Scottish Funding Council Research Integrity Policy: What Changes From September 2026

The Scottish Funding Council Research Integrity Policy takes effect on 1 September 2026 and applies to every Scottish higher education institution that receives SFC research and innovation funding. Its central change is a new, mandatory duty for institutions to report the outcomes of formal research misconduct investigations to SFC within one month of conclusion — a reporting relationship that did not exist under the Concordat to Support Research Integrity alone.

Research integrity, as SFC adopts the definition from the Concordat, exists “when research is carried out according to the principles of the Concordat, and in a way that is trustworthy, ethical, and responsible.” The policy, published on 26 May 2026 by SFC’s Investment and Research Directorate, sets out what Scottish universities and SFC-funded individuals must do differently, and what SFC itself commits to doing when misconduct is proven.

• What does the policy require of Scottish universities?
• What counts as research misconduct versus a questionable research practice?
• How must institutions report misconduct investigations to SFC?
• How does the SFC policy compare with the UK Concordat and UKRI’s good-practice policy?
• Answer-first Q&A: research integrity principles and misconduct
• What should Scottish universities change before 1 September 2026?
• What happens next?

What does the policy require of Scottish universities?

The policy applies to Scottish higher education institutions receiving research and innovation funding from SFC, and to research activities directly funded by SFC. It sets out general responsibilities drawn from the Concordat to Support Research Integrity, of which SFC is a signatory, and adds SFC-specific misconduct-reporting requirements that institutions must meet from 1 September 2026.

Institutions must maintain transparent, robust and fair research-integrity policies, publish a governing-body-approved annual statement, and make named senior research-integrity contacts publicly available. Universities receiving SFC’s core research grants already link to that annual statement via their Research Assurance and Accountability (RAA) return; the new policy layers a live, case-by-case reporting duty on top.

SFC is explicit about the limits of its role: it is not an appeals body for individual cases, cannot support parties during investigations, and does not grant ethical clearance or advise on research ethics. Assessment of institutional research-integrity infrastructure under the Research Excellence Framework sits outside the policy’s scope.

What counts as research misconduct versus a questionable research practice?

SFC uses the Concordat’s five key principles — honesty, rigour, transparency and open communication, care and respect, and accountability — as its benchmark, then draws a deliberate line between two categories of shortfall that many institutional policies still conflate.

Questionable research practices are minor infractions or avoidable errors falling short of the five principles without evident intent to deceive, often arising from negligence or attention-to-detail failures. Research misconduct covers deliberate actions falling short of the principles at any point in the research lifecycle: fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, breach of legal or ethical obligations, misrepresentation, and improper handling of allegations — including inappropriate use of non-disclosure agreements to silence concerns. Honest errors and legitimate methodological disagreement are explicitly excluded. Institutions comparing these categories against their own glossaries can cross-check definitions in the CASRAI dictionary of research-integrity terms.

How must institutions report misconduct investigations to SFC?

This is the operative change from September 2026. Institutions in scope must inform SFC of the outcome of any formal research misconduct investigation, with reporting due immediately after conclusion and no later than one month afterward. Preliminary or initial assessments that do not proceed to a formal investigation do not need to be reported.

Each confidential report to SFC must include:

• A factual statement of the allegation’s nature, disciplinary area and time period, and which misconduct category it falls under (fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, legal/ethical/professional breach, misrepresentation, improper handling, or another category)
• The investigation’s findings — upheld (fully or partially) or not upheld
• A timeline of the investigation’s key stages, benchmarked against the institution’s own policy timescales
• Actions taken where allegations are upheld, such as disciplinary referral, publisher retraction requests, or mitigation for affected research
• Any resulting changes to institutional policy or practice, and how their effectiveness will be assured
• What, if anything, will be communicated publicly about the case

Institutions must also disclose if an investigation touches one of five named SFC strategic investments — Alliances for Research Challenges, the Hydro Nation Scholars Programme, the Scottish Graduate Schools for Arts and Humanities or Social Science, or Royal Society of Edinburgh–supported research — or a member of SFC’s Research & Knowledge Exchange Committee or Board.

Personal-data protections run in parallel: respondent names, special-category data, criminal-offence information and third-party (e.g. complainant) details must never be routinely sent to SFC, though redacted disclosure can be requested in high-risk or strategic-investment cases. Looking ahead, from academic year 2027-28, SFC will cross-check upheld allegations in institutions’ annual Concordat statements against what has actually been reported to it — a compliance backstop that did not previously exist.

How does the SFC policy compare with the UK Concordat and UKRI’s good-practice policy?

SFC’s policy does not replace the UK-wide Concordat to Support Research Integrity, first published in 2012 and refreshed in 2025; it operationalises SFC’s own responsibilities as a signatory and funder. It draws explicitly on UKRI’s Policy on the Governance of Good Research Practice, reused with permission, and was developed with input from the Scottish Research Integrity Network.

The practical distinction for Scottish institutions is that the Concordat’s annual-statement cycle is now supplemented by live, case-triggered reporting — closing the “lag” SFC identifies between when misconduct is resolved and when it would otherwise surface in annual publications.

Answer-first Q&A: research integrity principles and misconduct

What are the 5 principles of research integrity?

Under the Concordat definition SFC adopts, the five principles are honesty, rigour, transparency and open communication, care and respect, and accountability. Research has integrity when it is carried out according to these principles in a way that is trustworthy, ethical and responsible, at every stage of the research lifecycle.

What are the violations of research integrity?

Violations range from serious research misconduct — fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, breach of legal or ethical obligations, misrepresentation, and improper handling of allegations — to lesser questionable research practices such as avoidable errors or negligent attention to detail. Honest errors and genuine methodological disagreement are not violations.

What should Scottish universities change before 1 September 2026?

SFC acknowledges that existing institutional policies may not currently permit disclosure of investigation outcomes to an external funder, which would limit reporting on cases already underway. Research administrators and research integrity leads should treat this as a compliance gap to close now, not after September.

• Review misconduct policies for clauses that would block or delay disclosure of outcomes to SFC, including confidentiality wording that predates this requirement
• Confirm named contacts and senior oversight roles for research integrity are published and current, as the policy expects
• Align internal misconduct categorisation with the Concordat’s fabrication/falsification/plagiarism/legal-ethical-breach/misrepresentation/improper-handling taxonomy so outcome reports map cleanly to SFC’s required fields
• Check that non-disclosure agreements are not used to close out misconduct findings, which the policy treats as improper handling in itself
• Flag any live or upcoming investigation touching SFC strategic investments (Alliances for Research Challenges, Hydro Nation Scholars, the two Scottish Graduate Schools, or RSE-supported work) for the additional disclosure requirement

These changes matter beyond Scotland: institutions with cross-UK portfolios should map SFC’s requirements against equivalent obligations to UKRI and other funders, so research administration teams work from one internal reference of reporting triggers and timescales rather than several conflicting ones.

What happens next?

From 1 September 2026, SFC expects to act on most reports without further intervention, reserving formal letters and improvement plans — and, for systemic governance failures, restrictions on strategic funding applications or suspension of all SFC research funding — for the most serious or repeated cases. From AY 2027-28, its cross-check between reported outcomes and annual Concordat statements becomes the enforcement backstop, giving universities roughly one full reporting cycle to embed compliant processes first.

Institutions treating September 2026 as a wording exercise rather than a change to reporting workflows, confidentiality clauses and NDA practice risk falling foul of that 2027-28 check.