World conference on research integrity
Scientific papers are avenues for scientists to introduce their results to the world, but first, those findings need to be validated. The 7th World Conference on Research Integrity (WCRI), which took place in South Africa, brought together stakeholders in the scientific community to discuss the topic “Fostering Research Integrity in an Unequal World.”
Researchers, organizations, policymakers, journals, and funders, focused on the ethical challenges facing the community and solutions to foster improved research integrity across the scientific ecosystem. Innovations, diversity, and fairness in peer review and science in general also took center stage in a bid to encourage researchers in resource-poor countries. Researchers from Africa spoke on the need to do away with the continued colonization of research to foster equity in science. Other topics, such as plagiarism in multilingual contexts and best practice in authorship, publication, and use of research data, also drew more attention to challenges facing the drive for integrity in research.
UK Research Integrity Office Annual Conference 2022
The consequences of research misconduct are becoming more and more costly to all parties involved, so we need to respond to global integrity challenges facing the research community. On this note, the 2022 UKRIO annual conference was themed ‘Good research practice: culture, environment and sustainability.’ It centered discussions around maintaining ethical standards and ensuring high-quality research for better reproducibility.
With the aim to improve research practice, speakers reiterated the need for sustainability in the academic system and solutions to research misconduct challenges.
Peer review week 2022
Peer Review Week is a global community-led event that focuses on the roles, successes, and challenges of peer review in scholarly communication. Topics on how to improve peer review and highlights on the latest innovations that enhance integrity in science were on the front burner as stakeholders unpacked the many challenges that plague the process.
As an annual event that celebrates the value of peer review in scholarly communication, it was themed “Research Integrity: Creating and supporting trust in research” to bring more focus to integrity in research. Participating organizations and stakeholders emphasized how innovation in peer review contributes to and reinforces trust in scholarship.
Why is research integrity so important?
To understand its importance, we must first define the term. So what is research integrity? This term means the use of honest and verifiable methods in proposing, performing, assessing, and reporting research results with clear adherence to rules, regulations, and guidelines that follow commonly accepted professional codes or norms in the science community.
As integrity in research was important enough to be the focus of this year’s peer review week; it is clearly the right path for science. Recent revelations show that one of the most cited papers on Alzheimer’s disease research may have been manipulated. This research, on which billions of US federal research funds were spent, proves how costly research misconduct can be.
Being ethical and honest in the research process and during the dissemination of results is the responsibility of everyone involved in the process of scholarly communication. Research integrity is important because it allows the community and world learners to trust that the results of the research are reproducible and can be used for the greater good of society.
How is Morressier supporting trust in science?
Public trust in scientific research has taken a downturn over the years and has continued to decline since the pandemic. Now more than ever, the scientific community needs to step up, innovate and find new ways to ensure integrity in research.
Morressier is going the extra mile to provide tools that bring new levels of integrity to research. With integrity checks across all stages of the life cycle, we empower peer reviewers, publishers, and conference organizers to handle the ever-increasing volume of submissions.
Conclusion
As we look forward to the new year, the research community must innovate its approach to identifying misconduct. Technology innovations enhance peer review and improve the ability to accelerate early-stage research, hence the need to integrate these digital infrastructures across every aspect of research.
