Ireland’s national approach to research integrity is coordinated, not centralized. Rather than a single statutory regulator investigating individual misconduct cases (the model used by, for example, the US Office of Research Integrity), Ireland relies on a sector-wide coordinating body, the National Research Integrity Forum (NRIF), and a shared national policy document that every signatory research-performing organisation (RPO) commits to implementing through its own procedures. This guide covers what the NRIF is, how it is structured, and what changed in the December 2024 revision of the National Policy Statement on Ensuring Research Integrity in Ireland.
What Is the National Research Integrity Forum (NRIF)?
The National Research Integrity Forum was established in June 2015 and is jointly coordinated by the Irish Universities Association (IUA) and the Technological Higher Education Association (THEA), the representative bodies for Ireland’s universities and technological higher education institutions respectively. NRIF was created to bring research-performing organisations, national research funders, and other stakeholders together in one forum so that research integrity policy, training, and practice develop consistently across the Irish higher education and public research system, rather than diverging institution by institution.
NRIF does not itself investigate individual allegations of research misconduct. Investigation and sanction remain the responsibility of each RPO under its own procedures, consistent with the decentralized model described below — NRIF’s role is coordination, guidance, and maintaining the shared national policy framework that those institutional procedures are built on.
NRIF’s Structure: Steering Group and Community of Practice
NRIF was restructured in 2022 into two linked components:
- Steering Group — a smaller body of senior stakeholders that discusses strategic direction on research conduct and integrity policy. As of the most recent published information, it is chaired by Professor Anita Maguire of University College Cork. Steering Group representation spans the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (DFHERIS), the Higher Education Authority (HEA), THEA and IUA themselves, Enterprise Ireland, the Health Research Board, and the Royal Irish Academy, alongside Ireland’s national research funders — a landscape that consolidated in August 2024 when the Irish Research Council and Science Foundation Ireland merged into Research Ireland (Taighde Éireann).
- Community of Practice (CoP) — a broader, more operational membership group for research-performing organisations, funders, and other stakeholders to share training materials, policy templates, and operational practice. Chair and deputy chair roles on the CoP rotate annually among member organisations.
NRIF also facilitates an annual meeting of Research Integrity Officers (RIOs) from across the sector — the practitioners who, at institutional level, carry out much of what the national policy describes in the sections below. For background on that role generally, see Research Integrity Officer (RIO).
The National Policy Statement on Ensuring Research Integrity in Ireland
NRIF’s central output is the National Policy Statement on Ensuring Research Integrity in Ireland, first published in 2014. A revised edition was published in December 2024, updating both the framing and the operational detail to reflect developments in the international research integrity landscape over the intervening decade — including the growth of national research integrity offices elsewhere in Europe, evolving expectations around open research practices, and lessons from how misconduct cases have actually been handled across the sector since the original statement.
The revised Policy Statement positions itself explicitly within the wider European framework: it draws on the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity (the ALLEA code) and is informed by comparable national frameworks, notably the UK’s Concordat to Support Research Integrity. Institutions and funders that formally adopt the Policy Statement commit to the same four broad values that anchor most European integrity codes — honesty, reliability, respect, and accountability in how research is conducted, reported, and reviewed.
How the Policy Statement Defines Research Misconduct
Like the ALLEA code it draws on, Ireland’s Policy Statement does not stop at a narrow definition of misconduct. It distinguishes fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism (FFP) — inventing data or results, manipulating data or processes so the record no longer accurately reflects the research, and presenting others’ ideas, data, or words as one’s own without attribution — as the core, most serious category of misconduct, but frames it alongside a wider set of “detrimental” or “questionable” research practices that Irish RPOs are also expected to address through policy and training, including:
- Poor or inappropriate research practices, such as flawed research design or inadequate methodology;
- Failure to appropriately manage or preserve primary data and materials underlying published results;
- Publication-related misconduct, such as denying deserved authorship or attributing authorship inappropriately (see fabrication and the site’s broader FFP and RCR fundamentals guide for how these categories are typically defined across frameworks);
- Failures of supervision or mentoring that create conditions for misconduct;
- Misuse of research funds or resources.
This layered approach — FFP as the clear-cut core, surrounded by a broader band of practices institutions are still expected to prevent and address — mirrors the structure used in the ALLEA European Code of Conduct and in most other European national frameworks, rather than defining misconduct narrowly the way some funder-specific US policies do.
Investigation Procedures Under the Policy Statement
Because Ireland’s model is decentralized, the Policy Statement does not run investigations itself — it sets out the principles and minimum structure that each RPO’s own procedures must satisfy. In broad terms, that structure follows two stages:
- Preliminary review — a written complaint or concern is examined, typically by or through the institution’s Research Integrity Officer, to assess whether it warrants a formal investigation.
- Formal investigation — where a preliminary review finds a case for further examination, an investigation committee or panel is convened to determine whether the allegation is substantiated and, if so, what follows.
The Policy Statement requires that institutional procedures built on this structure be independent, impartial, uniform in how they are applied, fair to the respondent, transparent, timely, and appropriately confidential toward both the person raising a concern and the person accused. Responsibility for reaching findings and imposing any sanction sits with the RPO, not with NRIF or any national regulator — a structural difference from countries that operate a national investigative or oversight body with case-level authority. See how a research misconduct investigation actually works for the mechanics that a typical institutional panel process of this kind involves.
How Ireland’s Framework Compares Internationally
Ireland’s coordinate-but-don’t-centralize model sits closer to the UK’s Concordat to Support Research Integrity — which likewise leaves investigation to individual institutions under shared national principles — than to countries with a national investigative body. It’s a useful comparison point alongside other national frameworks covered on CASRAI, including Germany’s OWiD/DFG Code of Conduct system and South Africa’s ASSAf-led research integrity framework, and against cross-institutional bodies like COPE that operate at the journal level rather than the national-policy level. For readers comparing funder-level coordination more broadly, see the Global Research Council guide.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the NRIF investigate individual research misconduct cases in Ireland?
No. NRIF coordinates national policy, guidance, and shared practice through its Steering Group and Community of Practice; investigation and sanction of individual allegations remain the responsibility of the research-performing organisation involved, following procedures built on the National Policy Statement.
What does FFP mean in the Irish Policy Statement?
FFP stands for fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism — the core category of serious research misconduct under Ireland’s framework, consistent with how FFP is defined across most European and international research integrity codes.
Who coordinates the National Research Integrity Forum?
The Irish Universities Association (IUA) and the Technological Higher Education Association (THEA) jointly coordinate NRIF, which was established in June 2015.
When was the National Policy Statement on Research Integrity last revised?
A revised edition was published in December 2024, updating the original 2014 statement and aligning it more closely with the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity and comparable national frameworks such as the UK Concordat.
Is Ireland’s research integrity system centralized like the US Office of Research Integrity?
No. Ireland uses a decentralized model: NRIF sets shared national policy and coordinates practice, but each research-performing organisation runs its own investigation and sanctioning procedures, similar in structure to the UK’s Concordat-based approach rather than a national case-investigating agency.
