As we come to the end of a busy and productive year, the UK Committee on Research Integrity extends warm thanks to colleagues across the research system who give their time to inform and challenge our endeavours. The Committee depends on such input. If you would like the chance to be involved, please keep in touch.

We wish all readers best wishes for the New Year and for the festive season.

Meeting with the Minister of State for Science, Research and Innovation

In November, the co-chairs of the Committee were pleased to meet with Lord Vallance, Minister for Science, to discuss our work to uphold, demonstrate, and drive improvements in research integrity. The meeting provided an opportunity to share updates on the Committee’s activities and insights gained from our engagements across the research ecosystem.

Our discussion focused on the importance of transparency and rigour in relation to poor research practice and research misconduct. We reaffirmed our commitment to strengthening the current evidence base and shared details of our on-going work in the Committee’s working groups on research misconduct and AI.

We spoke of the UK Concordat to Support Research Integrity and highlighted the widely held view across the sector that the Concordat provides the foundation for UK research integrity. We were pleased also to share that as newly appointed hosts of the Concordat; the Committee with the Concordat signatories will now develop a strategic work plan to drive next steps in its implementation.

Refreshed Concordat to Support Research Integrity publication date

Work has continued on the Concordat to Support Research Integrity refresh; and the Research Integrity Concordat Signatories (RICS) Group are pleased to announce that an updated version of the Concordat will be published by 31 March 2025.

This builds on the Concordat’s strong foundation for research integrity; while making it clearer (especially in terms of responsibilities), more consistent, and better future-proofed.

Our workstream on addressing poor research practice and research misconduct

The Committee’s cross sector working group on addressing poor research practices and research misconduct continues to convene on a bi-monthly basis to inform and monitor progress on the ‘Research Misconduct in the UK’ commission.

The project is set to deliver on three concurrent workstreams which include:

• Providing evidence on the UK Higher Education research sector’s governance of research misconduct
• Exploring international models for managing research misconduct in Higher Education Institutions.
• Exploring models that include assurance and regulation in UK sectors outside of Higher Education Institutions.

During the November meeting, members worked with RAND Europe to co-develop the project’s research methodology which would be used to characterise the governance of research misconduct governance within the UK and provide evidence on international models for managing research misconduct to inform potential adaptation to the UK’s approach and to support international collaborations.

RAND Europe have also produced a long list of international comparators, which the group made additions to, and which will be used to identify a cohort of international models for which there will be a deeper extraction of their systems and processes.  

A policy implication workshop to explore findings and implications for the UK research system will be held in the second quarter of 2025, with the final report expected in the third quarter of 2025. It is planned that the findings and outputs from this commission will inform anticipated Committee recommendations for UK governance of research misconduct.   

Regular updates are available on our project page.

Higher Education Institutions, Government departments and Independent Research Organisations annual statement analysis

In 2023, the Committee and the Research Integrity Concordat Signatories group (RICS) commissioned Research Consulting to carry out an analysis of content of discoverable annual statements, thematic and numeric analysis. 283 statements included from three years: 2019-2022 produced by Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) as part of their commitment to the UK Concordat to Support Research Integrity. The findings from the analysis can be found on our website.

The Committee is pleased to announce that in conjunction with the RICs group, we are commissioning an analysis to look at annual statements from HEIs, Government departments and Independent Research Organisations published between 2022-2024.

We hope to publish the results of the analysis in early summer of 2025.

Case studies

In this issue we have published four new in-depth case studies from our series of commissioned case studies. These cases discuss approaches and initiatives on research integrity from across the research system.

• Leeds Arts University’s case study examines how they made ethical approval and reflection on research integrity open and accessible for all researchers. They discuss how their small research team used new technology to design a user- and dyslexia-friendly app and process which helps support researchers to undertake research with honesty, rigour, transparency and respect.
• The Cancer Research UK Scotland Institute in Glasgow wanted to ensure that good research integrity practices are not seen as separate from their day-to-day operations or satisfied merely by reference to large-scale policies or guideline documents on their website. While such documents are important frameworks, the Institute has worked on practical methods to sustainably promote and implement the principles they seek to encourage “on the ground”.
• Learn about how the National Physical Laboratory is responding to a national shortage in skilled research scientists by working with industry to upskill graduate researchers and boost accountability in the sector.
• The team at Imperial College’s Department of Surgery and Cancer discuss how they adopted stringent industry standards to increase efficiency and rigour in lab environments.

You can read these and previously published case studies in our work on the Committee’s website.

If you have a case study demonstrating your work on research integrity and best practice, we want to hear from you. We are pleased to invite submission of case studies for future publication on our website. Our guidelines for this can be found in our work.

Committee engagements

On 26 November 2024, the Committee was represented by Ralitsa Madsen a member and Principal Investigator at the MRC-PPU Unit, University of Dundee at the Scottish Research Integrity Network’s anniversary meeting. Dr Madsen presented on the Committee’s current program of work, future projects and the value of collaborating and learning across the system.

Committee welcomes insights from the sector and look forward to learning opportunities that can influence and strengthen the work of the Committee.