According to the Concordat for Research Integrity1, research misconduct is:
“characterised as behaviour or actions that fall short of the standards of ethics, research and scholarship required to ensure that the integrity of research is upheld.”
Examples of research misconduct include:
In an infamous case of scientific fraud2, a social psychologist published papers using datasets that were made up or modified to suit his research hypotheses. Many of his papers were retracted. A report also stated that the misconduct negatively affected the careers of colleagues and graduate students who published papers with him.
According to the APA3, plagiarism “is the act of presenting the words, ideas, or images of another as your own; it denies authors or creators of content the credit they are due”. An example is failing to cite the original article where a quote, idea, or image was first published. This also includes self-plagiarism; for example, if an author publishes the same study in two different journals. There may be grey areas and acceptable uses of previous work, such as minor citation errors and students who publish peer-reviewed articles based on their thesis work. Go to the APA Style website for more information about plagiarism.
Here is an example of a conflict of interest from the Research Support office at The University of Oxford4:
A researcher holds a position (for example as a director) in an enterprise that may wish to restrict or otherwise manage adverse research findings for commercial reasons.”
Let’s say that a researcher co-owns a company that sells educational products designed to improve children’s learning outcomes. The researcher then publishes a study wherein she evaluated the effectiveness of using these products. This study may be perceived as less trustworthy because the researcher has a financial incentive for showing that the product works. In this case, the conflict of interest should be declared, managed, or avoided by the researcher5.
An article from Nature Index6 describes instances wherein a co-author was added to the publication list even when they had little to no contribution to the work, e.g., due to the co-author’s senior position in an institution or as a way to boost a researcher’s publication record. On the other hand, ghost authors are those who contributed a lot to the work but were not given credit. Journal publishers7 and universities8 have published guidelines to clarify what counts as authorship in research work.
Research studies involving human participants follow protocols to ensure that participants know that they are joining a study, what the study is about, and what will happen to the information that they will provide. Disregard for protocol may result in research misconduct; for example, if a researcher accidentally shares sensitive information about research participants (e.g., names and contact details, health conditions) to a third party (e.g., a government organization, a researcher from another university), or if participants are recruited without going through acceptable consent procedures (e.g., a child in a community is tested on the spot without written or oral consent from an adult family member). We will go into more detail in Section II.
These involve attempts by individuals or organizations to cover up research misconduct or silence whistleblowers. Knowing the true extent of research misconduct in research is difficult. Naturally, very few researchers admit to committing research misconduct themselves9 and it is still difficult to access complete and transparent reports of misconduct investigations in universities, at least in the UK10.
Serious research misconduct, such as data fabrication, may be clear-cut. However, many unacceptable research practices often fall into the grey area of questionable research practices (QRPs). Whereas a meta-analysis found that an estimated 2% of researchers admitted to engaging in serious research misconduct, more than 30% have reported engaging in questionable research practices11. The numbers are greater when reporting on other people’s misconduct (14%) or questionable research practices (over 70%).
Behaviours that have been classified by some authors12, 13 as questionable research practices include:
Research misconduct and questionable research practices lead to a number of consequences15, 16, 17; such as wasting research funding, decreasing the trustworthiness of research, researchers, and research institutions, and in the case of child research, potentially misdirecting policy decisions and future public funding.
Currently, there are great initiatives to improve transparency and accuracy in research, such as pre-registration, registered reports, and the open sharing of data sets and research materials. These open science practices are becoming increasingly popular within the scientific community.