Making researchers responsible: attributions of responsibility and ambiguous notions of culture in research codes of conduct

Abstract

Background: Research codes of conduct offer guidance to researchers with respect to which values should be realized in research practices, how these values are to be realized, and what the respective responsibilities of the individual and the institution are in this. However, the question of how the responsibilities are to be divided between the individual and the institution has hitherto received little attention. We therefore performed an analysis of research codes of conduct to investigate how responsibilities are positioned as individual or institutional, and how the boundary between the two is drawn. Method: We selected 12 institutional, national and international codes of conduct that apply to medical research in the Netherlands and subjected them to a close-reading content analysis. We first identified the dominant themes and then investigated how responsibility is attributed to individuals and institutions. Results: We observed that the attribution of responsibility to either the individual or the institution is often not entirely clear, and that the notion of culture emerges as a residual category for such attributions. We see this notion of responsible research cultures as important; it is something that mediates between the individual level and the institutional level. However, at the same time it largely lacks substantiation. Conclusions: While many attributions of individual and institutional responsibility are clear, the exact boundary between the two is often problematic. We suggest two possible avenues for improving codes of conduct: either to clearly attribute responsibilities to individuals or institutions and depend less on the notion of culture, or to make culture a more explicit concern and articulate what it is and how a good culture might be fostered.

Undertaking pre-pilot work to gain an empathetic insight into participants’ perspectives

“…It also provides a way for participants to be integral parts of the production and questioning of knowledge. This is in line with a constructivist approach, which not only embraces reflection, it considers 'myself' as an ethically and socially responsible researcher (Valkenburg et al 2020). Examination of the self through critical reflection and supervision is an essential aspect of undertaking ethical research.…”

Responsible research practices could be more strongly endorsed by Australian university codes of research conduct

“…Codes of research conduct could be regularly updated to mandate responsible research practices or hold researchers more accountable, especially when current wording simply defaults to the Australian Code, or only serves as a weak endorsement. Codes of research conduct could also be written to clearly attribute responsibility either to individuals or to institutions [ 20 ], or explicitly define good research ‘culture’ and how it can be developed. This could decrease reliance on research culture to drive the uptake of responsible research practices.…”