Codes of Ethics and Research Integrity

Abstract

Research integrity, research ethics, and research misconduct are increasingly focusing on discussions in academic, professional, and research communities. As formal documents sending a message to the professional community about standards guiding professional behavior, ethics codes seem to be a good place for addressing responsible conduct of research. However, research integrity concepts are not often addressed in ethics codes published in English. It is unclear whether ethics codes will or should become the primary safeguard against research misconduct and what form this would take in the developing landscape of research integrity. One way to go is for the ethics/integrity codes to become binding, strictly defined rules for members of the associations or institutions authoring the codes. Alternatively, ethics codes may serve as an aspirational promotion of responsible conduct of research, with the assumption that the research community has other self-correcting mechanisms to preserve the integrity of the research process. Whatever the future may hold, codes of ethics will remain an essential vehicle of the nascent attempts to safeguard against research misconduct and a good indicator of how the research community will address and resolve the emerging issues in responsible conduct of research.KeywordsEthics codesProfessional organizationsResearch integrityResearch misconduct