Rethinking success, integrity, and culture in research (part 2) — a multi-actor qualitative study on problems of science

Autor: Bonn, Noémie Aubert, Pinxten, Wim
Přispěvatelé: Pinxten, AUBERT BONN, Noemie, PINXTEN, Wim
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2021
Předmět:
Zdroj: Research Integrity and Peer Review, Vol 6, Iss 1, Pp 1-18 (2021)
Research Integrity and Peer Review
ISSN: 2058-8615
Popis: Background Research misconduct and questionable research practices have been the subject of increasing attention in the past few years. But despite the rich body of research available, few empirical works also include the perspectives of non-researcher stakeholders. Methods We conducted semi-structured interviews and focus groups with policy makers, funders, institution leaders, editors or publishers, research integrity office members, research integrity community members, laboratory technicians, researchers, research students, and former-researchers who changed career to inquire on the topics of success, integrity, and responsibilities in science. We used the Flemish biomedical landscape as a baseline to be able to grasp the views of interacting and complementary actors in a system setting. Results Given the breadth of our results, we divided our findings in a two-paper series with the current paper focusing on the problems that affect the integrity and research culture. We first found that different actors have different perspectives on the problems that affect the integrity and culture of research. Problems were either linked to personalities and attitudes, or to the climates in which researchers operate. Elements that were described as essential for success (in the associate paper) were often thought to accentuate the problems of research climates by disrupting research culture and research integrity. Even though all participants agreed that current research climates need to be addressed, participants generally did not feel responsible nor capable of initiating change. Instead, respondents revealed a circle of blame and mistrust between actor groups. Conclusions Our findings resonate with recent debates, and extrapolate a few action points which might help advance the discussion. First, the research integrity debate must revisit and tackle the way in which researchers are assessed. Second, approaches to promote better science need to address the impact that research climates have on research integrity and research culture rather than to capitalize on individual researchers’ compliance. Finally, inter-actor dialogues and shared decision making must be given priority to ensure that the perspectives of the full research system are captured. Understanding the relations and interdependency between these perspectives is key to be able to address the problems of science. Study registration https://osf.io/33v3m The project is funded by internal funding from Hasselt University through the Bijzonder Onderzoeksfonds (BOF), grant number 15NI05 (recipient WP). The authors wish to thank Raymond De Vries, who substantially contributed to the Conceptualization, Methodology, Resources, and Validation of the present project. The authors also wish to thank Melissa S. Anderson and Brian C. Martinson and Raymond De Vries for sharing their focus group guides which constituted the foundation of ours (Resources). We also wish to thank Ines Steffens, Inge Thijs, and Igna Rutten who were essential in helping us organise focus groups and recruit participants (Resources). Finally, and most importantly, we want to thank all those who participated in our interviews and focus groups. We know that we forced ourselves in the very busy schedules of many participants, and we are sincerely grateful for the time, efforts, and precious thoughts that participants generously shared with us. This is the article published for the preprint of the same name added to my Document Server board. The preprint may be removed if needed.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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