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Half of researchers admit questionable practices in Dutch survey

More than half of researchers responding to a national survey on research integrity by Dutch academics admitted to committing at least one questionable research practice – frequently during the last three years – the World Conference on Research Integrity heard this week.

The findings were revealed during a plenary session highlighting important work by early- and mid-career researchers at the world conference held in Cape Town in South Africa from 29 May to 1 June.

Dr Gowri Gopalakrishna, a postdoctoral researcher at the Amsterdam University Medical Centers and lead investigator of the survey, told delegates that around 40,000 researchers at all levels, from PhD students to full professors, were targeted in the Netherlands survey during 2020 and 2021.

The survey

In total 6,813 researchers responded to the 20-minute questionnaire by email, with their identities protected, giving a 21% response rate.

Eleven questionable research practices were explored, with answers based on a seven-point scale (one for never to seven for always), as well as responsible research practices and factors related to the falsification and fabrication of results.

Gopalakrishna said 51.3% of respondents, or one in two researchers, admitted “frequently engaging in at least one of the 11 questionable research practices in the last three years”. One in 12 researchers – 8.3% – are estimated to have fabricated or falsified research results in the last three years.

On the bright side, 99% of researchers said they accurately cited sources in publications and 96.5% disclosed who funded their studies and declared financial and non-financial interests, while 94.3% meticulously checked work to avoid errors or biases before publication and 86.4% corrected errors in published work where a valid reason for a correction was given.

The survey showed that junior researchers and PhD students were more likely to admit to questionable practices than researchers higher up the academic ranks, with one of the audience suggesting this could be because they were “more sensitive and honest” or more likely to be involved with tasks such as data collection.

Results being discussed with policy-makers

Gopalakrishna told University World News that the findings, which are available on the project website, are already being discussed with policy-makers in universities and university medical centres in the Netherlands. An article on the research by Gopalakrishna and colleagues was published in PLOS ONE in February 2022.

“We’re working together to translate the findings into implementable action plans for institutions,” she said.

“While our data shows that questionable research practices happen frequently, it is important to realise that many of these practices are subtle trespasses, such as not keeping accurate research notes, which can easily happen on a daily basis in any researcher’s life.

“The emphasis should therefore be on acknowledging that these practices can happen and to approach such trespasses with a non-incriminating mindset,” she told University World News.

Reframe research integrity

Gopalakrishna said the time was right to “reframe” research integrity and recognise that when researchers perceive they are being treated fairly and transparently by their institutions, they are less likely to commit questionable research practices.

The survey results highlighted that publication pressure, survival mentoring and competitiveness all had a worse outcome for research integrity, along with work pressure. Factors leading to better research integrity included the perceived likelihood of detection of questionable research practices by peer reviewers and responsible mentoring.

By survival mentoring, Gopalakrishna told University World News she was talking about being taught how to cut corners in research and where the focus is on getting published and advancing one’s career instead of mentoring from the perspective of maintaining research quality.

Surprised by some results

Gopalakrishna said she was surprised by some of the findings, saying: “Funding pressure was associated with a higher likelihood of responsible research practice, which while surprising is an indication of increasing funder requirements to include responsible practices in funding applications, such as FAIR data practices, open access publication of one’s research and so on.

“We also had mixed results for work pressure: on the one hand it led to higher likelihood of questionable research practices as we would expect, but surprisingly it was also associated with a higher likelihood of responsible research practices as funders increasingly require that we practise open science, which can be labour intensive and time consuming.”

Gopalakrishna told University World News that the purpose of the survey was not to encourage a blame game, but instead to help create a “safe environment where researchers can freely admit and speak about mistakes”.

Start with undergraduate students

Also taking part in the session was Dr Sophia Jui-An Pan, assistant research fellow at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University in Taiwan, who told the conference how she encouraged students fresh from high school to think about research integrity right at the start of their higher education journey.

She did this by inviting her undergraduate students to share their thoughts on either a real-life or imaginary case of research misconduct and share the story with classmates and then to either write an essay or discuss what they would to change the eventual outcome if they could travel back in time when the case was still developing.

“This helps the class formulate possible solutions and lets me find out about their attitudes,” she told delegates.

The final speaker in the session was Dr Mario Malicki, a postdoc from Stanford University in the United States and co-editor of Research Integrity and Peer Review, an open access journal published by Springer Nature.

He told the conference that there were more than 50,000 academic journals currently operating, with more than 200 million words in their databases. But over the past 50 years studies showed there was a lack of guidance to authors of papers on research integrity.

Malicki suggested that too much was expected of journal editors to mandate good practices and that while better ethical guidance and advice should be given to authors of papers, universities and research institutions should take greater responsibility in upholding research integrity by their researchers.

Nic Mitchell is a UK-based freelance journalist and PR consultant specialising in European and international higher education. He blogs at www.delacourcommunications.com.