On 27-28 January 2025, Italy’s National Research Council (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, CNR) convened the country’s 1st National Congress on Research Integrity in Rome. The event closed with delegates adopting, by acclamation, the Declaration of Rome on Research Integrity — the first document of its kind produced by a national congress on the subject in Italy, and a marker of where Italian research-integrity governance stands, and where it still has structural gaps, relative to peer European systems.
This is part of CASRAI’s ongoing series tracking how individual countries structure national research-integrity oversight — see the companion pages on Denmark’s Danish Board on Research Misconduct, Sweden’s Npof, Norway’s Granskingsutvalget, Finland’s TENK, Poland’s Committee on Ethics in Science, Ireland’s National Research Integrity Forum, Belgium’s VCWI, and Switzerland’s Competence Centre for Research Integrity.
Who oversees research integrity in Italy today: the CNR’s Research Ethics and Integrity Committee
Italy has no single, statutorily independent national research-integrity authority comparable to Denmark’s UVVU or Norway’s Granskingsutvalget. In practice, the closest thing to a national reference body is the Commissione per l’Etica e l’Integrità nella Ricerca (Research Ethics and Integrity Committee) hosted by CNR — Italy’s largest public research organization — and chaired by the CNR President, currently Andrea Lenzi, with Cinzia Caporale (former chair of UNESCO’s International Bioethics Committee) coordinating the Committee’s day-to-day work.
The Committee’s current term runs 2023-2027. Its members — roughly 30, drawn from academia, research institutions, and ethics/bioethics practice, serving on a voluntary, unpaid basis for the term — sit across two standing sub-committees:
- Ethical Clearance Sub-committee — issues formal ethical opinions and clearances on CNR research projects, functioning similarly to an institutional research ethics board.
- Research Integrity Sub-committee — carries out the preliminary examination of documents relating to allegations of research misconduct involving CNR staff, CNR-funded research, or publications by CNR-affiliated authors, before any matter proceeds toward a decision by CNR’s President (who retains sole authority to impose sanctions — the Committee itself is advisory, not adjudicative).
Because the Committee’s formal jurisdiction is CNR-specific, its influence over the wider Italian research system — universities, other public research bodies, private research institutions — runs through moral authority, published guidance, and convening power (like the Congress below) rather than binding national rule-making. That distinction is the throughline of the Declaration of Rome itself.
The 1st National Congress on Research Integrity, Rome, 27-28 January 2025
The Congress, organized by CNR and led on the programme side by Cinzia Caporale, brought together Italian and international research-integrity practitioners — including participants from Norwegian, U.S., and other national research-integrity bodies — for two days of structured discussion on the state of research integrity in Italy. Recurring themes reported from the sessions included:
- Honorary and disputed authorship, and pressure toward what has been informally called the “ANVUR effect” in Italian research-policy discussion — publication-volume incentives tied to national research-assessment exercises that can crowd out originality and careful authorship attribution.
- AI-enabled risks to data and image integrity — generative tools making fabrication and manipulation of research outputs easier to produce and harder to detect.
- Whistleblower protection for researchers reporting suspected misconduct.
- Open science practices as a structural aid to transparency and, by extension, integrity.
At the close of the Congress, delegates adopted the Declaration of Rome on Research Integrity by acclamation. The Declaration builds on the definition of research integrity CNR itself formulated in 2015 — “the set of ethical principles and values, deontological duties and professional standards on which responsible and correct conduct is based for those who conduct, finance or evaluate scientific research, as well as for the institutions that promote and carry it out” — and commits signatories to a shared set of principles across the issues raised during the Congress. The full text is published on CNR’s own ethics site.
The gap the Declaration names explicitly: no centralized national code or authority
What makes the Declaration of Rome notable for an international audience is less its content than what it concedes: Italy still lacks a centralized national code of conduct or a single national oversight authority for research integrity, of the kind long established in Scandinavian systems. Discussion at the Congress specifically contrasted Italy’s current CNR-centered, institution-by-institution approach with the structured national training and oversight frameworks already operating in Norway, France, Germany, and the UK.
A concrete proposal to close that gap emerged from the Congress: the establishment of a National Observatory of Research Integrity, intended to provide standardized oversight, guidance, and monitoring across Italian universities and research bodies rather than leaving each institution — and CNR’s own Committee, for matters outside its direct jurisdiction — to handle integrity questions independently. As of this writing the Observatory remains a proposal under discussion rather than an established body; there is no confirmed statutory timeline for its creation.
A 2nd National Congress on Integrity in Research is scheduled for 22-24 June 2026, which will be a natural point to check whether the Observatory proposal, or an equivalent centralizing mechanism, has moved from discussion toward implementation.
Why this matters for research administrators working with Italian partners
For institutions collaborating with Italian universities or CNR-affiliated researchers, or for research offices assessing partner-country integrity frameworks as part of due diligence on joint funding applications, the practical takeaway is: expect institution-level research-integrity processes (each university typically maintains its own ethics/integrity committee) rather than a single national point of contact, with CNR’s Committee as the closest thing to a national reference point for definitions, guidance, and (for CNR-affiliated work specifically) case handling. That is a materially different landscape from partners in Denmark, Norway, or Sweden, where a single statutory national board has jurisdiction, and closer in structure to countries like South Korea or South Africa, where oversight is distributed across several coordinating bodies rather than centralized in one.
See CASRAI’s dictionary entry on research misconduct for the underlying definitions this and other national frameworks build on, and MUR and PRIN: Italy’s National Research Funding System Explained for the wider Italian research-governance context this Committee sits within.
Frequently asked questions
Is the Declaration of Rome legally binding?
No. It is a declaration of shared principles adopted by acclamation at the close of a national congress, not legislation or a binding regulatory instrument. It signals direction and consensus among participating institutions rather than creating enforceable national rules.
Does Italy have a national research-integrity ombudsperson or authority?
Not a single statutory national authority in the way Denmark, Norway, or Sweden do. CNR’s Research Ethics and Integrity Committee is the closest national reference point, but its formal jurisdiction covers CNR staff, CNR-funded research, and CNR-affiliated publications — it can examine matters from other institutions only on request, not by default authority. Individual Italian universities and research bodies maintain their own separate integrity processes.
What would the proposed National Observatory of Research Integrity do?
Based on discussion at the January 2025 Congress, it is proposed as a mechanism to standardize research-integrity oversight, guidance, and monitoring across Italian universities and research institutions nationally, rather than leaving each institution to handle integrity matters independently. It remains a proposal, not an established body, as of this writing.
Who leads CNR’s Research Ethics and Integrity Committee?
The Committee is chaired by the President of CNR, currently Andrea Lenzi, for the 2023-2027 term. Cinzia Caporale, former chair of UNESCO’s International Bioethics Committee, coordinates the Committee’s work and led the programme for the January 2025 Congress.
