RESUMEN

Research Funding Organizations (RFOs) play an important role in promoting research integrity (RI). Not only do they allocate resources to research institutions and researchers, but they also set and monitor research standards in their funded projects. In spite of their crucial role, there is a paucity of guidance on how RFOs can promote research integrity. As part of the EU-Funded SOPs4RI project, we aimed to address this gap by co-creating guidelines to help RFOs promote RI, engaging a diverse group of stakeholders. Based on a Delphi survey, reviews of evidence and stakeholder interviews, three guideline topics were identified: 1) the selection and evaluation of proposals; 2) monitoring of funded projects; and 3) prevention of unjustified interference. Four sets of co-creation workshops were conducted for each guideline topic, and the input revised and finalized. Understanding these debates could help RFOs from diverse cultural and organizational backgrounds who are developing their own RI guidelines. Therefore, in this paper, we summarize the key results and emphasize the final recommendations. Further, we provide the main points of discussion that occurred during the workshops and explain how they were addressed or resolved in the final guidelines and how they can help in future endeavors to improve funders' practices to foster RI.

RESUMEN

Promoting and implementing research integrity is considered the joint responsibility and effort of multiple stakeholders in the research community. We conducted a scoping review and analyzed 236 research articles and gray literature publications from biomedical sciences, social sciences, natural sciences (including engineering), and humanities that dealt with the factors that may positively or negatively impact the promotion and implementation of research integrity. Critical appraisal of evidence was performed for studies describing interventions aimed at research integrity promotion in order to provide insight into the effectiveness of these interventions. The results of this scoping review provide a comprehensive taxonomy of factors with positive or negative impact and their relatedness to individual researchers, research performing and funding organizations, and the system of science. Moreover, the results show that efforts for fostering and promoting research integrity should be implemented at all three levels (researcher, institution, system) simultaneously to deliver greater adherence and implementation of research integrity practices. Although various educational interventions aiming at research integrity promotion exist, we were not able to conclude on the effectiveness of explored interventions due to the methodological quality issues in the studies.

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RESUMEN

Research integrity (RI) guidance documents often lack sufficient details on handling specific RI issues causing the lack of harmonized approaches to RI and opening the way to research misconduct and other detrimental research practices. Standard operating procedures (SOPs) are developed and implemented by organizations for ensuring the uniformity and quality of performed actions. This study aimed to explore stakeholders' opinions on SOPs for RI, factors influencing the implementation of RI guidance documents and practices, and ideas for improvements in the RI field. We conducted semi-structured interviews with stakeholders from different groups. Data were analyzed using the reflexive thematic analysis approach, and three themes were developed. The first theme addressed participants' knowledge and perceptions on SOPs for RI and their impact on RI promotion and implementation. The second theme described different factors that have a positive or negative impact on the implementation of RI and RI guidance documents and practices, while the third theme addressed needed changes and ideas for improvements in the RI field. Participants considered SOPs valuable for RI promotion. SOPs should be developed based on and consistent with more general and aspirational guidance and through the dialogue with researchers and other stakeholders, to ensure their relevancy.

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RESUMEN

To foster research integrity (RI), it is necessary to address the institutional and system-of-science factors that influence researchers' behavior. Consequently, research performing and research funding organizations (RPOs and RFOs) could develop comprehensive RI policies outlining the concrete steps they will take to foster RI. So far, there is no consensus on which topics are important to address in RI policies. Therefore, we conducted a three round Delphi survey study to explore which RI topics to address in institutional RI policies by seeking consensus from research policy experts and institutional leaders. A total of 68 RPO and 52 RFO experts, representing different disciplines, countries and genders, completed one, two or all rounds of the study. There was consensus among the experts on the importance of 12 RI topics for RPOs and 11 for RFOs. The topics that ranked highest for RPOs concerned education and training, supervision and mentoring, dealing with RI breaches, and supporting a responsible research process (e.g. through quality assurance). The highest ranked RFO topics concerned dealing with breaches of RI, conflicts of interest, and setting expectations on RPOs (e.g. about educating researchers about RI). Together with the research policy experts and institutional leaders, we developed a comprehensive overview of topics important for inclusion in the RI policies of RPOs and RFOs. The topics reflect preference for a preventative approach to RI, coupled with procedures for dealing with RI breaches. RPOs and RFOs should address each of these topics in order to support researchers in conducting responsible research.

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