Unlike the single centralized body other countries have — the US Office of Research Integrity (ORI) or the Netherlands’ LOWI — South Africa has no single national office that investigates research misconduct. Research-integrity policy instead sits across five separate organisations, each with a different statutory basis and a different lever: a higher-education department, a national research funder, a higher-education quality council, a national science academy, and a voluntary association of university leaders. This guide sets out what each body actually does, the one joint statement and one code of conduct that formally tie them together, and — as honestly as the public record supports — how a misconduct allegation would actually move between them in practice.
The bodies involved, and what each one actually controls
Five organisations signed South Africa’s foundational statement on research ethics in July 2019: the Department of Higher Education and Training, the National Research Foundation, the Council on Higher Education, the Academy of Science of South Africa, and Universities South Africa. A sixth department is sometimes named alongside them in policy discussion — the Department of Science and Innovation — and while it was not one of the five signatories, its role is close enough to the others’ to be worth covering here too.
Department of Higher Education and Training (DHET)
DHET is the national government department responsible for South Africa’s post-school education and training system, including public universities. Its most direct lever on research integrity is administrative rather than investigative: DHET publishes and maintains the list of accredited, subsidy-earning journals and conference proceedings that determines how much government subsidy a university earns for its research output. Because that subsidy formula rewards publication volume, DHET’s accreditation list is also the mechanism most directly implicated in South Africa’s publish-or-perish pressures — which is why the 2019 joint statement below treats journal accreditation as a research-integrity issue, not a purely administrative one.
Department of Science and Innovation (DSI, formerly DST)
The Department of Science and Technology was renamed the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) in 2019. DSI sets national science, technology and innovation policy and is the National Research Foundation’s parent department — NRF operates as a public entity under DSI’s oversight rather than as an independent regulator. DSI was not a signatory to the 2019 joint statement covered below; its influence on research integrity runs upstream, through the policy and funding framework it sets for NRF, rather than through any direct statement, code, or investigative function of its own that this guide could verify.
National Research Foundation (NRF)
NRF is South Africa’s statutory national research-funding agency. As a funder, NRF can attach research-integrity conditions to its own grants and can investigate and sanction misconduct connected to NRF-funded work — the same kind of funder-level authority CASRAI documents in Canada’s Tri-Agency SRCR/PRCR process. That authority is scoped to NRF’s own grants; it does not extend to a general mandate to investigate misconduct across South African research regardless of funding source. (CASRAI covers NRF’s funding programmes separately in its NRF South Africa funding overview, where that guide exists.)
Council on Higher Education (CHE)
CHE is the statutory quality council for South African higher education, responsible for programme accreditation and institutional quality assurance through its Higher Education Quality Committee. CHE co-administers the DHET-accredited journal list alongside ASSAf’s peer-review process (below). Its leverage over research integrity runs through accreditation and institutional audit, not through adjudicating individual misconduct complaints.
Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf)
ASSAf is South Africa’s official national science academy, and functions as the closest thing the country has to a lead coordinating body on research-integrity policy — though it is an advisory academy, not a statutory regulator with power to sanction individual researchers. ASSAf runs three concrete programmes relevant here: the National Scholarly Editors’ Forum (NSEF), which convenes editors of South African-based journals; a Quality Assurance peer-review system that assesses DHET-accredited journals on a rotating basis; and, since 2019, published monitoring of questionable publishing practices in South Africa, including a widely cited report flagging excessive publication intensity and so-called publication cartels. ASSAf also led the multi-year drafting of the Code of Conduct for Research described below.
Universities South Africa (USAf)
USAf is the representative association of the vice-chancellors of South Africa’s public universities (the successor body to SAUVCA and HESA). It functions as a coordinating and advocacy body for its member institutions rather than a regulator — USAf’s role in research integrity is to help member universities align their own internal policies with sector-wide commitments like the 2019 statement, not to investigate individual cases itself.
The 2019 Statement on Ethical Research and Scholarly Publishing Practices
On 31 July 2019 in Pretoria, ASSAf, CHE, DHET, NRF and USAf signed the joint Statement on Ethical Research and Scholarly Publishing Practices, following an April 2018 workshop on the ethics of scholarly publishing. Each signatory subsequently published its own account, in the South African Journal of Science, of how it would put the Statement into practice within its own remit — DHET through accreditation policy, NRF through funding conditions, CHE through quality assurance, ASSAf through NSEF and its monitoring work, and USAf through its member universities.
What the Statement is not is a binding code with defined sanctions or a shared investigative process. It reads as a set of shared principles and individual institutional commitments, not an operational rulebook — CASRAI could not verify a single national complaints channel, appeal body, or published sanctions schedule attached to it.
ASSAf’s Code of Conduct for Research — and what it actually covers
A second, later, and more concrete initiative is ASSAf’s Code of Conduct for Research, developed over roughly three years and submitted to South Africa’s Information Regulator on 19 April 2023. It’s worth being precise about scope here, because the name invites a natural but incorrect assumption: this Code of Conduct is not a general research-misconduct or fabrication/falsification/plagiarism code comparable to Germany’s DFG/OWiD rules or Japan’s MEXT guidelines. It is a sector-specific code of conduct under the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), intended to give the South African research community legal certainty and a demonstrable compliance mechanism for handling personal information — consent, de-identification, data sharing — in research. A 2024 peer-reviewed analysis in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications found that despite genuine progress through the drafting process, unresolved issues remained; as of the most recent published account CASRAI could verify, the Code was still with the Information Regulator for review rather than formally approved.
How a misconduct allegation actually moves through this system
This is where honesty matters more than tidiness. CASRAI could not locate a published flowchart, national complaints channel, or appeal body describing how a misconduct allegation — a plagiarism or data-fabrication complaint against a named researcher, say — moves between these five organisations in practice. That is a genuine finding, not an oversight in this guide’s research: unlike the Netherlands’ LOWI (a formal second-opinion appeal body) or the US ORI (a federal investigative office with defined case procedures), South Africa’s system does not appear to centralize investigation or adjudication at all.
What the public record does support is a picture closer to the institution-led model CASRAI documents for South Korea and Japan: individual universities carry primary responsibility for investigating misconduct by their own researchers, under their own internal research-ethics or research-integrity policies (a number of public universities publish their own such policies). National-level bodies then act on the outcome indirectly rather than investigate directly: NRF through funding conditions on its own grants, CHE and DHET through the accreditation/subsidy system that can be affected by an institution’s or journal’s standing, and ASSAf through NSEF and its own monitoring and advisory role. CASRAI could not verify a national appeal-of-last-resort body a researcher or complainant could escalate to if dissatisfied with an institution’s own process — precisely the gap LOWI and ORI fill in their respective systems. Anyone navigating an actual case in South Africa should treat their own institution’s research-ethics/misconduct policy as the operative document, not any of the national-level statements or codes covered above.
A related but separate track: health research ethics
One further distinction worth making explicit: South Africa’s National Health Research Ethics Council (NHREC), established under the National Health Act, registers and oversees institutional Research Ethics Committees (RECs) for health-related human-subjects research specifically. NHREC’s remit is prospective ethics review and REC accreditation — comparable in function to the human subjects research oversight structures CASRAI covers elsewhere — not the research-integrity/misconduct-oversight function this guide focuses on. The two tracks run in parallel and involve different bodies; don’t conflate NHREC with the ASSAf/DHET/NRF/CHE/USAf framework described above.
How this fits CASRAI’s national research-integrity series
South Africa’s diffuse, institution-led structure is not unique. It sits alongside CASRAI’s coverage of South Korea’s NRF/KUCRE system and Japan’s MEXT framework as institution-led models, in contrast to the more centralized US ORI, the Netherlands’ LOWI, Germany’s DFG/OWiD, France’s OFIS, Australia’s ARIC, Canada’s Tri-Agency SRCR/PRCR process, New Zealand’s Royal Society Code, and the UK’s UKRIO. What sets South Africa apart even within the institution-led group is that it lacks a single ministry-issued guideline document (like Japan’s MEXT guidelines or Korea’s MOE guideline) that at least standardizes definitions and minimum procedures across institutions — South Africa’s framework is a shared statement plus a data-protection code, not a shared misconduct-procedure standard.
Frequently asked questions
Is there a South African equivalent to the US Office of Research Integrity?
No. No single South African body has ORI’s combination of national jurisdiction and investigative authority over individual misconduct allegations. Oversight is split across DHET, NRF, CHE, ASSAf and USAf, each with a partial lever (accreditation, funding conditions, quality assurance, convening/monitoring, or member coordination), and primary investigative responsibility sits with individual universities.
What does ASSAf’s Code of Conduct for Research actually regulate?
It is a code of conduct under South Africa’s Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA), covering how researchers handle personal information — consent, de-identification, data sharing. It is not a fabrication/falsification/plagiarism misconduct code.
Who investigates a research misconduct allegation in South Africa?
In practice, the researcher’s own institution, under that institution’s internal research-ethics or integrity policy. CASRAI could not verify a national body that investigates cases directly or hears appeals from an institution’s decision.
Did the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI) sign the 2019 joint statement?
No. The five signatories were ASSAf, CHE, DHET, NRF and USAf. DSI’s connection to the framework is indirect, through its oversight of NRF as its parent department.
Is NHREC part of this research-integrity framework?
No. NHREC oversees ethics review of health-related human-subjects research and REC registration — a separate track from the general research-integrity/misconduct oversight this guide covers.
