The Perception of Research Integrity and Ethical Training in the Academic Community

Abstract

The article presents academics’ perceptions on research integrity and teaching integrity and ethics. The empirical basis of the article is a qualitative analysis of data based on open questions from two online surveys conducted among scientists, academic teachers and students. We point out two ways of defining scientific integrity: (1) as a common challenge for the academic community arising from the relationship between science and society; (2) as an individual choice and one’s capital in achieving scientific success. We describe the respondents’ views on the process of teaching integrity and ethics, rooted in a values-based approach to integrity. In this approach, teaching is open to the use of dialogical methods and takes into account the relative nature of the subjects being taught – research integrity and ethics. In our analyses, we focus on a positive approach to research integrity and show that it has great potential to raise the awareness of the scientific community about the principal values in science.