Examples
Worked examples
- Is an instance
A co-investigator lists a department head as an author on a paper despite that person having made no substantive contribution to conception, drafting, or approval of the work (guest authorship) -- an authorship-ethics violation, not FFP.
- Is an instance
A researcher fails to disclose a paid advisory-board role with a company whose product the study evaluates, on both the grant application and the resulting manuscript -- an undisclosed conflict-of-interest violation.
- Is an instance
A study team begins recruiting participants under a revised protocol before the Institutional Review Board (IRB) has approved the amendment -- a human-subjects-protection violation, actionable by the institution and, for federally funded work, potentially by OHRP, independent of whether any data was fabricated or falsified.
Counter-examples
Looks similar, but isn't
- Not an instance
A researcher publishes a result that a later, better-powered study fails to replicate, with no evidence of manipulated data, omitted results, or copied text. This is an honest error or a normal feature of scientific uncertainty, not an ethical violation -- 42 CFR Part 93 explicitly excludes honest error from the misconduct definition, and the same principle is applied more broadly across institutional and funder ethics policies.
Editorial commentary
“Ethical violation” is the umbrella term for any breach of an accepted research-ethics norm — broader than, and not synonymous with, the legally narrow US federal definition of research misconduct, which under 42 CFR Part 93 covers only fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism (FFP). Understanding where the line sits matters operationally: an institution’s research integrity office, a funder, and a journal editor each have different obligations and remedies depending on which category a reported concern falls into, and conflating the two — treating every ethics complaint as if it must clear the FFP bar to be actionable — is itself a common source of mishandled cases.
Why ‘ethical violation’ is broader than ‘research misconduct’
The US Office of Research Integrity (ORI) is explicit that research misconduct ‘does not include honest error or differences of opinion’ and does not extend to ‘criminal behavior, personal disputes, violations of grant management policies, or other unacceptable behaviors not unique to research, such as discrimination or harassment.’ Many jurisdictions and codes define the broader ethical universe differently and more expansively than the US federal FFP standard — the UK Research Integrity Office (UKRIO) Code of Practice and ALLEA’s European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity both name additional categories such as undisclosed conflicts of interest, ghost or guest authorship, and peer-review manipulation as integrity breaches in their own right, not merely as aggravating factors around an FFP finding. CASRAI’s own Research misconduct entry covers this FFP-specific definition and its jurisdictional variation in more depth; this entry is the wider category it sits inside.
Categories institutions actually handle under ‘ethical violation’
- FFP (research misconduct proper). Fabricating data, falsifying results or images, or plagiarizing text or ideas — the narrowest, most severely sanctioned category, typically triggering a formal institutional investigation and, for federally funded work, a possible ORI referral.
- Questionable research practices (QRPs). Practices that fall short of FFP but still distort the record — selective reporting, p-hacking, HARKing (hypothesizing after results are known), inappropriate data exclusion. Surveys consistently find QRPs far more prevalent than confirmed FFP, which is part of why research-ethics training programs treat them as a distinct, high-priority category rather than folding them into misconduct proper.
- Authorship abuse. Ghost authorship (a real contributor omitted, often for commercial reasons), guest/gift authorship (an honorary name added without qualifying contribution), and denying deserved credit. Journals increasingly require a structured contribution statement (see CASRAI’s own CRediT taxonomy) specifically to make authorship claims auditable and reduce this category of dispute.
- Undisclosed conflicts of interest. Financial, professional, or personal interests that could bias the work and were not disclosed per institutional, funder, or journal policy — see CASRAI’s Conflict of Interest (COI) in Research and Conflict of interest disclosure entries.
- Human- and animal-subjects protection breaches. Proceeding without required IRB/IACUC approval, exceeding an approved protocol’s scope, or failing to obtain proper informed consent. These are handled through the institution’s human/animal subjects protection infrastructure and, for federally funded human-subjects research, can also draw OHRP scrutiny — separately from any research-integrity-office FFP process.
- Peer-review misconduct. A reviewer or editor misappropriating ideas or data from a manuscript under review, or breaching the confidentiality of the review process — one of the categories COPE’s Core Practices address directly.
- Duplicate or fragmented (‘salami-slicing’) publication and other publication-ethics breaches that mislead readers about the novelty or scale of reported work, without necessarily involving fabricated data.
Why the distinction is operationally important
Because ‘research misconduct’ triggers specific, often statutorily defined investigation procedures (in the US, the process set out in 42 CFR Part 93), while the broader category of ethical violations is governed by whichever institutional policy, funder terms, or journal/COPE process actually applies, misclassifying a complaint at intake has real consequences — a COI non-disclosure or authorship dispute routed as if it must clear the FFP threshold can be wrongly dismissed, while a genuine FFP allegation handled only as an informal ethics matter can miss required regulatory reporting. Research integrity offices, IRBs, and editorial boards each maintain separate intake and adjudication pathways for exactly this reason.
References
- US Office of Research Integrity, Definition of Research Misconduct, 42 CFR Part 93
- UK Research Integrity Office (UKRIO), Code of Practice for Research
- ALLEA, European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity (2023 revised edition)
- Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), Core Practices
Machine-readable encodings
Use in your systems
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