Two questions get conflated constantly in research-misconduct handling: “what happens during an investigation” and “who actually has the authority to investigate.” CASRAI’s step-by-step walkthrough of the ORI process answers the first. This guide answers the second, because the jurisdiction question has its own edge cases — multi-institution collaborations, subawards, researchers who change jobs mid-case, and research that was never federally funded at all — that a straight procedural walkthrough doesn’t have room to cover.
The baseline split: institutions investigate, ORI oversees
Under the Public Health Service (PHS) research-misconduct framework at 42 CFR Part 93, the institution that receives PHS funding — not the federal government — is responsible for conducting the inquiry and investigation. Every covered institution must designate a Research Integrity Officer (RIO) to run that process. The Office of Research Integrity (ORI), part of HHS, does not typically show up to run the case itself: its role is to review the institution’s record, request a re-opened inquiry if the institutional process was inadequate, make the final federal finding, and propose administrative actions such as debarment. That baseline split is well established, but it only describes the ordinary case. What determines whether it applies at all — and who is actually on the hook when the ordinary case breaks down — is a separate, more specific question.
What actually triggers federal jurisdiction
Federal jurisdiction under 42 CFR Part 93 attaches to a specific nexus, not to an institution wholesale. The regulation applies to institutions that apply for or receive PHS support, and to research misconduct occurring in PHS-supported research, applications or proposals for PHS support, or research training and activities related to that support. A university that receives NIH funding does not automatically place every research project on its campus under ORI’s jurisdiction — only the subset connected to PHS support falls under the federal framework. Many institutions apply a single, uniform misconduct policy campus-wide for consistency and administrative simplicity, but it is worth distinguishing, when a jurisdiction question actually arises, between the institution’s own policy scope (which the institution can set as broadly as it wants) and the narrower federal trigger that determines whether ORI has any oversight role, whether federal administrative sanctions are even on the table, and whether the case has to be reported to ORI at all.
Practically, this means a misconduct allegation involving research with no PHS or other federal funding nexus is handled entirely under institutional policy. There’s no ORI review, no federal debarment risk, and no obligation to report the outcome to a federal office — though many institutions still investigate with the same rigor, since reputational and employment consequences don’t depend on federal involvement, and since a researcher’s other, federally funded work could still be affected if a pattern of misconduct is found.
When ORI investigates directly, instead of overseeing
ORI’s role is usually described as oversight rather than first-line investigation, but that’s a description of the typical case, not a jurisdictional ceiling. ORI retains the authority to respond directly to an allegation of research misconduct at any point — before, during, or after an institution’s own response — rather than waiting for a completed institutional finding. In practice, direct federal involvement is the exception: it becomes relevant where an institution is unable or unwilling to conduct an adequate inquiry or investigation, where the matter involves PHS-supported intramural research (research conducted by federal agency staff rather than by an external grantee institution, which has no separate covered institution to hand the case to in the first place), or where ORI determines the institutional process needs direct federal intervention to protect the integrity of the record. This is the provision that keeps the “institution investigates” default from being an absolute rule administrators can rely on without exception.
Multi-institution and subaward cases
Collaborative research routinely spans more than one institution — a prime awardee and one or more subrecipients, or co-investigators employed at different universities on the same PHS-supported project. When a misconduct allegation touches more than one institution, current PHS regulations set out coordination requirements rather than leaving each institution to work it out independently: institutions with a shared interest in the same allegation are expected to cooperate, and ORI’s own guidance and the 2024 revision of Part 93 build out more structured procedures for multi-respondent and multi-institution cases specifically, reflecting how common this scenario has become as collaborative, multi-site research has grown. As a practical matter, jurisdiction generally tracks employment and funding relationships rather than physical location of the alleged conduct alone: the institution that employed the respondent at the time of the alleged misconduct, and the institution(s) that received the PHS funding in question, are the ones with a direct institutional role, and a subrecipient institution does not get to treat a prime awardee’s oversight as a substitute for running its own inquiry into conduct by its own personnel.
This is also where data transfer agreements and other subaward documentation matter in practice: they typically establish which institution holds the original research records, which affects who can actually sequester and produce them once an inquiry opens.
Jurisdiction when a respondent changes institutions
A respondent who moves to a new employer while an allegation is pending or after a finding is made doesn’t escape jurisdiction by leaving. The institution where the alleged misconduct occurred retains responsibility for completing its inquiry or investigation regardless of the respondent’s current employment status, and ORI’s procedures require notifying a respondent’s current employer — if that employer is itself a covered PHS-funded institution — even when it is different from the institution where the case originated. This matters operationally for hiring institutions: due diligence on an incoming researcher’s misconduct history can surface an open or unresolved matter at a prior institution, and federal administrative actions such as debarment travel with the individual, not with the institution where the finding was made, since debarment restricts eligibility to receive PHS funds at any institution.
Overlapping and parallel jurisdiction
Institutional and ORI jurisdiction is not the only authority that can be in play on the same set of facts. Several tracks can run in parallel, each with its own scope and its own outcome, and one doesn’t substitute for another:
- Other federal funders. Research funded by the National Science Foundation follows a structurally similar but legally distinct process under 45 CFR Part 689, with NSF’s Office of Inspector General playing a more direct oversight role than ORI does for PHS cases, and final disposition running through the NSF Deputy Director rather than HHS. Where more than one federal agency has a funding interest in the same research, current PHS provisions direct HHS to cooperate with the other agency or agencies in designating a lead agency to coordinate the response, rather than running duplicate, uncoordinated inquiries.
- State professional licensing boards. A researcher who holds a medical, veterinary, or other professional license can face a separate licensing-board inquiry over the same underlying conduct, with its own standard of proof and its own sanctions (up to and including license suspension), independent of whatever the institution or ORI concludes.
- Journals and publishers. An institutional misconduct finding doesn’t automatically produce a journal retraction, and a retraction doesn’t require a prior institutional finding — that decision belongs to the journal editor, following guidance such as COPE’s retraction guidelines. See CASRAI’s guide on how a retraction actually happens for that separate, though often parallel, process.
- Non-US institutions and funders. International collaborators are not bound by 42 CFR Part 93 at all. Bodies such as the UK’s UKRIO and the European Network of Research Integrity Offices (ENRIO) play a comparable coordinating and guidance role in their own jurisdictions, but the employing institution — not the national body — remains the one that actually investigates, the same structural principle as the US model even though the specific regulatory trigger differs.
Why the distinction matters for research administrators
Getting the jurisdiction question right, before assuming a case simply follows “the ORI process,” affects several concrete decisions: whether a case has to be reported to a federal office at all, which institution is responsible for sequestering records when a project spans a subaward, whether a departing or incoming researcher’s history needs to be checked with a prior employer, and whether parallel processes (a licensing board, a journal, a second funding agency) need to be tracked alongside the institutional inquiry rather than treated as resolved once the institution closes its file. Institutional research-integrity offices that build jurisdiction-screening into their initial assessment step — before an inquiry formally opens — avoid the more common failure mode: proceeding through months of institutional process under an assumption about federal involvement (or lack of it) that turns out to be wrong.
Frequently asked questions
Does ORI ever investigate a case itself instead of the university?
Yes, though it is the exception rather than the default. ORI retains authority to respond directly to an allegation at any point, and direct federal involvement becomes relevant chiefly where an institution can’t or won’t conduct an adequate inquiry, or where the research is PHS-supported intramural research with no separate grantee institution to hand the case to.
Does a university’s research-misconduct policy only apply to federally funded research?
Not necessarily — institutions can and often do apply one uniform misconduct policy campus-wide regardless of funding source. What’s narrower is federal jurisdiction specifically: ORI oversight, reporting obligations, and federal administrative sanctions under 42 CFR Part 93 apply only to research misconduct connected to PHS support, not to every case the institution’s own policy happens to cover.
Who has jurisdiction when a misconduct allegation involves a subaward institution?
Generally, the institution that employed the respondent at the time of the alleged conduct and the institution(s) that received the relevant PHS funding both have a direct role, and current PHS provisions require institutions with a shared interest in the same allegation to cooperate rather than each running an independent, uncoordinated process.
What happens if the respondent has already left the institution?
The originating institution remains responsible for completing its inquiry or investigation regardless of the respondent’s current employment. ORI’s procedures require notifying the respondent’s current employer, if it is itself a covered institution, and federal sanctions such as debarment follow the individual rather than the institution where the finding was made.
Can a researcher face both an institutional finding and a state licensing board action for the same conduct?
Yes. Institutional, federal, and state licensing-board processes are legally distinct, each applying its own standard and producing its own outcome, and a resolution in one does not resolve the others.
