This session brought together a publisher, a university research integrity officer, a journal editor, and the director of a national research integrity body to discuss the processes and challenges of handling a case of misconduct.
This discussion is one of eleven sessions hosted by COPE during Publication Integrity Week 2023.
Publisher’s perspective
Coromoto Power-Febres (Research Integrity Manager, Emerald Publishing) opens the discussion with a call for collaboration. She also identifies two further issues which recur through the session: the time taken to resolve allegations, and the increased number of complex and systematic problems which are being uncovered. Subsequent investigations can be complex: for a publisher the case can involve a range of issues; information can be reported from many different sources; necessitate liaising with several external contacts including authors; and may reveal a more complex situation which requires further investigation.
Institution’s perspective
Rhys Morgan (Head of Policy, Governance and Integrity, Research Strategy Office, University of Cambridge) elaborates on these points from the institutional perspective, where there is a difficult balance to be achieved between the duty of care to employees, the requirements of funders and journals, and the need to maintain trust in the institution’s research output. Processes must be consistent and institutions should engage in ongoing review and improvement of their systems.
Editor’s perspective
Kurt Barnhart (editor of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine owned journal Fertility and Sterility) presents the journal’s point of view, again highlighting the perceptions that processes are slow and that journals are unwilling to take action on concerns. He describes the Research Integrity Committee instituted at the journals owned by the ASRM, which has been very successful in speeding up investigations, but which still encounters problems over non-availability of data and tensions over transparency.
Investigating research misconduct
Karin Nylén (Director, Swedish National Board for Assessment of Research Misconduct), describes the aims and processes used at her organisation which was set up in 2020 to investigate cases of alleged fabrication, falsification and plagiarism. The Board has received many more cases than expected, and Karin highlights several issues encountered by its staff. These include a lack of knowledge from authors on research ethics, missed opportunities to resolve issues within author groups, and a lack of proper systems to store and archive data at universities.
Improving research misconduct investigations
The panellists give a range of responses on when universities and research institutions should be involved in cases of misconduct, however several note that it can be hard to find out who to contact. Universities and research institutions also face difficulties over how to act when several institutions are implicated in a case. All of the panellists agree that anonymous concerns should be taken seriously provided the concern has substance, although they can present difficulties when more information is needed. Perceptions of the process, standards of knowledge, and the resources and time required are identified as key areas where change would be welcome, especially in de-stigmatising corrections that protect the scholarly record.
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