Student researchers encounter ethical issues daily, but little is known about their unique perspectives. This article presents the results of 30 qualitative semi-structured interviews exploring students’ views and experiences around ethical issues in research groups. During the interviews, students were asked to describe challenges and successes they have encountered in their lab, their conception of what counts as an “ethical issue in research,” and how they handle these issues when they arise. Against this background, the article discusses students’ conceptions of (...) ethical issues in research environments, the types of issues students reported facing, how these issues were ultimately resolved, and finally, the factors, internal qualities, and lessons learned that help students thrive in research environments, as well as some of the challenges students face – especially international students. Many of the ethical challenges interviewees discussed focused on interpersonal issues, highlighting the intense collaboration most graduate students have with their colleagues and supervisors. Findings from this study point to the need for targeted training programs for students and faculty supervisors focusing on building mentoring relationships and finding space in the lab where open communication can occur around ethical research practices. (shrink)

Promoting research integrity practices among doctoral candidates and early career researchers is important for creating a stable and healthy research environment. In addition to teaching specific technical skills and knowledge, research supervisors and mentors inevitably convey research practices, both directly and indirectly. We conducted a scoping review to summarise the role of mentors in fostering research integrity practices, mentors’ responsibilities and the role that institutions have in supporting good mentorship. We searched five different databases and included studies that used an (...) empirical methodology. After searching, a total of 1199 articles were retrieved, of which 24 were eligible for analysis. After snowballing, a total of 35 empirical articles were selected. The review discusses various themes such as the importance of good mentorship, poor mentorship practices, virtues and qualities of mentors, responsibilities and activities of mentors, group mentoring and responsibilities of the institution in supporting good mentorship. This review demonstrates the importance of mentors instilling responsible research practices and attitudes, and promoting research integrity among their mentees. Mentors are responsible for providing explicit guidance and for acting as good role models. The review highlights how poor mentorship can have a bad impact on the research climate. In addition, the review highlights the important influence that institutions can have in supporting mentorship. (shrink)

Fostering research integrity (RI) increasingly focuses on normative guidance and supportive measures within institutions. To be successful, the implementation of support should be informed by stakeholders’ experiences of RI support. This study aims to explore experiences of RI support in Dutch, Spanish and Croatian universities. In total, 59 stakeholders (Netherlands n = 25, Spain n = 17, Croatia n = 17) participated in 16 focus groups in three European countries. Global themes on RI support experiences were identified by thematic analysis. (...) Themes identified were: ‘RI governance and institutional implementation’, ‘RI roles and structures’, ‘RI education and supervision’, and ‘Infrastructure, technology and tools supporting daily practice’. Experiences of support differed between countries in relation to: the efforts to translate norms into practice; the extent to which RI oversight was a responsibility of RE structures, or separate RI structures; and the availability of support close to research practice, such as training, responsible supervision, and adequate tools and infrastructure. The study reinforces the importance of a whole institutional approach to RI, embedded within local jurisdictions, rules, and practices. A whole institutional approach puts the emphasis of responsibility on institutions rather than individual researchers. When such an approach is lacking, some stakeholders look for intervention by authorities, such as funders, outside of the university. (shrink)

Organizational climate and culture may influence different work-related outcomes, including responsible conduct of research and research misconduct in academic or research organizations. In this scoping review we collected evidence on outcomes of interventions to change organizational climate or culture in academic or research settings. Out of 32,093 documents retrieved by the search, we analysed 207 documents in full text, out of which 7 met the eligibility criteria and were included in the final analysis. The included studies measured organizational climate, organizational (...) culture, or both at biomedical faculties or non-academic university departments. Four studies had post-test, and three before-and-after study designs. The majority of interventions were face-to-face activities, and two were based on organizational change. Six studies reported positive changes in organizational climate/culture after the intervention. These positive changes were measured as improvements in score on different questionnaire survey or were described through authors’ or external evaluator’s narrative reports. However, the methodological quality of the studies was low, both for qualitative and quantitative study designs. Replicable studies, using rigorous methods and clearly defined outcomes are urgently needed if organizations want to achieve a real change in organizational climate or culture for responsible research. The protocol for this scoping review was registered at https://osf.io/7zjqb. (shrink)

Issues related to research integrity receive increasing attention in policy discourse and beyond with most universities having introduced by now courses addressing issues of good scientific practice. While communicating expectations and regulations related to good scientific practice is essential, criticism has been raised that integrity courses do not sufficiently address discipline and career-stage specific dimensions, and often do not open up spaces for in-depth engagement. In this article, we present the card-based engagement method RESPONSE_ABILITY, which aims at supporting researchers in (...) developing their ability to respond to challenges of good scientific practice. The method acknowledges that what counts and what does not count as acceptable practice may not be as clear-cut as imagined and that research environments matter when it comes to integrity issues. Using four sets of cards as stimulus material, participants are invited to reflect individually and collectively about questions of research integrity from different perspectives. This approach is meant to train them to negotiate in which contexts certain practices can still be regarded as acceptable and where possible transgressions might begin. RESPONSE_ABILITY can be seen as fostering the creation of an integrity culture as it invites a more reflexive engagement with ideals and realities of good practice and opens a space to address underlying value conflicts researchers may be confronted with. Concluding the article, we call for caution that addressing issues of integrity meaningfully requires striking a delicate balance between raising researchers’ awareness of individual responsibilities and creating institutional environments that allow them to be response-able. (shrink)

Scientific malpractice is not just due to researchers having bad intentions, but also due to a lack of education concerning research integrity practices. Besides the importance of institutionalised trainings on research integrity, research supervisors play an important role in translating what doctoral students learn during research integrity formal sessions. Supervision practices and role modelling influence directly and indirectly supervisees’ attitudes and behaviour toward responsible research. Research supervisors can not be left alone in this effort. Research institutions are responsible for supporting (...) supervisors in being more aware of their RI function, and in supporting responsible supervision practices to have a positive cascading effect on supervisees’ research practices. We interviewed 22 European research supervisors to investigate how they perceive their role as research integrity trainers and their real-life supervision practices. Moreover, we investigated their points of view concerning the role of research institutions in supporting supervision practices. Although there are different commonalities in supervisors’ perception of their research integrity-related role, differences are emphasised depending on the supervisors’ characteristics such as academic domain, seniority, working country and gender. In addition, supervisors’ way of mentoring depend also on supervisees’ learning curve. Overall, all supervisors agreed on institutions playing an important role in support their supervision effort and practices. This study aims to be a starting point for better understanding research integrity supervision practices and the role of institutions in supporting them. Moreover, it puts the basis to further investigate differences in supervision practices depending on supervisors’ characteristics. (shrink)