The Royal Society Te Apārangi, New Zealand’s national academy of science and the humanities, maintains the Code of Professional Standards and Ethics in Science, Technology, and the Humanities. It is the closest thing New Zealand has to a national research-integrity code, but its reach is fundamentally different from the statutory or funder-mandated frameworks covered elsewhere in this series (the US ORI misconduct-investigation process, Australia’s ARIC, the Netherlands’ LOWI, Germany’s OWiD/DFG system, Japan’s MEXT framework, and Canada’s Tri-Agency SRCR/PRCR process). The Code binds Royal Society Te Apārangi members, not New Zealand researchers as a class. That distinction — membership-based obligation versus government-mandated regulatory coverage — is the single most important thing to understand about how New Zealand handles research integrity, and it is the focus of this guide.
What the Code is and where its authority comes from
The Code of Professional Standards and Ethics in Science, Technology, and the Humanities was made under section 34 of the Royal Society of New Zealand Act 1997, adopted by resolution of the Society’s Council, and took effect on 1 January 2019, replacing earlier versions of the Society’s code. It is organised in three parts: Part 1 sets out preliminary provisions and definitions; Part 2 states the Society’s values and ethical principles, including a bicultural foundation that gives effect to the Treaty of Waitangi through principles such as tika, mana, whakapapa, manaakitanga, pūkenga, and kaitiakitanga alongside conventional research-ethics norms; Part 3 sets out the specific responsibilities and standards members must meet. Members are obliged to comply with Part 3 when undertaking research, scholarly, or professional activities, to a standard the Code describes as the level of care “a reasonable, ethical, professional researcher or scholar would normally take in the same circumstances” — on top of, not instead of, whatever regulatory and legal obligations already apply to that work.
It is worth being precise about what section 34 actually does. It empowers the Society’s Council to adopt a code of ethical conduct as part of the Society’s own statutory governance — it does not make the Code’s substantive provisions binding on New Zealand researchers generally, the way, for example, US federal misconduct regulation binds every institution that accepts Public Health Service funding. The statutory hook explains why the Society can adopt a code with disciplinary force over its own members; it does not extend that force to anyone else.
Who the Code actually covers
The Code applies to Royal Society Te Apārangi’s membership categories: Honorary Fellows, Fellows, Companions, Professional Members, Associate Members, Student Members, Honorary Members, and the Society’s Regional Constituent Organisations (Branches) and Constituent Organisations. It explicitly does not extend to Affiliate Organisations or “Friends” of the Society, two lighter-touch categories of association.
In practice, this means a New Zealand researcher who is not a Society member — which is the majority of the country’s research workforce, since Fellowship and the other membership categories are elected/subscribed statuses, not something every practising researcher automatically holds — is not personally bound by this Code at all. Their conduct is instead governed by whatever mix of employer policy, funder terms and conditions, professional-body codes, and general law applies to them. This is the practical meaning of “non-statutory” for this Code: not that it lacks any legal underpinning (it has one, via section 34), but that its binding force runs through a voluntary membership relationship rather than through legislation that reaches every researcher regardless of society affiliation.
The Society does make the Code freely available beyond its own membership, and explicitly encourages research institutions, funding agencies, and other stakeholders to adopt it or use it as a model. Where an institution or funder does that, the Code’s principles can end up governing far more people than the Society’s own membership roll — but only because that institution or funder has separately chosen to adopt it, typically by writing compliance with it into an employment policy, a funding contract, or a code of conduct of the institution’s own. The Code’s reach beyond Society members is voluntary and adoptive, not automatic.
Enforcement: what happens when a member breaches the Code
The Royal Society Te Apārangi maintains complaints procedures specifically for handling complaints about its Members’ conduct. Under those procedures, a member whose conduct is considered to be in breach of the Code is asked to account to the Society for their actions. Because this is a membership-disciplinary process rather than a statutory investigation, the available outcomes are ultimately about the individual’s standing with the Society (up to and including their membership or Fellowship status), not about their employment, their research funding, or any criminal or civil liability — those consequences, if they arise, come from separate processes run by the person’s employer, funder, or the courts. Readers who need the procedural detail of a live complaint — timelines, who sits on any review panel, appeal rights — should consult the Society’s own Complaints Procedures document directly, since that level of process detail is not restated in the publicly summarised Code materials and is best sourced from the primary document rather than paraphrased here.
Gaps relative to statutory and funder-mandated models
Set against the other national models in this series, the practical gaps of a membership-based code are consistent and worth stating plainly:
- No jurisdiction over non-members. A researcher who is not a Royal Society Te Apārangi member cannot be investigated or sanctioned under this Code, however serious the alleged conduct, because they were never bound by it in the first place.
- No government investigatory powers. The Society cannot compel an institution to produce records, cannot subpoena witnesses, and has no statutory audit or enforcement authority over universities, Crown Research Institutes, or other research employers — unlike, for instance, the oversight role Australia’s ARIC plays as a joint NHMRC/ARC body reviewing whether an institution’s own investigation of a possible breach of the national Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research was properly conducted, which carries real weight because compliance with that national Code is a condition attached to NHMRC and ARC funding across the whole funded sector.
- Sanctions are membership consequences, not research-integrity findings with external force. A finding under the Code affects the member’s relationship with the Society. It does not, by itself, create a formal misconduct finding that a university, a funder, or a journal is obliged to act on — those bodies each run their own separate processes and may or may not treat a Society outcome as relevant evidence.
- National coverage depends on voluntary uptake, not law. Because the Code only reaches beyond the Society’s own members when an institution or funder separately chooses to adopt it, New Zealand’s de facto research-integrity coverage is a patchwork of individual institutional and funder policies that may or may not converge on the Society’s language, rather than a single instrument that applies uniformly the way, for example, the Netherlands’ sector-wide Code of Conduct for Research Integrity (with LOWI providing a common second-opinion mechanism across all Dutch universities and research institutes) or the US Public Health Service misconduct regulation (42 CFR Part 93, binding on every PHS-funded institution) does.
None of this means New Zealand research goes unsupervised. Universities, Crown Research Institutes, and district health boards all maintain their own conduct and research-integrity policies, and major funders — the Health Research Council, and MBIE-administered funds including, currently, the Marsden Fund administered by the Royal Society itself — attach their own terms and conditions to grants, which is a separate lever from the Code discussed here. The point is structural: New Zealand does not have a single government-mandated body with investigatory authority over the whole funded-research population, comparable to the US Office of Research Integrity or the Netherlands’ LOWI. Oversight is distributed across institutional employment policy, individual funder conditions, and — for the subset of researchers who are Society members — this Code.
How this compares to Australia’s ARIC and other models in this series
| Model | Legal basis | Who is bound | Typical enforcement lever |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Zealand — Royal Society Te Apārangi Code | Society governance power under s.34, Royal Society of New Zealand Act 1997 | Society members (Fellows, Companions, other membership categories) only, unless separately adopted by an institution/funder | Membership status (accounting for conduct, possible loss of standing) |
| Australia — ARIC | Joint NHMRC/ARC administrative body reviewing compliance with the national Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research | Institutions receiving NHMRC/ARC funding (i.e., most of the funded research sector) | Funding-eligibility condition; review of institutional investigation process |
| US — ORI / 42 CFR Part 93 | Federal regulation | Institutions receiving Public Health Service funding | Federal funding eligibility; formal misconduct findings and administrative actions |
| Netherlands — LOWI | Sector-wide Netherlands Code of Conduct for Research Integrity | All Dutch universities and affiliated research institutes (sector agreement) | Sector-wide second-opinion review of institutional findings |
| Germany — OWiD/DFG | DFG funding conditions plus institutional statutes required for DFG eligibility | Institutions and researchers applying for DFG funding | Funding-eligibility condition; institutional ombuds process, DFG-level review |
The comparison shows New Zealand is not alone in using a non-purely-statutory mechanism — Germany’s DFG-anchored system, for example, also runs on a funding-eligibility condition rather than direct legislation reaching every researcher. What sets the Royal Society Te Apārangi’s Code apart within this set is that its binding population is Society membership specifically, rather than a funding relationship that touches the whole national research sector the way NHMRC/ARC funding conditions or DFG eligibility do. A researcher can be entirely outside the Code’s reach while still holding NHMRC, ARC, or DFG funding equivalents in their own country and being fully covered by those systems.
What this means for research administrators advising on New Zealand cases
If you are advising on a New Zealand research-integrity matter, the first practical question is not “what does the Royal Society’s Code say” but “is this person a Royal Society Te Apārangi member, and if not, what actually governs them.” For most researchers, the operative documents will be their employer’s own conduct and research-integrity policy, the terms and conditions attached to their specific funding (HRC, MBIE, or Marsden Fund grants administered by the Royal Society), and any professional-body code relevant to their discipline. The Royal Society’s Code becomes directly relevant only where the individual holds one of the Society’s membership categories, or where an institution or funder has separately and explicitly adopted the Code as its own governing standard — which the Society’s own materials say it actively encourages, but which is never automatic.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Royal Society Te Apārangi’s Code of Professional Standards and Ethics legally binding on all New Zealand researchers?
No. It legally binds Royal Society Te Apārangi members under the Society’s own governance powers (section 34, Royal Society of New Zealand Act 1997). It applies to non-members only where an institution or funder has separately chosen to adopt it as its own policy.
Who counts as a “member” for the Code’s purposes?
Honorary Fellows, Fellows, Companions, Professional Members, Associate Members, Student Members, Honorary Members, and the Society’s Regional Constituent Organisations (Branches) and Constituent Organisations. Affiliate Organisations and “Friends” of the Society are explicitly excluded.
What happens if a member is found to have breached the Code?
The member is asked to account to the Society for their conduct through the Society’s own complaints procedures. The consequence runs through the member’s standing with the Society, not through a statutory misconduct finding with automatic force over their employer or funder.
Does New Zealand have a national statutory research-integrity office comparable to the US ORI or the Netherlands’ LOWI?
Based on the Royal Society Te Apārangi’s own published materials, there is no single government-mandated body with investigatory authority across the whole funded-research sector; the Society explicitly positions its Code as available for voluntary adoption by institutions and funders rather than as a universal regulatory instrument. Oversight in New Zealand is distributed across institutional policy and individual funder terms.
How does this compare to Australia’s ARIC?
ARIC’s authority runs through NHMRC/ARC funding conditions that reach essentially the whole publicly funded research sector in Australia, reviewing whether institutions properly investigated potential breaches of the national Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research. The Royal Society Te Apārangi’s Code runs through a membership relationship with the Society itself, which is a narrower and differently structured population than “everyone who holds NHMRC/ARC funding.”
Sources: Royal Society Te Apārangi, “Code of Professional Standards and Ethics in Science, Technology, and the Humanities” and related “Our rules and codes” and complaints-procedures pages, royalsociety.org.nz (fetched 2026-07-24); Royal Society of New Zealand Act 1997, section 34.
