Creating an institutional research integrity culture: It takes more than training

Author: Saskia Hoving

Editor-in-Chief

Research integrity is essential for maintaining trust in research, but sustaining this integrity requires efforts in a complex landscape. Institutions have a key role to play by fostering a culture that supports responsible research in practice. In a special blog series, we draw on interviews with institutional research integrity experts from various regions to explore how integrity is experienced in practice, and what it takes to sustain it.

In this second blog of the series, we explore the gap between integrity training and research practices and discuss how institutions can reshape incentives to make training more meaningful in everyday research practices.

In the first blog of this series, we mapped the complexity of today’s research integrity landscape. With insights from institutional integrity experts, we recognised the importance of collaboration, communication, and trust for the work of institutions with publishers and funders to advance and maintain research integrity. Turning inwards to the institutions themselves, in this blog we explore their efforts to cultivate a research integrity culture that endures, with the backdrop of day-to-day pressures that sometimes pull researchers away from good practice.

For the insights in this blog and the other in the series, we draw on our conversations with Jonas Åkerman, Research Integrity and Ethics Coordinator, Ethics Support Function at Stockholm University, Sweden, Daniel Barr, Principal Research Integrity Advisor at RMIT University, Australia, Rod Bates, Former Research Integrity Officer at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, and Lauran Qualkenbush, Senior Director for Research Integrity and Training and Research Integrity Officer at Northwestern University, United States and founding member of the Association of Research Integrity Officers.

When research practices contradict institutional integrity training

Institutional research integrity experts point out that although institutions support researchers through training, this training can come into tension with research practices. When everyday research practices clash with integrity education, this can undo the efforts to train and maintain research integrity standards. What supervisors communicate in their labs “sets culture,” as Lauran Qualkenbush explains, even if it contradicts what she teaches in research integrity classes.

Researchers are hardly motivated against good integrity practice. On the contrary: “The vast majority of researchers want to conform to good research practice,” says Jonas Åkerman. “The problem is that they are challenged by features in this ecosystem that incentivise them to sometimes compromise.”

This is an important reminder for institutions that invest time and resources in training: What happens after the training can be just as important. The workflows and environment in which researchers work, the patterns of supervision, and the pressures of assessment shape how things are done in practice.

“Research will always be competitive, but we can take away some of the negative incentives, set positive incentives, and provide researchers with guidance and the best possible conditions for good research practice.”
- Jonas Åkerman, Research Integrity and Ethics Coordinator, Ethics Support Function at Stockholm University, Sweden

Encouraging good research practice through institutional support and services

Telling researchers what good practice entails is not enough to operationalise a research integrity culture. Institutions need to also work actively to counter the “features in the ecosystem” Åkerman mentions, that motivate researchers to take shortcuts. Indeed, many pressures are outside the realm of influence of institutions, but identifying where they can meaningfully support researchers is vital.

For instance, the two main research integrity challenges as identified by the integrity experts we spoke with, authorship and data, could be opportunities for targeted intervention by institutions. Supplying researchers with compliance checklists guiding them on how to maintain research integrity in authorship and data management is a good start. But institutions can consider ways to offer additional services addressing these issues and encouraging good practice throughout the research cycle. These could mean the difference between training and guidance that is external to researchers’ practice and offerings that can be implemented in these practices.

The problem with ‘box ticking’ training that the integrity experts raised was also identified in a global survey by Springer Nature on research integrity training. In the white paper titled ‘Surveying the provision of research integrity training around the world,’ researchers expressed concern that the training they were offered was not tailored to the immediate needs of their research practice. The white paper suggests that more training is not necessarily the solution: For complex issues (such as data sharing), researchers may best be served by access to specialists rather than be expected to develop these specialist skills themselves.

Supporting research assessment reform to realign incentives

Incentives are a daily behavioural driver. When success is measured primarily through speed and publication metrics, it can create conditions where research integrity issues become more likely.

Prioritising quantity over quality is a reward structure that can incentivise shortcuts and corner cutting. “A lot of the misconduct is carried out because people need more citations, more publications,” Rod Bates says.

Research assessment for hiring, promotion, or funding has long been challenged for its evaluation practices and the need for more holistic approaches to researcher contributions. While reforming research assessment requires action from stakeholders across the research community, institutions can consider how they support reform initiatives within their own processes, and strengthen researchers’ understanding of the importance of transparency, reproducibility, and data stewardship beyond more traditional success signals.

Creating conditions that incentivise responsible research

Jonas Åkerman describes incentives as the “simple but impossible” problem. Institutions can’t remove competition from research, but they can remove some of the most damaging pressures and add positive incentives by “providing researchers with guidance and the best possible preconditions” to do responsible work.

Creating these counter incentives does, however, require resources. With “genuine funding” for responsible research, Daniel Barr claims, institutions would be able to assist researchers directly and also resource the support teams around them that help with practical aspects of responsible research.

Institutions don’t necessarily need to establish new scorecards for these positive incentives. Libraries often offer services that are preconditions to research integrity like data support, repository guidance, or metadata and licensing advice. More broadly, institutions can enable practical conditions that make responsible work more achievable: allocate time for researchers to adopt relevant good practices, ensure support is visible and normalized, and set clear expectations around transparent and open sharing of data, methods and outputs, in line with reproducibility and integrity standards.

How can institutions make research integrity the default rather than the exception?

Research integrity training is essential, but we must recognise that it cannot alone compete with contradictory incentives, signals, and culture. Institutions have the power to create an environment that elevates integrity training into responsible research practice and culture through targeted, strategic actions.

Some insights emerge from our conversations with institutional integrity experts:

• Make research integrity a meaningful part of everyday decisions:
  Responsible practice expectations can be incorporated into hiring, promotion, and internal funding criteria. When these expectations are communicated throughout the institution, they signal the value of integrity.
• Design support to pre-empt errors that are later complex to address:
  Strategically embedding practical and simple support throughout the research lifecycle where issues tend to arise later, such as authorship clarifications, contribution statements, data deposit checklists, and clear pathways to seek out support on specific issues.
• Invest in tools, systems, and people to bridge between research integrity ideals and daily practices:
  Investing in practical support that can help researchers apply training in their day-to-day work, such as data management platforms, repository guidance, authorship templates, and access to specialist advice.
• Equip supervisors and local leaders to become research integrity champions:
  Lab heads and principal investigators set culture and example for their researchers. They should be supported not only with policy and rules, but also with practical tools such as templates, escalation routes, and coaching that can make these figures into integrity facilitators and ambassadors.

These efforts require strong and committed leadership. In the next and final blog of this series, we explore what this leadership commitment looks like in practice, and how institutional support networks can support research integrity where research actually happens. Stay tuned.

Related content

• Institutional perspectives on strengthening research integrity through collaboration
• Emerging librarian roles in supporting ethical and rigorous scholarship
• Research integrity in the age of open access and AI: The view from France
• How libraries enhance research ethics for researchers
• Navigating research integrity in the age of AI

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