The research climate plays a key role in fostering integrity in research. However, little is known about what constitutes a responsible research climate. We investigated academic researchers’ perceptions on this through focus group interviews. We recruited researchers from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and the Amsterdam University Medical Center to participate in focus group discussions that consisted of researchers from similar academic ranks and disciplinary fields. We asked participants to reflect on the characteristics of a responsible research climate, the barriers they (...) perceived and which interventions they thought fruitful to improve the research climate. Discussions were recorded and transcribed at verbatim. We used inductive content analysis to analyse the focus group transcripts. We conducted 12 focus groups with 61 researchers in total. We identified fair evaluation, openness, sufficient time, integrity, trust and freedom to be mentioned as important characteristics of a responsible research climate. Main perceived barriers were lack of support, unfair evaluation policies, normalization of overwork and insufficient supervision of early career researchers. Possible interventions suggested by the participants centered around improving support, discussing expectations and improving the quality of supervision. Some of the elements of a responsible research climate identified by participants are reflected in national and international codes of conduct, such as trust and openness. Although it may seem hard to change the research climate, we believe that the realisation that the research climate is suboptimal should provide the impetus for change informed by researchers’ experiences and opinions. (shrink)

Both scientists and society at large have rightfully become increasingly concerned about research integrity in recent decades. In response, codes of conduct for research have been developed and elaborated. We show that these codes contain substantial pluralism. First, there is metaphysical pluralism in that codes include values, norms, and virtues. Second, there is axiological pluralism, because there are different categories of values, norms, and virtues: epistemic, moral, professional, social, and legal. Within and between these different categories, norms can be incommensurable (...) or incompatible. Codes of conduct typically do not specify how to handle situations where different norms pull in different directions. We review some attempts to develop an ordering of different sorts of norm violations based on a common measure for their seriousness. We argue that they all fail to give adequate guidance for resolving cases of incommensurable and conflicting norms. We conclude that value pluralism is inherent to codes of conduct in research integrity. The application of codes needs careful reasoning and judgment together with an intellectually humble attitude that acknowledges the inevitability of value pluralism. (shrink)

BackgroundConcerns about research misbehavior in academic science have sparked interest in the factors that may explain research misbehavior. Often three clusters of factors are distinguished: individual factors, climate factors and publication factors. Our research question was: to what extent can individual, climate and publication factors explain the variance in frequently perceived research misbehaviors?MethodsFrom May 2017 until July 2017, we conducted a survey study among academic researchers in Amsterdam. The survey included three measurement instruments that we previously reported individual results of (...) and here we integrate these findings.ResultsOne thousand two hundred ninety-eight researchers completed the survey. Results showed that individual, climate and publication factors combined explained 34% of variance in perceived frequency of research misbehavior. Individual factors explained 7%, climate factors explained 22% and publication factors 16%.ConclusionsOur results suggest that the perceptions of the research climate play a substantial role in explaining variance in research misbehavior. This suggests that efforts to improve departmental norms might have a salutary effect on behavior. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore different possible explanations for research misconduct (especially falsification and fabrication), and investigate whether they are compatible. We suggest that to explain research misconduct, we should pay attention to three factors: (1) the beliefs and desires of the misconductor, (2) contextual affordances, (3) and unconscious biases or influences. We draw on the three different narratives (individual, institutional, system of science) of research misconduct as proposed by Sovacool to review six different explanations. Four theories start from the (...) individual: Rational Choice theory, Bad Apple theory, General Strain Theory and Prospect Theory. Organizational Justice Theory focuses on institutional factors, while New Public Management targets the system of science. For each theory, we illustrate the kinds of facts that must be known in order for explanations based on them to have minimal plausibility. We suggest that none can constitute a full explanation. Finally, we explore how the different possible explanations interrelate. We find that they are compatible, with the exception of explanations based on Rational Choice Theory and Prospect Theory respectively, which are incompatible with one another. For illustrative purposes we examine the case of Diederik Stapel. (shrink)