Stakeholders' perspectives on research integrity training practices: a qualitative study

Abstract

Background Even though research integrity (RI) training programs have been developed in the last decades, it is argued that current training practices are not always able to increase RI-related awareness within the scientific community. Defining and understanding the capacities and lacunas of existing RI training are becoming extremely important for developing up-to-date educational practices to tackle present-day challenges. Recommendations on how to implement RI education have been primarily made by selected people with specific RI-related expertise. Those recommendations were developed mainly without consulting a broader audience with no specific RI expertise. Moreover, the academic literature lacks qualitative studies on RI training practices. For these reasons, performing in-depth focus groups with non-RI expert stakeholders are of a primary necessity to understand and outline how RI education should be implemented. Methods In this qualitative analysis, different focus groups were conducted to examine stakeholders’ perspectives on RI training practices. Five stakeholders' groups, namely publishers and peer reviewers, researchers on RI, RI trainers, PhDs and postdoctoral researchers, and research administrators working within academia, have been identified to have a broader overview of state of the art. Results A total of 39 participants participated in five focus group sessions. Eight training-related themes were highlighted during the focus group discussions. The training goals, timing and frequency, customisation, format and teaching approach, mentoring, compulsoriness, certification and evaluation, and RI-related responsibilities were discussed. Although confirming what was already proposed by research integrity experts in terms of timing, frequency, duration, and target audience in organising RI education, participants proposed other possible implementations strategies concerning the teaching approach, researchers' obligations, and development an evaluation-certification system. Conclusions This research aims to be a starting point for a better understanding of necessary, definitive, and consistent ways of structuring RI education. The research gives an overview of what has to be considered needed in planning RI training sessions regarding objectives, organisation, and teaching approach.

“The person in power told me to”—European PhD students’ perspectives on guest authorship and good authorship practice

“…To change the culture in a research institution senior researchers must also receive research integrity training [ 6 ], and the norms of good authorship practice should be made clear to all staff. In addition, initiatives should be taken to promote and support the continued discussion of good authorship practice in the labs and corridors after the training has finished [ 45 , 46 ]. Clearly, these actions will in many instances require support and resources from the management level.…”

Teaching phronesis in a research integrity course

“…RI courses for PhD students like the one described in Section 4.1 are important in developing research phronesis and eventually RI. But they cannot stand alone (Pizzolato and Dierickx 2021). A short course can develop in participants a valuable awareness of ethical aspects of research practice, a vocabulary in which to talk about these aspects, and familiarity with navigating grey areas through a first training set of cases, preferably from the entire spectrum presented in Fig.…”

VIRT2UE: A European train-the-trainer programme for teaching research integrity

“…Few included any content on researchers' moral character and professional habits, such as why these aspects are important or how to strengthen them (Abdi et al, 2021). Pizzolato and Dierickx (2021) found that those involved in research in Europe do, however, consider the development of researchers' moral behaviour, character, and professional virtues as appropriate goals of RI training. This goal has been neglected in formal RI training, with little attention given to what we consider to be a 'good researcher' or what acting with integrity means in specific situations.…”