Other Unacceptable Practices
Other Unacceptable Practices
The ALLEA Code provides examples of unacceptable research practices. The list is not exhaustive. In most cases, universities have regulations for research integrity that allow their integrity committees to decide if a particular practice is unacceptable.
The Slippery Slopes on this website are situations in which unacceptable research practices may occur.
Module 1: introduction
- Research integrity isn’t relevant for me
- I’m experienced enough not to fall for a slippery slope
Module 2: supervision and mentoring
- Micromanagement
- The (im)possible aim for high impact publications
Module 3: good academic research practices
- “Unreliable research findings due to flawed study design” and “Gender-blind research”
- HARKing and data snooping
- P-hacking
- Double dipping
- Unavailable (raw) data
- Lack of detailed documentation
- Image manipulation
- Honory, gift and guest authorship
- Providing a wrong or false affiliation or failing to disclose a relevant affiliation
- Secondary referencing
- Predatory publishers/conferences
- Biased or fake peer review
- Duplicate submission/publication
- Undisclosed conflict of interest
Module 4: violations of research integrity
- Honest mistakes
- Detection doesn’t always stop publishing
Supplementary module on the General Data Protection Regulation
- Lack of transparency
- Pseudonymisation and anonymisation
- Inadequate risk assessment
Supplementary module on ethics rules and regulations
- Ethics Dumping
- Extra (course) credits for students
Like the list provided by ALLEA, this list is not exhaustive and other situations might occur.
One other set of practices that is normally not covered by research integrity committees is bullying, harassment and discrimination. Such practices, while totally unacceptable, can also arise between university staff who are not involved in research. As such, they are covered by universities’ human resource regulations. Cases of bullying, harassment, and discrimination should be reported to the appropriate contact person at your university, faculty or department. A UKRI survey (Metcalfe et al, 2020) found that incidents of bullying and harassment were cited as the top factor negatively impacting research integrity. This means that research integrity committees and integrity officers should work together with services that deal with bullying and harassment, both to prevent and investigate violations of integrity.
Impact
The main impact of fabrication, falsification, and sometimes plagiarism is on research itself. Such practices introduce false, misleading and fraudulent information into the research record, and thus directly damage science itself.
Some of the other violations of research integrity may have a less direct impact on the scientific record itself, but they still damage science as a practice. Such practices may lead to wasted resources, undermine co-operation among scientists, or damage the societal reputation of science. But they can also lead to:
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Undermining the research process
While research is often a competitive process, the competition should be fair and should not involve deliberate attempts to undermine the work of others. For example: withholding research results or delaying or inappropriately hampering the work of other researchers. Another example is ‘Salami publication’ (sometimes called bologna or trivial publication), which is the practices of dividing one significant piece of research into a number of small experiments (least publishable units or LPUs) to publish on separately, simply to increase the number of publications (Source: ORI introduction to RCR, Retrieved May 27). That way your CV looks more impressive which can give an (unfair) advantage in job applications.
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Practices that undermine integrity procedures
Universities have policies and procedures to promote integrity and to investigate violations of research integrity. Failure to respect these efforts to keep science ‘clean’, and actions that undermine them, are unacceptable. Examples of such unacceptable practices include: misusing seniority to encourage violations of integrity, ignoring or covering up putative violations of integrity by others, and accusing researchers of misconduct or other violations in a malicious way.
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Dishonesty about research
Researchers are expected to be responsible in presenting their research to funders, sponsors, and to society as a whole. Dishonesty about research undermines the important role that scientific research plays in society, being a reliable and independent partner in knowledge accumulation. Examples of dishonest practices include: misrepresenting research achievements and exaggerating the importance and practical applicability of findings.