European Universities’ Guidance on Research Integrity and Misconduct: Accessibility, Approaches, and Content

Abstract

Research integrity is imperative to good science. Nonetheless, many countries and institutions develop their own integrity guidance, thereby risking incompatibilities with guidance of collaborating institutions. We retrieved guidance for academic integrity and misconduct of 18 universities from 10 European countries and investigated accessibility, general content, principles endorsed, and definitions of misconduct. Accessibility and content differ substantially between institutions. There are general trends of common principles of integrity and definitions of misconduct, yet differences remain. Parallel with previous research, we distinguish different approaches in integrity guidance; one emphasizes broad values of integrity, and the other details negative behaviors of misconduct. We propose that a balance between both approaches is necessary to preserve trust, meaning, and realism of guidance on research integrity.

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The principal investigator (Noemie Aubert Bonn) was funded by the European Commission for participating in the Erasmus Mundus Master of Bioethics 2013-2014 during which this project took place, and is currently funded by an Internal Funding PhD fellowship of Hasselt University, Belgium (UHasselt BOF Nieuw initiatief 15NI05). Kris Dierickx is funded by the Internal Funds (IF) KU Leuven project C24/15/032. Simon Godecharle was funded until February 2016 by the Research Foundation-Flanders (Fonds Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek-Vlaanderen), PhD Fellowship: 11U8214N. Starting from March 2016, Simon is coordinator of health care ethics in the health care group Emmaus (Belgium).

research integrity; misconduct; research ethics; ethical requirements; code of conduct; values of research; guidance on research integrity; European universities