Poland’s research-integrity structure is unusual among the countries covered in this series: there is no single national office charged with investigating research misconduct. Instead, oversight is split between an advisory body at the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN), a national code of conduct, funder-specific integrity committees, and a decentralized network of independent bioethics committees. Understanding how these pieces fit together — and where they don’t — matters for anyone collaborating with Polish institutions, evaluating a Polish co-author’s institutional obligations, or benchmarking national research-integrity systems.
The Committee on Ethics in Science (PAN)
The Committee on Ethics in Science (Komisja do spraw Etyki w Nauce), established in 2011 under the Polish Academy of Sciences, is the closest thing Poland has to a national research-integrity body. Its members are elected by the PAN General Assembly from nominations drawn across the Polish scientific community.
The Committee’s role is advisory and referral-based, not investigative. It:
- Issues opinions on alleged breaches of ethical standards in science by employees of universities, PAN scientific units, and research institutes;
- Can initiate cases with the relevant disciplinary committees on its own initiative, recommending that explanatory proceedings be conducted;
- Mediates in disputes concerning research ethics; and
- Promotes standards of ethics and integrity in research more broadly, including through the Code of Ethics discussed below.
This is a structurally different model from a body like the U.S. Office of Research Integrity, which oversees a formal inquiry-and-investigation process for PHS-funded research, or Sweden’s Npof, a statutory national board with authority to make binding misconduct determinations (see CASRAI’s guide to Npof: Sweden’s National Board for Assessment of Research Misconduct). The PAN Committee does not adjudicate cases itself; it refers them onward and weighs in when local institutions are uncertain how to classify an allegation.
The Code of Ethics for Research Workers / Code of Ethics for Researchers
The Committee on Ethics in Science drafts and maintains Poland’s national research-ethics code, adopted by the PAN General Assembly. Its history spans several editions and a name change:
- 2012 — first edition, published as the Code of Ethics for Research Workers.
- 2016 — second edition, a substantive revision of the 2012 text.
- A further, third edition followed later in the decade, continuing under the same title.
- 5 December 2024 — the PAN General Assembly (153rd session) adopted a fourth edition, retitled the Code of Ethics for Researchers, reflecting updated norms and terminology.
The Code sets out principles covering the handling of research data, research procedures, publishing practices, peer review conduct, and the evaluation of scholarly work. Like most national codes of this kind — comparable in function, though not in legal status, to the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity maintained by ALLEA — it is a normative reference point rather than a directly enforceable regulation. It binds researchers through institutional statutes, employment terms, and disciplinary codes that individual universities and institutes adopt and reference, rather than through a standalone statute of its own.
Why Poland has no central misconduct-investigation body
Most countries covered elsewhere in this series have converged on some form of central coordination for actual misconduct investigation — a statutory board (Sweden’s Npof), a funder-housed office with defined process (the U.S. ORI), or a national research-ethics center attached to a funding agency (South Korea’s NRF Research Ethics Center; see CASRAI’s guide to South Korea’s Research-Integrity Oversight). Poland has not built an equivalent, and that absence is a real, structural feature of the system rather than a gap this page is filling in — it should be represented as such, not implied away.
Instead, responsibility for research integrity in Poland is distributed across at least four separate tracks:
- Institutional disciplinary process. Universities and research institutes bear primary responsibility for investigating misconduct by their own staff. A suspected case is reported to the rector or institute director; a disciplinary officer investigates to determine whether grounds exist for formal proceedings; the accused researcher is notified and given an opportunity to respond; and a confidential report informs the institution’s disciplinary decision. This is where the substantive fact-finding actually happens in the large majority of cases.
- The PAN Committee on Ethics in Science, which intervenes chiefly when a local institution is uncertain how to classify conduct, or when a case is referred to it, rather than running its own investigations from the outset (see above).
- Funder-specific integrity mechanisms. The National Science Centre (Narodowe Centrum Nauki, NCN) — Poland’s principal basic-research funding agency, covered separately in CASRAI’s guide to NCN funding programs — established its own Rules of Procedure for the Investigation of Alleged Research Misconduct in September 2016, together with an NCN Committee on Research Integrity that reviews and resolves allegations arising in NCN-funded projects specifically. This body has no authority over research it does not fund.
- Independent bioethics committees. Human-subjects research ethics review in Poland runs through a network of independent Bioethical Committees (Komisje Bioetyczne) — commonly cited in the literature at 54 committees, most attached to medical universities, regional medical chambers, or research institutes — that approve clinical and biomedical research protocols on a case-by-case, regional basis. Poland has no central coordinating office for this network, a structural gap noted repeatedly in comparative EU reporting (see EUREC’s Poland country page). The Ministry of Health maintains a Bioethics Appeals Committee that hears appeals from individual committee decisions, but this is an appellate body for protocol-review decisions, not a national misconduct-investigation authority, and it should not be conflated with one.
The practical effect is that “who handles a Polish research-integrity case” depends heavily on what kind of case it is and who funded the work — there is no single answer, and no single office to contact, the way there is with ORI in the United States or Npof in Sweden.
What this means for international collaborators and comparative benchmarking
For a funder, publisher, or co-author trying to establish who is responsible for handling a concern about a Polish researcher’s conduct, the practical starting point is the researcher’s home institution — its rector’s office or research-integrity/disciplinary contact — not a national hotline or office. If the work was NCN-funded, the NCN’s own integrity procedure may also apply in parallel. If the concern involves human-subjects research ethics approval rather than misconduct in the FFP sense (fabrication, falsification, plagiarism — see CASRAI’s research misconduct entry), the relevant bioethics committee that approved the protocol is the right point of contact, not the PAN Committee on Ethics in Science.
This diffuseness is not unique to Poland — federal systems and some other EU member states similarly lack a single national investigative body — but it is a meaningful point of contrast with the centralized or semi-centralized models profiled elsewhere in this series, including Sweden, South Korea, and the advisory-but-still-singular New Zealand Royal Society model. Readers building a comparative picture of national research-integrity infrastructure should treat “does this country have a central body” as a genuine variable, not an assumption — Poland is a clear negative case.
Frequently asked questions
Does Poland have an equivalent to the U.S. Office of Research Integrity?
Not in the sense of a single office with authority to investigate and formally adjudicate misconduct cases nationwide. The nearest equivalent, the PAN Committee on Ethics in Science, is advisory: it issues opinions, can refer cases to disciplinary committees, and mediates, but it does not itself conduct or conclude misconduct investigations the way ORI does for PHS-funded research in the U.S.
Is the Code of Ethics for Researchers legally binding?
Not as a standalone statute. It functions as a normative national reference that individual institutions typically incorporate into their own statutes, employment terms, or disciplinary codes, which is where the actual binding obligation on a given researcher arises.
Who actually investigates a misconduct allegation at a Polish university?
In the ordinary case, the institution itself: a report goes to the rector or director, a disciplinary officer investigates, and the institution’s own disciplinary process determines the outcome. The PAN Committee on Ethics in Science becomes involved mainly on referral, particularly where an institution is unsure how to classify the alleged conduct.
What is the difference between a bioethics committee and the Committee on Ethics in Science?
Bioethics committees approve human-subjects research protocols in advance — they are the Polish equivalent of an independent ethics committee or IRB function, reviewed and operated regionally, with no central coordinating office. The Committee on Ethics in Science is a separate, PAN-wide body concerned with misconduct allegations and the national ethics code, not prospective protocol approval.
Does NCN funding change who handles a misconduct case?
Yes, in part. For projects it funds, Poland’s National Science Centre applies its own Rules of Procedure for the Investigation of Alleged Research Misconduct via an NCN Committee on Research Integrity, established in 2016 — a parallel track alongside, not a replacement for, the institution’s own disciplinary process.
