Research Integrity and Research Ethics in Professional Codes of Ethics: Survey of Terminology Used by Professional Organizations across Research Disciplines.

Dubravka Komić,Stjepan Ljudevit Marušić,Ana Marušić,Jelte M Wicherts

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0133662

Dubravka Komić, Stjepan Ljudevit Marušić + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0133662

Copy DOI

Journal: PloS one	Publication Date: Jul 20, 2015
Citations: 34	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: University of Split

Abstract

Professional codes of ethics are social contracts among members of a professional group, which aim to instigate, encourage and nurture ethical behaviour and prevent professional misconduct, including research and publication. Despite the existence of codes of ethics, research misconduct remains a serious problem. A survey of codes of ethics from 795 professional organizations from the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Codes of Ethics Collection showed that 182 of them (23%) used research integrity and research ethics terminology in their codes, with differences across disciplines: while the terminology was common in professional organizations in social sciences (82%), mental health (71%), sciences (61%), other organizations had no statements (construction trades, fraternal social organizations, real estate) or a few of them (management, media, engineering). A subsample of 158 professional organizations we judged to be directly involved in research significantly more often had statements on research integrity/ethics terminology than the whole sample: an average of 10.4% of organizations with a statement (95% CI = 10.4-23-5%) on any of the 27 research integrity/ethics terms compared to 3.3% (95% CI = 2.1–4.6%), respectively (P<0.001). Overall, 62% of all statements addressing research integrity/ethics concepts used prescriptive language in describing the standard of practice. Professional organizations should define research integrity and research ethics issues in their ethics codes and collaborate within and across disciplines to adequately address responsible conduct of research and meet contemporary needs of their communities.

Highlights

There are many definitions of professional codes of ethics and their functions [1] but they can generally be described as formal documents sending a message to the professional community about moral standards guiding professional behaviour
We first created a list of 23 terms, which were piloted with a group of 5 researchers in the area of research integrity and ethics
The list was discussed with the participants of the 3rd World Congress on Research Integrity (May 2013), where we presented our preliminary analysis [13]; the discussion resulted in addition of one more term to designate conflict of interest (‘dual relationship’)

Summary

Introduction

There are many definitions of professional codes of ethics and their functions [1] but they can generally be described as formal documents sending a message to the professional community about moral standards guiding professional behaviour. In a qualitative study of 46 scientific organization codes of ethics [10], the codes included issues such as honesty in conducting and reporting research; fairness and integrity in authorship; appropriate use of public funds; sharing, preservation and dissemination of research results; and responsibility for the integrity of the published record (for organizations with strong publishing activity). The codes are classified into 28 different categories of professional organizations and have been contributed by academic organizations, businesses, industry associations, fraternal organizations, government organizations, non-profit organizations and professional associations

Methods

Results

Discussion