Building a culture of research integrity with leadership commitment and support networks

Author: Saskia Hoving

Editor-in-Chief

Institutions can help responsible research practice thrive by supporting their researchers and providing the right conditions. 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 across a fragmented research landscape. In this final blog, we explore how the commitment of leadership and systemic institutional support can create and sustain a culture of research integrity.

In the previous blogs in this series on institutional research integrity, we first explored the landscape of integrity to understand the context in which institutions are working today to uphold and advance integrity. In the second blog, we focused on the gap between what training teaches and what incentives reward and considered how institutions can contribute to minimising this gap.

In this blog, we investigate the role of leadership commitment and support networks throughout institutions in nurturing a positive integrity culture. For responsible research practice to thrive, institutions need multi-layered support systems that cover policy, leadership, local guidance, and lifecycle support.

Leadership sets the tone and policies that define expectations around research integrity. This is in turn echoed through the institution through embedded support networks that give researchers contextual, discipline-specific guidance. These local integrity-champions model practical decisions and practices in labs and research sites, but they also support integrity offices with disciplinary knowledge when integrity cases arise.

As with the first two blogs in the series, we draw here 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.

“Understanding what's happening in research and how researchers do research enables us to support integrity and to engender a culture of responsible ethical research.” - Daniel Barr, Principal Research Integrity Advisor at RMIT University, Australia

Visible leadership in support of integrity makes a difference

Leadership commitment is not just a slogan. This commitment means that institutional integrity work is properly resourced, visible and valued, and able to influence research practice. For the creation of a good institutional integrity culture, the willingness of “leadership at the executive level to think about research integrity and ethics, but also then support it in real terms, is very important,” according to Daniel Barr.

These “real terms” in which leadership can support research integrity can range from staffing and securing integrity roles, treating data stewardship as infrastructure rather than an afterthought, and sustaining investment in research support services like repositories, licensing guidance, and trainings. High-level integrity expectations translate into day-to-day practice when leadership commits to integrity through strategy, policies, and sustained institutional support.

“Culture comes from the top down,” says Lauran Qualkenbush, and there are “many layers to the culture.” Leadership sets the tone and policies, while support networks embedded across the institution and in different settings turn those signals into day-to-day decisions in departments, labs, and project teams.

Embedded support networks: Integrity guidance where research happens

Most researchers, Jonas Åkerman observes, are aware of integrity issues and consider them, but “they need guidance and help, not just interpreting the rules individually, but also finding a good balance and managing the complexity of the whole.” By offering guidance and practical assistance, embedded support networks can help researchers effectively handle integrity issues throughout their work.

Centralised integrity offices can find it challenging to reach every discipline or lab culture alone, when they are themselves external to those everyday research practices. The challenge of translating integrity training and institutional policies into research practices and culture is already substantial. Taking this translation a step further requires having integrity champions acting from within.

Research integrity advisors that “champion these conversations in their local schools or areas,” as Daniel Barr explains, bring integrity into everyday practice and establish the conditions for it to be upheld. Integrity champions that are “locally” embedded where research is conducted complement training and policies and help translate institutional and leadership commitment to integrity.

The importance of discipline-specific support in addressing research integrity concerns

Beyond modelling integrity-positive practices to their peers, these local supporters also help integrity officers with domain knowledge to complement their general expertise about integrity. This could be required when institutional integrity specialists address an integrity concern.

Rod Bates explains that receiving assistance from disciplinary experts when addressing integrity issues is important. The collaboration of these experts is based on the general understanding throughout the institution that “integrity is important.”

Having distributed networks that support research integrity throughout the institution creates a culture of responsible research practice that upholds integrity. These disciplinary integrity champions offer researchers discipline-specific guidance and also support the institutional integrity office with their topical expert input, as needed to address integrity concerns. 

In this environment, there are more chances to identify and address confusion, conflict, or poor practice in early stages, as well as the commitment to solving issues when they surface in later stages. These support networks extend the reach, credibility, and responsiveness of the central integrity office and the commitment of the leadership throughout the institution.

Institutions in support of a research integrity culture

Institutions shape research integrity culture by what they resource, what they reward, and what they make practical. An integrity culture hinges on the accumulated effect of leadership commitment and embedded support.

In this blog series, we explored the integrity challenges of the complex landscape of modern research. We learned how everyday pressures and misaligned incentives can pull researchers away from responsible practice. And we recognised how institutions can create and nurture a culture in which research integrity thrives. Working in concert with other players across the research ecosystem, institutions make research integrity a lived reality, not just an ideal.

Related content

• Creating an institutional research integrity culture: It takes more than training
• 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
• Navigating research integrity in the age of AI

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