How to Avoid Research Misconduct: PhD Checklist

How to avoid research misconduct as an early-career researcher comes down to five habits: keep verifiable records from day one, agree authorship and CRediT roles before writing starts, retain data for the period your funder requires, disclose every conflict of interest, and know your institution’s reporting route before you ever need it. Research misconduct is the fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism of data, results, or other people’s work in proposing, performing, reviewing, or reporting research — a definition used by the US Office of Research Integrity and echoed by the UK Research Integrity Office (UKRIO).

PhD students and postdocs face specific pressure points that senior investigators rarely encounter in the same way: unclear authorship expectations, ambiguous data ownership when moving labs or institutions, and thin knowledge of funder-specific retention rules. This guide sets out an individual-level checklist — not an institutional policy document — for the two career stages where most avoidable misconduct risk actually sits.

• What is research misconduct?
• The early-career checklist: how to avoid research misconduct
• Common questions on avoiding research misconduct
• What to do if you suspect misconduct
• Building a habit of research integrity

What is research misconduct?

The US Office of Research Integrity defines research misconduct as fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in proposing, performing, or reviewing research, or in reporting research results — and explicitly excludes honest error or genuine differences of scientific opinion. UKRIO uses a broader formulation: behaviours that deliberately or recklessly fall short of the standards expected in the conduct of research.

• Fabrication — inventing data or results that were never generated.
• Falsification — manipulating materials, equipment, processes, or data so the research record misrepresents what actually happened.
• Plagiarism — using another person’s ideas, words, or results without appropriate credit.

Below these three formal categories sit questionable research practices (QRPs) that rarely trigger a formal misconduct finding but do real damage: salami-slicing a single dataset into multiple papers, gift or ghost authorship, undisclosed conflicts of interest, and selective reporting of results. Early-career researchers are disproportionately exposed to QRPs because they typically have the least authority to push back when a supervisor or collaborator proposes one.

The early-career checklist: how to avoid research misconduct

Prevention at the individual level works best as a small number of fixed habits applied consistently, rather than a one-off training module. The checklist below groups those habits into the three areas where early-career researchers are most exposed: record-keeping, authorship, and disclosure.

Data retention and record-keeping

Keep a dated, tamper-evident record of every experiment, dataset version, and analysis script — electronic lab notebooks and version-controlled repositories are far easier to defend under scrutiny than a personal laptop folder. Retention periods are not optional extras; they are usually written into your funding agreement. UKRI’s grant Terms and Conditions require standard research data to be retained for a minimum of ten years from the date the last researcher on the project drew on it, with longer retention commonly required for clinical or patient-identifiable data. Before you leave a lab or finish a contract, confirm who takes custodial responsibility for the data and archive it through your institutional repository rather than a personal drive.

Authorship sign-off using CRediT

Disputed or inflated authorship is one of the most common sources of misconduct allegations against early-career researchers, usually because it was never discussed until submission. Raise authorship expectations at the start of a project, not the end, and record who did what using a recognised contributor taxonomy. CASRAI originated the CRediT contributor role taxonomy in 2014; the standard is now stewarded by NISO as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022. Alongside CRediT, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) sets four authorship criteria — substantial contribution, drafting or critical revision, final approval, and accountability for accuracy — all of which should be satisfied and confirmed in writing before a manuscript is submitted. See CASRAI’s overview of the CRediT taxonomy and individual contributor roles, and the broader guidance on authorship practice.

Disclosure habits: conflicts of interest and funding

Declare funding sources, consultancy income, and any relationship that could be perceived to bias your work — on every manuscript, grant application, and peer-review invitation, not just the ones where a conflict feels obvious. Undisclosed conflicts of interest are one of the categories of unethical practice identified in the research-ethics literature alongside fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, and biased design or interpretation. Build a habit of updating your disclosure statement annually rather than reconstructing it from memory when an editor asks.

Common questions on avoiding research misconduct

How can research misconduct be prevented?

Prevention combines individual habits with institutional support: complete responsible conduct of research training, keep a verifiable data record from the outset, agree authorship and disclosure expectations early, and use a named mentor to check difficult decisions before they become irreversible.

What are the 5 unethical practices in research?

The research-ethics literature commonly lists five categories: fabrication of data, falsification of results, plagiarism of others’ work, failure to credit contributors, and undisclosed conflicts of interest that bias design or interpretation.

How can we prevent unethical research?

Reduce bias systematically: pre-register study design where possible, separate data collection from data interpretation roles, declare every conflict of interest, and keep records detailed enough that a colleague could reconstruct your analysis without asking you a single question.

What to do if you suspect misconduct

Early-career researchers are frequently the first to notice irregularities — and often the least sure how to act on them without risking their own position. UKRIO operates a free, confidential advisory service specifically to help individuals think through a concern before deciding whether to raise it formally, independent of any single university’s internal process. The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) publishes decision flowcharts that editors and institutions use to work through suspected data fabrication, image manipulation, and authorship disputes; reading these in advance demystifies what a formal process actually involves.

• Raise concerns informally with a trusted mentor first, where safe to do so.
• Use your institution’s named research integrity contact for a formal report.
• Contact UKRIO’s advisory service for independent, confidential guidance if you are unsure whether a concern meets the threshold for misconduct.
• Document your concern in writing, with dates, before raising it — memory fades and paper trails protect everyone involved.

Building a habit of research integrity

None of the five habits above require institutional permission to start. A PhD student can open a data management plan, propose a CRediT-based authorship discussion, and file a disclosure statement without waiting for a policy update. What changes between PhD and postdoc stage is not the principle but the stakes: postdocs increasingly lead the projects, supervise the juniors, and sign the disclosures that PhD students are only learning to draft. Starting the habit early is what keeps it intact when the stakes rise.