Abstract
Issues related to research integrity receive increasing attention in policy discourse and beyond with most universities having introduced by now courses addressing issues of good scientific practice. While communicating expectations and regulations related to good scientific practice is essential, criticism has been raised that integrity courses do not sufficiently address discipline and career-stage specific dimensions, and often do not open up spaces for in-depth engagement. In this article, we present the card-based engagement method RESPONSE_ABILITY, which aims at supporting researchers in developing their ability to respond to challenges of good scientific practice. The method acknowledges that what counts and what does not count as acceptable practice may not be as clear-cut as imagined and that research environments matter when it comes to integrity issues. Using four sets of cards as stimulus material, participants are invited to reflect individually and collectively about questions of research integrity from different perspectives. This approach is meant to train them to negotiate in which contexts certain practices can still be regarded as acceptable and where possible transgressions might begin. RESPONSE_ABILITY can be seen as fostering the creation of an integrity culture as it invites a more reflexive engagement with ideals and realities of good practice and opens a space to address underlying value conflicts researchers may be confronted with. Concluding the article, we call for caution that addressing issues of integrity meaningfully requires striking a delicate balance between raising researchers’ awareness of individual responsibilities and creating institutional environments that allow them to be response-able.
Highlights
Over the last decade, the issue of research integrity has received increasing attention
While communicating expectations and regulations related to good scientific practice is important, criticism has been raised that integrity courses do not sufficiently address discipline and career-stage specific dimensions, and that online teaching with little face to face interaction is not offering sufficient practical experiences
While when developing the card-based engagement method RESPONSE_ABILITY we have explored these engagement methods, in terms of concrete choreography and specific methodological considerations it primarily draws from the cardbased discussion methods IMAGINE (Felt et al, 2014) and IMAGINE RRI5 (Felt et al, 2018)
Summary
The issue of research integrity has received increasing attention. Most universities have formulated more explicit integrity guidelines, they have introduced (obligatory) courses to address issues of good scientific practice (Abdi et al, 2021). These trainings are often guided by an ‘awareness-leads-to-avoidance’ logic, which links scientific misconduct to an information deficit on the side of researchers. While communicating expectations and regulations related to good scientific practice is important, criticism has been raised that integrity courses do not sufficiently address discipline and career-stage specific dimensions, and that online teaching with little face to face interaction is not offering sufficient practical experiences. Analysts underline the importance to embed this addressing of integrity issues into the overall socialization of novice researchers, which would require commitments on many different levels (Hyytinen & Löfström, 2017; Mejlgaard et al, 2020; Orr, 2018; Todd et al, 2017)
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