Aims

Research Consulting was appointed by the committee and the Research Integrity Concordat Signatories group to review annual integrity reports prepared by higher education institutions.

The work provides a novel understanding of the state of research integrity in the UK academic research system and act as a baseline from which trends can be monitored.

This project sought to:

• Analyse and summarise the evidence base provided by higher education institution’s annual statements to understand what the information tells us about the state of research integrity in the UK.
• Make a light touch assessment on how complete and robust the data is and provide an understanding of how many higher education institutions are writing these reports.

The report has now been published.

Partnership

The committee partnered with the Research Integrity Concordat Signatories to carry out the work and established a small cross-sector project board to provide strategic oversight.  

Background

Under commitment five of the Concordat to Support Research Integrity, employers of research must produce and publish a short annual statement on research integrity. The statement must provide a summary of activities undertaken that support and strengthen understanding of research integrity and include data on the number of research misconduct investigations conducted.

The data included in these statements has been undervalued and underutilised. There has been limited analysis of these statements in the past few years, but a thorough and full review of the data within them is expected to offer a more complete understanding of research integrity across the system, provide a baseline from which trends can be monitored and highlight areas where the greatest attention is required.

Findings

There is clear evidence that higher education institutions consider research integrity to be a strategic priority and have been ramping up efforts in this area. Our assessment of annual statements indicates that activities to support research integrity are highly variable in scope and format, based on the institutional context and resources available.

1. Annual statements describe diverse activities in different institutional contexts
2. Annual statements show evidence of institutions learning from investigations
3. Research integrity is part of broader discussions around research culture
4. Support and training on research integrity are focused on early career stages
5. The effectiveness of research integrity activities is not formally monitored

Read the full report.