCR training and education programs and related issues—including funder mandates, content, delivery mechanisms, and assessment—are covered in detail in Chapter 10 . The 1992 report Responsible Science noted that institutional RCR education programs were not very common at that time and that the research enterprise was ambivalent about such programs ( NAS-NAE-IOM, 1992 ). Although there is still much to be learned about the effectiveness of particular educational approaches, recognition that institutions have clear responsibilities has grown over time, both in the United States and around the world. The report Integrity in Scientific Research recommended that “institutions should implement effective educational programs that enhance the responsible conduct of research” ( IOM-NRC, 2002 ). The Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research states that

Each institution must provide induction and training for all research trainees. This training should cover research ethics, occupational health and safety, and environmental protection, as well as technical matters appropriate to the discipline. ( NHMRC-ARC-UA, 2007 )

As is the case with institutional policies and resources to address allegations of research misconduct, the formal requirements of funders should constitute the floor, not the ceiling, for institutional efforts. NIH mandates participation in RCR education for all persons receiving NIH support. This requirement includes instruction in nine core areas: (1) data acquisition, management, sharing, and ownership; (2) mentor/trainee responsibilities; (3) publication practices and responsible authorship; (4) peer review; (5) collaborative science; (6) human subjects; (7) research involving animals; (8) research misconduct; and (9) conflict of interest and commitment ( Steneck, 2004 ). A 2009 update on the Requirement for Instruction in the Responsible Conduct of Research requires RCR training to be provided in person, noting that online instruction is a helpful supplement but is insufficient as the sole provider of RCR training ( NIH, 2009 ). The guidance suggests at least a semester-long series of RCR instruction from faculty on a rotating basis to ensure full faculty participation and that instruction recur through the different levels of a scientist's career ( NIH, 2009 ). The CGS project discussed below produced a number of possible approaches for institutions aiming to improve RCR education, such as engaging faculty in developing discipline-specific content, holding lunchtime workshops for graduate students, integrating RCR content into courses, and developing courses that escalate in complexity ( CGS, 2012 ). The Integrity in Scientific Research report also recommends RCR instruction be provided by “faculty who are actively engaged in research related to that of the trainees” ( IOM-NRC, 2002 ). The CGS project made recommendations for institutional leaders to demonstrate engagement in RCR education through public endorsement from the university president and by assembling a steering committee of institutional leaders and a project director to oversee a plan to integrate RCR education into the curriculum ( CGS, 2012 ).

Institutions can participate in and take advantage of other RCR education development efforts. Recently, RCR training has shifted emphasis from the traditional focus on imparting knowledge, specifically of regulations and compliance requirements, toward the potential value of imparting skills in ethical decision making (see Appendix C ). The effectiveness of techniques such as team-based learning is also being explored ( McCormack and Garvan, 2014 ). An organization involved in RCR is the National Postdoctoral Association, which oversaw a project aimed at developing RCR educational approaches specifically for postdocs ( NPA, 2013 ).

Box 9-2 provides a best practices checklist for research institutions.

Best Practices Checklist for Research Institutions.

Journals and Other Scholarly Communicators

This section and the associated practices are addressed to journals—editors, governing bodies, and publishers—and other individuals and groups involved with scientific publishing and other forms of scholarly communication, including university librarians, digital archivists, and academic presses.

The basics of responsible publishing include ensuring that a journal's existing rules and guidelines have been followed, such as those related to data sharing and research involving human subjects ( Gustafsson et al., 2006 ). Editors are also responsible for the scientific quality of the journal. Journals should clearly articulate their publication criteria and evaluate submissions based on those criteria. They should provide the authors of proposed publications with a fair and full account of reviewers' comments and ensure transparent communication in the event of disputes, questions, or difficulties in the publication process. Journals should make their principles and processes visible to authors, readers, librarians, and peer reviewers. As an example, publishers should disclose sources of funding or other issues that may affect the choice of work to disseminate.

The 1992 report Responsible Science mentions scientific journals and editors and contains a general recommendation that journals and societies support research integrity. Journal concerns and responsibilities related to research integrity have grown and shifted in recent years, as article retractions have increased, a series of high-profile cases of fabricated research published in several high-profile journals has come to light, and relatively new challenges such as image manipulation have prompted journals to develop new policies and approaches. The fact that detecting fabrication often requires specialized technical and analytical tools makes it unlikely that it will be uncovered in the normal peer review process (i.e., before publication).

Although it is sometimes assumed that journal peer review processes are or should be effective mechanisms for uncovering fabricated data and other research misconduct, history and recent experience indicate that this is not the case ( Ioannidis, 2012 ; Stroebe et al., 2012 ). Most misconduct is uncovered through revelations by whistleblowers or by other scientists who have tried and failed to replicate fabricated research.

Over the years, a number of individual journals and publishing groups, journal associations, and other groups have developed ethical codes and good practice guidelines for scientific publishing ( COPE, 2011 ; CSE, 2012b ; ICMJE, 2013 ; SfN, 2010 ). Some publication executives and boards regard the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) principles and recommendations as directive and more or less adhere to them. Others regard them as informative and suggestive while holding independent views on responsible publishing that occasionally vary from COPE's advice. COPE promulgates a mandatory code of conduct for journal editors and a more aspirational set of best practices. COPE has also published a number of guidelines and monographs intended to assist editors and publishers in the course of their work.

Digital innovation has been a major source of disruption in science, engineering, technology, and medical research and publishing, and this has implications for responsible research. Predicting the directions and extent of progress in information technologies is difficult, yet principles and best practices in publishing should be flexible enough to be applied as innovations in research practice arise. The Society for Neuroscience's recently revised ethics policy and guidelines for responsible conduct in scientific publishing are useful examples ( SfN, 2010 ). The set of guidelines put forward for authors is notable for the detailed specifications given for describing the intellectual contribution of authors.

Some journals have introduced technical checks to detect plagiarism and image manipulation. These tools have been useful in detecting misconduct and detrimental practices in proposed papers. In addition, a recent trend among biomedical journals has been to hire ethics officers. It should be noted that these sorts of steps contribute to rising costs that are passed on to university libraries, other subscribers, and, in the “open access” arena, the authors of research. Still, these costs need to be balanced against the costs incurred in editorial time when a journal has to retract a paper.

Best Practice J-1: Practicing Transparency. Practice transparency in journal policies and practices related to research integrity, including publication of retractions and corrections and the reasons for them

Openness is fundamental to the success of the entire chain of processes and relationships involved in scholarly communication. This principle translates directly into best practices in publishing, with just a few exceptions. The one obvious exception is that of peer review, in which the identity of peer reviewers has traditionally been hidden so that undue influence on reviewers is minimized, pre- or postpublication, thus creating an environment enabling direct and frank critical commentary for authors and editors by reviewers. As discussed in Chapter 3 , improving peer review policies and practices and considering other models—such as unblinded review—are issues currently facing journals and disciplines.

Following this best practice begins with maintaining an up-to-date set of author instructions, as well as ethical policies for authors, reviewers, and editors. The policies should include procedures to be followed when allegations of misconduct arise. Journals should communicate retractions (including the reasons for retractions or why a reason cannot be provided), corrections, clarifications, and apologies promptly and openly to ensure that the published record of research is as free of bias, error, and falsehoods as possible. New means of electronic communication provide new and potentially powerful ways of correcting the research literature. There is great value in putting retractions in the place of the target article and in tables of contents. Metadata—which is information about a dataset embedded within it—associating each with the target article should be included for ongoing observation and analysis.

In addition, data and code that support an article should be published with the article (or chapter or book) or made otherwise available (e.g., through linking) in its original position in an issue (or edition) as well as a separate issue- or title-level section with its own explicit entry in the table of contents. Publishers and editors should provide for postpublication review and commentary attached to scientific, technical, and medical articles. Such commentary can be helpful in uncovering problems with published work and in exploring promising areas for research that would confirm or extend the reported results.

Journals should have policies in place to prevent conflicts of interest on the part of editorial staff from affecting editorial decisions. One way of handling this would be for editorial staff to provide conflicts of interest in narrative form in articles and as metadata for systematic observation and analysis. Alternatively, the journal might define what constitutes a conflict of interest for any editor, and then state that if an editor has a conflict of interest with any of the authors of a paper, he or she is excluded from handling the paper. Journals would have on hand declarations from their editors that are updated annually or more often as circumstances change. Addressing conflicts of interest of other participants in the publication process is covered below.

Throughout the publishing process, journals should negotiate fairly and as transparently as possible in author, author-reviewer, and author-reader disputes.

While not as directly supportive of research integrity as the other steps outlined above, journals contribute to the effective functioning of the research enterprise by providing open access to publications, perhaps after an embargo period so as not to interfere with a publisher's business viability.

Best Practice J-2: Requiring Openness. Require openness from authors regarding public access to data, code, and other information necessary to verify or reproduce reported results. Require openness from authors and peer reviewers regarding funding sources and conflicts of interest

As described in other parts of this report, including Chapter 7 , requiring authors to share data and code for purposes of verification, replication, and reuse is an important step that the research enterprise can take to help ensure research integrity. Journals are in a powerful position to implement this step, and some are developing new policies and procedures aimed at ensuring access to data and code ( Nature , 2013 ). Although making data available with the article is the traditional approach in many disciplines, linking to a specialized database or repository will likely be the preferred way to provide access to data in most cases. One example of efforts to expand the availability of data is a 2016 proposal by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors that in order for an article to be considered for publication authors should be required to commit to publish “deidentified individual-patient data underlying the results” of clinical trial research within 6 months of the corresponding article for reproducibility purposes ( Taichman et al., 2016 ).

The data to be made available should include outlier data and negative results if appropriate. Alterations to images should be specified. In cases where regulatory, legal, or technological constraints prevent authors from providing full access to data, an explanation should be published along with the paper.

Journals should work with sponsors, authors, and research institutions to ensure long-term access to data, code, and other information supplementary to the article. Archiving of articles and supplementary information by third parties is the ultimate goal, although securing the necessary resources and developing the appropriate mechanisms remain challenging tasks in some fields and disciplines.

It is also important for full method descriptions to be included in every publication. Currently, references to method sections in previously published work are common in some fields, but this may cause ambiguity as to what was actually done. With the availability of electronic supplements, there is no reason why full methods cannot be included, even if this means reprinting what the same author published previously. Good practice should not be discouraged by concerns about self-duplication if this increases transparency and reduces ambiguity.

Financial conflicts of interests, other relevant financial relationships, and relevant nonfinancial interests should be identified by all authors and included in print and as metadata (PLOS Medicine Editors, 2008). For example, “publishing relevant competing interests for all contributors and publishing corrections if competing interests are revealed after publication” is a best practice listed in COPE's guidelines ( COPE, 2011 ). This disclosure should include an explicit citation of support from funders, whether corporate or not for profit.

Journals should also take steps to safeguard the integrity of the peer review process. COPE's guidelines for peer reviewers include submitting a declaration of potential competing interests, respecting the confidentiality of the process, and not intentionally delaying the process ( Hames, 2013 ). Journals might ask reviewers to explicitly commit to these guidelines by signing a statement.

Best Practice J-3: Authorship Contributions. Require that the contributions and roles of all authors be described. 2

Article authors are the researchers who have contributed significantly to the article and are listed in the article byline. Authorship determines who receives credit for the work and fixes responsibility if or when mistakes or misconduct is uncovered. While guidance on authorship is provided by journals, institutions, societies, and other groups, specific practices vary by discipline. Although detrimental authorship practices other than plagiarism have not been included in the U.S. government's definition of research misconduct, practices such as honorary authorship and unacknowledged ghost authorship, as well as authorship disputes, pose challenges to research integrity. The Council of Science Editors points out that “problems with authorship are not uncommon and can threaten the integrity of scientific research” ( CSE, 2012b ). A recent review of research on authorship across all fields found that 29 percent of researchers in several separate studies reported that they or others they know had experiences involving the misuse of authorship (this figure could be inflated by multiple reports of the same behavior in some of the reviewed studies) ( Marušić et al., 2011 ).

In an environment of increasing collaboration across institutions and borders, it may be more difficult to determine who is responsible for mistakes or fabricated work. In some cases of fabricated or falsified research, senior researchers have claimed that they were merely honorary authors and therefore were not responsible for the integrity of the reported work.

These issues pose challenges to journals, which have responded by paying increasing attention to authorship. One journal practice that has become fairly widespread is to require authors to describe their individual contributions, which are published in a designated place in the article. Journals such as the Lancet began adopting this practice in the 1990s ( Yank and Rennie, 1999 ). The Nature Publishing Group journals, which had requested that authors provide contribution disclosures beginning in 1999, made them mandatory in 2009 ( Nature , 2009 ). At the same time, Nature had considered requiring corresponding authors to sign a statement that they had taken some integrity assurance steps, but there was significant skepticism about this proposal.

Most current contribution disclosures tend to be fairly broad. For example, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides an example list of contributions that includes research design, research performance, contribution of new reagents or analytic tools, data analysis, and writing ( PNAS, 2013 ). Advances in technology hold out the possibility that such contribution disclosures can become more detailed and useful in the future, providing the underlying tools for researchers to maintain up-to-date, verified accounts of their work ( Frische, 2012 ).

For now, journals should require contribution disclosures at as detailed a level as practical and be open to adjusting these requirements as technologies and tools evolve. For peer-reviewed papers, all authors should be identified along with the sources of funding for their work. To avoid questions of duplication, previously published materials should be identified and cited.

Best Practice J-4: Training and Education. Facilitate regular training and education in responsible publishing policies and best practices for editors, reviewers, and authors

Best practices for research institutions and mentors in RCR training and education are described above. Journals can play an important role in focused areas of RCR education as well. It is particularly important for editors to be knowledgeable about responsible publishing practices, requirements that need to be communicated to authors and reviewers, and what to do if problems arise. Some aspects of responsible writing, reviewing, and editing may not be covered in RCR training provided to graduate students. A recent review indicates that many writers, reviewers, and editors lack the necessary training to play their roles effectively, but little is known about the availability and effectiveness of such training ( Galipeau et al., 2013 ). The Council of Science Editors, which has provided training for editors for some time, recently launched a certificate program in scholarly publication management ( CSE, 2012a ). A 2006 paper recommended that an international online training and accreditation program for peer reviewers should be established ( Benos et al., 2007 ).

Journals have varied capabilities and resources to encourage training or to undertake their own educational programs. They should take what steps are appropriate to their own circumstances to help ensure that authors, reviewers, and editors are well prepared to perform their tasks.

Best Practice J-5: Collaboration. Work with other journals to develop common approaches and tools to foster research integrity

As described elsewhere in this section, the work of groups such as the Committee on Publication Ethics, International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, and Council of Science Editors has been of great value to the research enterprise in developing policies, tools, and approaches to ensure research integrity. While individual journals and other scholarly communicators need to maintain the independence to adopt policies and practices that are appropriate to their circumstances, continued collective efforts by journals can contribute to improvements in standards and practices across the enterprise. Uniform policies reinforce the norms of research integrity.

Box 9-3 provides a best practices checklist for journals and other scholarly communicators.

Best Practices Checklist for Journals.

Research Sponsors and Users of Research Results

Sponsors and users of research occupy particularly important positions in the research enterprise. In general, researchers and research institutions rely on funding from government and private-sector sponsors such as industry and foundations to perform their work. The incentive structures created by sponsors can have a significant influence on the motivations and behaviors of researchers and institutions. The changing environment for research funding and the resulting pressures on researchers are described in Chapter 3 and Chapter 6 . While specific recommendations to sponsors are developed in Chapter 11 , this section identifies several specific best practices that research sponsors and users of research results can adopt to ensure research integrity.

The 1992 report Responsible Science recommended several roles for government research sponsors related to integrity, including adopting a common framework of definitions of research misconduct and common policies, adopting policies and procedures that ensure appropriate and prompt responses to allegations of misconduct, and providing support for institutional efforts to discourage questionable research practices ( NAS-NAE-IOM, 1992 ). The 2002 report Integrity in Scientific Research recommended that research sponsors support work to increase understanding of the factors that influence research integrity, including monitoring and assessing those factors ( IOM-NRC, 2002 ). As discussed in Chapter 6 , the Office of Research Integrity and the National Science Foundation maintain programs to support such research.

U.S. government research sponsors such as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation have imposed several mandates and other regulatory requirements on research institutions and researchers over the past several decades covering RCR education and training. The Office of Research Integrity also requires institutions to file an assurance that they have developed and will comply with policies for addressing allegations of misconduct in Public Health Service–sponsored research that meet Public Health Service policies.

The need for research sponsors to take an active role in fostering research integrity is becoming more recognized around the world. The Irish Council for Bioethics report Recommendations for Promoting Research Integrity ( ICB, 2010 ) provides a useful overview of various approaches. The Global Research Council's Statement of Principles on Research Integrity is a succinct list of funding agency responsibilities that includes promotion of education, leading by example, and conditioning support on upholding research integrity ( GRC, 2013 ). The InterAcademy Council and InterAcademy Panel ( IAC-IAP, 2012 ) have also described the responsibilities of funding agencies in Responsible Conduct in the Global Research Enterprise: A Policy Report .

Best Practice RS-1. Research Integrity and Quality. Align funding and regulatory policies with the promotion of research integrity and research quality

Aligning funding and regulatory policies with the promotion of research integrity and research quality has several distinct aspects. For example, as described in Chapter 4 , some funding agencies and regulatory bodies maintain policies on research misconduct and exercise oversight over how institutions address allegations of misconduct. Private foundations such as the Howard Hughes Medical Institute also have research misconduct policies ( HHMI, 2007 ). As discussed in Chapter 9 , agencies require grantee institutions to provide RCR education. Funders that play these roles should ensure that their policies are clear and implemented consistently. Additional commentary on the policies and practices of U.S. government agencies is provided in Chapter 7 in support of the committee's recommendations in this area.

A second aspect of aligning policies and practices with the promotion of research integrity is to increase awareness of how funding policies affect research integrity and to make adjustments when possible and necessary. This may involve support for research that illuminates issues related to research integrity. For example, in recent years the Office of Research Integrity has responded to evidence that the institutional environment has a major impact on research integrity by supporting efforts to study, assess, and strengthen those environments. Some policy initiatives might be based on direct understanding of a situation rather than the results of sponsored research—ORI has also sought to address unevenness in institutional capacity to respond to allegations of misconduct by supporting professional training for research integrity officers.

A recent international report has pointed out that funders have a responsibility to ensure that funding policies not cause researchers and research institutions to emphasize quantity over quality ( IAC-IAP, 2012 ). Chapter 6 explores whether changes in the level and structure of research funding might be associated with detrimental research practices or misconduct. As explained there, this is a complex issue. Evaluating the extent of possible problems and recommending solutions are beyond the scope of this committee's task. Nevertheless, agencies may already be collecting relevant data on how changes in funding and organization are affecting research environments ( NIH, 2012a ). Sponsors should look for opportunities to develop evidence on possible impacts of funding policies on the researchers and institutions that are supported, including impacts on integrity, and take appropriate actions. One example is the NIH policy that limits the number of publications that can be listed in the biosketch submitted in grant and cooperative agreement applications, which may help reduce incentives for researchers to maximize the number of publications ( NIH, 2014 ).

Finally, research funders can take steps to coordinate and harmonize their activities within their own domestic contexts as well as internationally. Examples of international cooperation include NSF's participation in the Global Research Council and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Working Group activities to develop common approaches to dealing with research integrity issues across member countries ( GRC, 2013 ; OECD, 2009 , 2007 ). The Fogarty International Center, part of NIH, supports capacity building in bioethics and research integrity in the developing world.

Best Practice RS-2. Data and Code. Promote access to data and code underlying publicly reported results

The importance of ensuring access to data and code for research integrity and quality is covered above with reference to journal practices and policies. Funders have important roles to play as well. The America COMPETES Reauthorization of 2010 called on federal agencies to ensure access to publications and data resulting from work that they support, and the Office of Science and Technology Policy began working with agencies on implementing the legislation in early 2013 ( Holdren, 2013 ). Federal sponsors can also play a role in providing resources to cover the costs borne by researchers and institutions in making data and code available. Funders will play a critical role in supporting the development of necessary infrastructure, such as data and sample repositories, efforts to develop metadata standards, and the development of applications that facilitate the direct deposit of data to the repositories complete with the metadata. Without those efforts and tools, compliance for data deposition will be low, and the ability of others to use the data for reproducibility will be hampered.

Industry research sponsors also have important contributions to make in this area. Clinical trial data constitute a prominent specific example. Over the years, the share of clinical trials funded by industry has grown ( Buchkowsky and Jewesson, 2004 ). At the same time, pressure has grown to make the clinical trial process more transparent through mechanisms such as public registration of all trials and encouraging the release of all results, including negative results. A recent report states that there are “compelling justifications for sharing clinical trial data to benefit society and future patients” ( IOM, 2015 ). There is a need to ensure that data sharing is done responsibly and protects privacy. Lack of timely reporting of clinical trials is not solely or even primarily an issue in industry-performed or industry-sponsored work; clinical trials performed at academic medical centers and sponsored by federal agencies and other nonindustry sources also need to improve their practices ( Chen et al., 2016 ). Still, since clinical trials are an important component of industry-sponsored research that is published in peer-reviewed journals, industry sponsors can make an important contribution by registering all of their trials, reporting all results in a timely way, and sharing data responsibly.

In September 2016, NIH issued a final policy to promote broad and responsible dissemination of information from NIH-funded clinical trials through ClinicalTrials.gov . Under this policy, every clinical trial funded in whole or in part by NIH is expected to be registered on ClinicalTrials.gov and have summary results information submitted and posted in a timely manner, whether subject to section 402(j) of the Public Health Service Act or not ( NIH, 2016 ).

Best Practice RS-3: Utilizing Research. Practice impartiality and transparency in utilizing research for the development of policy and regulations

As discussed in Chapter 3 , scientific evidence and inputs are increasingly important to numerous areas of policy making—public health, environmental protection, economic development, criminology, food safety, education, and many other areas. The interpretation of research results is a central part of many contentious policy debates, which often feature accusations that science is being manipulated or distorted by powerful interests.

One recent report identifies the five “tasks” that science has in relation to policy: “(1) identify problems, such as endangered species, obesity, unemployment, and vulnerability to natural disasters or terrorist acts; (2) measure their magnitude and seriousness; (3) review alternative policy interventions; (4) systematically assess the likely consequences of particular policy actions—intended and unintended, desired and unwanted; and (5) evaluate what, in fact, results from policy” ( NRC, 2012b ). The report also develops a framework for understanding how science is used in policy and points to areas where better knowledge could improve the utilization of science in policy making.

The utilization of science as an input to policy is a broad, complex field that this report cannot cover in detail. It raises questions and issues of global concern that scientists, policy makers, and citizens of nations around the world will be wrestling with for years to come ( Gluckman, 2014 ). At the same time, the responsible communication of results to policy makers and the public by researchers, and the adoption of best practices by governments in utilizing that input, are important components of scientific integrity that are closely related to other issues discussed in this report.

Recent efforts to define and implement best practices in utilizing science for policy making have focused on the development of clear policies and procedures and the utilization of transparent processes. For example, a 2009 report of the Bipartisan Policy Center explored the need for clearer policies governing the disclosure of relevant relationships by potential members of federal advisory committees, including expert testimony and consulting relationships, to prevent conflicts of interest in these activities ( BPC, 2009 ).

As discussed in Chapter 3 , the Obama administration launched an initiative in 2010 to require all federal agencies to develop and adopt scientific integrity policies ( Holdren, 2010 ). Although an analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists concluded that the efforts of a number of agencies fell short of what is needed to “promote and support a culture of scientific integrity,” the universal adoption of such policies is certainly an important step ( Grifo, 2013 ).

Box 9-4 provides a best practices checklist for research sponsors and users of research.

Best Practices Checklist for Research Sponsors and Users of Research.

According to one perspective on the role of scientific societies in fostering research integrity, “As visible, stable, and enduring institutions, scientific societies serve as the custodian for a discipline's norms and traditions, transmitting them to their members and helping to translate them into accepted research practices” ( Frankel and Bird, 2003 ). The focus here is on disciplinary societies, although it should be noted that the largest general professional association of scientists, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, has been active over the years in a number of areas related to research integrity. Several members of the committee met with a large number of scientific society representatives as part of this study, discussing the concerns and issues facing societies and learning about what they are doing to foster integrity. Many societies publish journals as one of their core activities, and best practices associated with publishing are covered above.

Honorific academies can also play a constructive role in fostering research integrity in their national contexts, and interacademy networks can contribute at the international level by developing and disseminating guidelines and educational materials ( ESF-ALLEA, 2011 ; IAP, 2016 ; NAS-NAE-IOM, 2009b ).

Best Practice S-1. Standards and Education. Serve as a focal point within their disciplines for the development and updating of standards, dissemination of best practices, and fostering RCR education appropriate to the discipline

The specific areas where many societies are active, apart from those related to publication, are the formulation of codes of conduct and educational efforts ( Macrina, 2007 ). Responsible Science asserted that societies should play a key role in developing guidelines for research conduct appropriate to their specific fields ( NAS-NAE-IOM, 1992 ). Many societies developed codes of conduct when research misconduct became a prominent issue in the late 1980s and 1990s, covering issues such as data handling, authorship, mentoring, and research misconduct. An American Association for the Advancement of Science survey undertaken in 2000 reported on the content and subject matter coverage of society ethics codes ( Iverson et al., 2003 ). The American Society for Microbiology, for example, developed its first code of conduct in 1988, and it has been revised several times since ( Macrina, 2007 ). This points to the importance of regularly updating codes of conduct in order to keep pace with changing research practices within disciplines and new ethical issues.

Societies have been active in fostering RCR education. One mechanism for doing this is through workshops or symposia held during the society's annual meeting ( Iverson et al., 2003 ). ORI has provided support for these efforts ( Macrina, 2007 ). Societies can also develop case studies and other educational materials that illustrate ethical issues that can arise in their disciplines. One example is the American Physical Society, which developed an extensive set of case studies in the mid-2000s following several high-profile cases of research misconduct in physics ( APS, 2004 ).

Box 9-5 provides a best practices checklist for scientific societies and professional organizations.

Best Practices Checklist for Scientific Societies and Professional Organizations.

In Recommendation Five, this report calls for the development and adoption of authorship standards and suggests a framework that if adopted would formally codify several of the best practices discussed here, such as describing the roles of all authors. See Chapter 8 for the rationale underlying the recommendation and Chapter 11 for the recommendation text.

In Recommendation Five, this report calls for the development and adoption of authorship standards and suggests a framework that if adopted would formally codify the requirement that the roles of authors be disclosed across all fields and disciplines. See Chapter 8 for the rationale underlying the recommendation and Chapter 11 for the recommendation text.

• Cite this Page National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; Policy and Global Affairs; Committee on Science, Engineering, Medicine, and Public Policy; Committee on Responsible Science. Fostering Integrity in Research. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2017 Apr 11. 9, Identifying and Promoting Best Practices for Research Integrity.
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