CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: research integrity officer

  • Research Governance Officer: Role and Remit

    A research governance officer is the institutional post responsible for checking that a research project — most often a clinical trial or human-participant study — has the approvals, contracts, insurance and regulatory sign-offs before it starts, and for monitoring compliance throughout. The role differs from the research integrity officer, who investigates misconduct after the fact.

    Research governance is the framework of regulations, principles and standards of good practice through which the quality, safety and accountability of research involving human participants, data or tissue is monitored and assured. This explainer sets out what the role covers day to day, how it differs from research integrity, and where it typically reports.

    What Does a Research Governance Officer Do?

    A research governance officer reviews study documentation — protocols, participant information sheets, indemnity and insurance arrangements, data-sharing agreements, and contracts with sponsors or CROs — before a project is authorised to open at a site. Once a study is live, they monitor amendments, adverse-event reporting and ongoing compliance against the approvals granted.

    Core duties typically include:

    • Reviewing feasibility and capacity before a site accepts a study
    • Checking regulatory and ethical approvals are in place and current
    • Negotiating and countersigning research contracts and costing agreements
    • Conducting site-specific or local authorisation checks
    • Monitoring protocol amendments, deviations and adverse events
    • Advising investigators, sponsors and ethics committees on governance requirements
    • Logging and triaging complaints or concerns about the conduct of a study

    The role is administrative and risk-based rather than investigative: a research governance officer exists to stop non-compliant studies from starting, and to catch drift once they are under way — not to adjudicate whether a named researcher acted dishonestly.

    Research Governance Officer vs Research Integrity Officer

    The two roles are frequently confused because both sit under an institution’s wider compliance function, but they answer different questions. Governance asks “was this study set up and run according to the rules?” Integrity asks “did this researcher tell the truth?”

    Aspect Research Governance Officer Research Integrity Officer
    Primary focus Legal, contractual and regulatory compliance of a study Ethical conduct and honesty of individual researchers
    Typical trigger Study setup, amendment, or routine monitoring An allegation of misconduct (fabrication, falsification, plagiarism)
    Timing Before and during the research Usually after a concern is raised
    Governing reference UK Policy Framework for Health and Social Care Research; ICH Good Clinical Practice US Public Health Service Policies on Research Misconduct, 42 CFR Part 93 (US); institutional codes of practice (UK/EU)
    External liaison Health Research Authority, funders, sponsors, ethics committees Office of Research Integrity (US), UK Research Integrity Office, COPE

    Because the remits differ, the two functions are usually kept organisationally separate. A research governance officer who also adjudicated misconduct cases would face an obvious conflict of interest with the sponsors and investigators they routinely work alongside.

    Typical Reporting Lines and Where the Role Sits

    A research governance officer usually reports to a Head of Research Governance, R&D Manager, or Director of Research Operations, who in turn reports to a Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research at a university, or a Director of Research and Development at an NHS trust or health board. In UK NHS organisations, the post commonly sits within a Research and Development (R&D) office and works closely with the local Research Ethics Committee (REC) and the sponsor’s clinical trials unit.

    By contrast, a research integrity officer is deliberately positioned for independence — often reporting directly to a Vice-Chancellor, Provost, or an institutional Research Integrity Committee, rather than through the same line as the operational governance team. This separation protects whistleblowers and preserves the impartiality of any misconduct investigation.

    Professional bodies such as ARMA (the Association of Research Managers and Administrators, UK), EARMA (Europe), NCURA (US) and the international umbrella body INORMS have progressively professionalised research management and governance as a distinct career track, with defined competency frameworks separate from research integrity casework.

    Research Governance Frameworks: UK, Australia and Beyond

    The specific rules a research governance officer applies vary by jurisdiction, though the underlying purpose — assuring quality, safety and accountability — is consistent internationally.

    In the UK, the Health Research Authority (HRA) maintains the UK Policy Framework for Health and Social Care Research (first published 2017, updated 2018), which superseded the 2005 Research Governance Framework for Health and Social Care. Clinical research governance officers also apply the ICH Good Clinical Practice (GCP) guideline, which sets international standards for the design, conduct and reporting of clinical trials.

    In Australia, the equivalent function is often titled Research Governance Officer explicitly, and is built around the NHMRC’s National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research (2023). These officers conduct Site-Specific Assessment (SSA) reviews under state-based mutual acceptance schemes, checking local site capacity and resourcing after a Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) has already approved the ethical dimensions of a study — a two-stage model (ethics, then governance) that is more formally separated than the equivalent UK process.

    This ethics/governance split is a genuine structural distinction most UK-focused explainers of the role omit: in the Australian National Mutual Acceptance model, ethical review and site governance review are statutorily distinct steps performed by different bodies, whereas UK practice more often blends elements of both within a single R&D sign-off.

    Common Questions About the Research Governance Officer Role

    What is a research governance officer?

    A research governance officer provides support and advice to investigators, sponsors, ethics committees and site leadership on regulatory compliance, contracts and risk before and during a study. The role ensures research is conducted in line with national frameworks, institutional policy and applicable legislation, rather than assessing individual researcher conduct.

    What is the role of a governance officer?

    A governance officer checks that an organisation’s activities comply with the rules that apply to them. In a research setting, this means verifying approvals, contracts, insurance and data-handling arrangements are in place before work starts, and monitoring compliance as the project progresses — a risk-management function, not a disciplinary one.

    Is governance a good career?

    Research governance offers a structured career path through R&D offices, university research services, and NHS trusts, with progression from officer to manager to director-level roles. Bodies such as ARMA, EARMA and INORMS provide competency frameworks and professional development routes, giving the field defined progression that is less common in adjacent compliance roles.

    Why the Distinction Matters for Institutions

    Institutions that conflate governance and integrity functions risk two failures: slower study setup, because a single overstretched post is asked to do both routine compliance checks and rare, high-stakes misconduct investigations; and weaker independence, because the same person cannot simultaneously advise a sponsor on contract terms and later investigate that sponsor’s investigator for alleged fabrication. Keeping the roles organisationally distinct — with separate reporting lines as described above — protects both throughput and impartiality.

    As research increasingly spans borders, jurisdictional literacy also matters: a governance officer working across UK and Australian sites needs to recognise that “research governance officer” describes a materially different process step in each system, not merely a different job title for the same task. Institutions building shared services or international collaborations should map these differences explicitly rather than assuming equivalence. For readers mapping this role against the wider research administration landscape, CASRAI’s research administration resources set out how governance, integrity and related functions fit together, and the CASRAI Dictionary collects definitions for adjacent terms.

  • Research Integrity Jobs: Roles, Salaries and How to Start

    Research integrity jobs span universities, funders, publishers and independent charities, and the core role — Research Integrity Officer (RIO) — is the named individual responsible for advising on ethical conduct, investigating misconduct allegations, and protecting the reliability of published research. In the UK, advertised RIO salaries typically range from around £31,000 at entry level to over £70,000 for senior publisher-side leads, with most institutional roles clustering between £35,000 and £50,000.

    A research integrity officer is the institutional point of contact who receives, assesses and — where warranted — investigates concerns about research misconduct, while also delivering training and policy guidance to protect the integrity of an organisation’s research output. This article maps the job titles, qualifications, salary bands and entry routes that make up this career path — not a general definition of what research integrity means.

    What Is a Research Integrity Officer?

    A Research Integrity Officer investigates allegations of research misconduct, advises researchers on ethical conduct, and reports outcomes to the relevant oversight body. The role exists in some form at nearly every UK university and at a growing number of publishers and funders, though the legal weight behind it differs sharply by jurisdiction.

    In the United States, the position is a compliance requirement: any institution receiving Public Health Service funding must designate a RIO who liaises directly with the federal Office of Research Integrity (ORI), a division of the US Department of Health and Human Services, and follows the process set out in the ORI’s Handbook for Institutional Research Integrity Officers. In the UK, there is no single statutory equivalent — instead, universities appoint their own RIOs under internal codes of practice, informed by the sector-wide Concordat to Support Research Integrity, and can draw on independent advice from the UK Research Integrity Office (UKRIO), a charity that has offered confidential guidance on research conduct since 2006. Across the European Union, national RIOs coordinate through the European Network of Research Integrity Offices (ENRIO), which shares practice guidance rather than enforcing a single legal standard.

    Day to day, the job blends investigation, education and policy work: reviewing complaints, running training sessions on responsible conduct, updating institutional policy, and — increasingly — adjudicating authorship disputes. Some of those disputes now turn on contributor-role statements built on the CRediT taxonomy, which CASRAI originated in 2014 and which is now stewarded by NISO as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022; RIOs handling authorship complaints benefit from fluency in how those roles are defined and applied, alongside broader authorship criteria.

    What Job Titles and Employers Are Hiring?

    “Research integrity officer” is only one of several job titles covering this work — recruiters use the term inconsistently, so a job search needs to cast a wider net. Current UK vacancies (mid-2026) show the following pattern of employer types and titles:

    • Universities — Research Integrity Manager, Research Integrity and Governance Officer, Research Policy Manager (e.g. a dual Research Policy Manager recruitment at the University of Bath’s Research Policy, Governance and Integrity team, advertised May 2026), and combined roles such as Research, Ethics, Governance and Integrity Manager.
    • Academic publishers — Research Integrity Manager, Research Integrity & Publishing Ethics Lead, and Head of Journal Audits & Research Integrity, reflecting the post-publication misconduct-detection work publishers now run at scale.
    • Independent bodies and charities — UKRIO itself periodically recruits a Research Integrity Manager to support its advisory casework across the UK sector.
    • Funders and government-adjacent bodies — research governance and compliance officer roles that sit alongside, rather than inside, a formal RIO title.

    Search volume data confirms the fragmentation: “research integrity jobs” and “research ethics jobs” each attract broadly comparable UK search interest, while the narrower “research integrity officer” phrase is searched far less often — evidence that most candidates search by sector or employer rather than by exact job title.

    What Qualifications Do You Need?

    There is no single licence or certification that gates entry to research integrity work, but employers converge on a consistent set of requirements across advertised UK vacancies.

    Requirement Typical expectation
    Academic background Degree in a relevant discipline; a Master’s or PhD is commonly required or strongly preferred for senior and university-based roles
    Sector knowledge Working understanding of UK research governance, the Concordat to Support Research Integrity, and relevant ethics-approval processes
    Investigative skill Ability to assess evidence dispassionately, conduct interviews, and write defensible investigation reports
    Communication Confident delivery of training and policy guidance to researchers, committees and senior leadership
    Prior experience Background in research administration, ethics committee work, publishing editorial roles, or active research is commonly favoured over integrity work with no research-sector grounding

    Specialist short courses and CPD in research ethics and integrity — offered by UKRIO, professional bodies and university research-development units — strengthen an application but are not, in most UK institutions, a formal precondition for the role.

    What Salary Can You Expect in the UK?

    Advertised UK salaries for research integrity roles vary considerably by employer type and seniority. The following reflects a representative sample of live and recent 2026 postings:

    Role Employer type Advertised salary (GBP)
    Research Integrity Officer Major research institute £40,500 – £46,000
    Research Integrity Officer Russell Group university £31,406 – £38,587
    Research Integrity Associate Academic publisher £30,000 – £42,000
    Head of Research Operations (integrity remit) Senior institutional leadership £58,225 – £87,974
    Research Integrity Editor Academic publisher, senior track £72,069

    The pattern is clear: entry and mid-level institutional roles sit in the low-to-mid £30,000s–£40,000s, publisher-side and senior leadership roles climb toward £60,000–£80,000+, and progression typically comes from moving between institutional, publisher and senior-governance tracks rather than promotion within a single fixed ladder.

    How Do You Get Started?

    Most people arrive at research integrity work sideways, from research administration, ethics-committee support, editorial roles or an active research career, rather than through a dedicated entry-level pipeline. A practical route in looks like this:

    1. Build a base in research administration, ethics review, or editorial/publishing work — this is where most current RIOs started.
    2. Get close to your institution’s or publisher’s governance processes: volunteer for an ethics committee, a research integrity champion scheme, or misconduct-policy review.
    3. Take structured CPD in research ethics and integrity, such as courses referenced by UKRIO or sector bodies, to formalise sector-specific knowledge.
    4. Apply laterally for titles beyond “Research Integrity Officer” — Research Governance Officer, Research Policy Manager and Publishing Ethics Lead all lead to the same career track.
    5. For publisher-side roles, build familiarity with post-publication tools (plagiarism detection, image-integrity screening, retraction workflows) alongside ethics knowledge.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    What does a research integrity officer do?

    A research integrity officer receives and assesses allegations of research misconduct, leads or oversees investigations, advises researchers on ethical conduct and governance, and delivers institutional training. In regulated US contexts, they also serve as the formal liaison to the federal Office of Research Integrity.

    What is the UK Research Integrity Office?

    The UK Research Integrity Office (UKRIO) is an independent charity, not a government regulator, that provides confidential, impartial advice to researchers and institutions on good practice and allegations of misconduct. It periodically recruits Research Integrity Manager roles itself and publishes sector guidance, including its Code of Practice for Research.

    Is a research integrity job stressful?

    Research integrity roles can be demanding: officers routinely handle confidential misconduct allegations, mediate disputes between researchers, and balance institutional reputation against fair process. Case volume and emotional weight vary by employer, but the role’s investigative and mediating functions make sustained pressure a realistic expectation rather than an edge case.

    What This Means for the Profession

    Demand signals point toward continued, if modest, growth: search interest in “research integrity jobs” rose across UK queries through late 2025 and into 2026, and publishers are visibly expanding dedicated integrity and publishing-ethics teams rather than folding the work into general editorial roles. For institutions, this points to research integrity maturing from an ad hoc committee duty into a recognised, resourced career track — one that increasingly requires fluency in contributor-role and authorship frameworks alongside classical misconduct investigation. For prospective candidates, the practical implication is to search broadly across job titles and employer types rather than waiting for postings titled exactly “Research Integrity Officer.”

  • Research Integrity Office: A Governance Model

    A well-governed research integrity office reports to a senior academic officer independent of Human Resources, draws its investigation panels from cross-disciplinary senior staff plus at least one external member, and keeps case-handling separate from disciplinary sanctioning — a structure distinct from simply appointing a named Research Integrity Officer.

    A research integrity office is the standing institutional unit responsible for policy, training oversight and the inquiry-and-investigation process for allegations of research misconduct — distinct from the individually appointed Research Integrity Officer who runs its day-to-day casework.

    What Is a Research Integrity Office?

    A research integrity office is the standing unit — not a single job title — that owns an institution’s policy on responsible conduct of research, coordinates training, and runs the formal process when misconduct is alleged. Most coverage of this topic focuses on the individual Research Integrity Officer (RIO) career pathway; far less has been written about how the surrounding office should be structured as a governance function.

    The office typically sits alongside, but separate from, two adjacent functions: the research ethics committee, which reviews prospective study design and participant safeguards before research starts, and the research governance office, which manages sponsor, funder and regulatory compliance (common in clinical and health research). Conflating the three creates confusion about who owns what when a concern is first raised.

    It is also worth distinguishing an institution’s own office from the UK Research Integrity Office (UKRIO), an independent charity established in 2006 that provides advisory support — including case advice and training — to around 160 subscribing UK research organisations. UKRIO is a sector-wide advisory body; it does not replace the internal office each institution is expected to run under the Concordat to Support Research Integrity.

    Where Should the Office Report? Comparing Reporting-Line Models

    The office should report to a senior academic officer — a Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research, Provost, or Vice-President for Research — never through a line that also manages HR casework or sits inside a single faculty. This gives the office standing to investigate any member of staff, including senior leadership, without a structural conflict of interest. In the United States, 42 CFR Part 93 requires any institution receiving Public Health Service research funding to designate an RIO with documented authority to act independently of the respondent’s own management chain.

    Governance model Reporting line Independence from HR Best fit
    Centralised office Reports directly to Provost / PVC-Research High — own budget line and case files Large, research-intensive universities
    Devolved faculty network Faculty-based integrity advisors report to a central RIO, who reports to the Provost Medium — depends on the advisor’s own line management Multi-faculty institutions with devolved research cultures
    External advisory subscription Advisory only; the institution retains formal decision-making authority High for advice, but not a substitute for a named internal Officer Smaller institutions, or as an escalation and second-opinion route

    King’s College London illustrates the devolved model: its Research Integrity Office is supplemented by faculty-based “Research Integrity Champions and Advisors” who provide local, first-line support while formal casework remains with the central office. Whichever model is chosen, the reporting line — not the job title of the person running it — determines whether the office can act without institutional pressure.

    Who Should Sit on the Investigation Panel?

    An investigation panel needs disciplinary expertise, distance from the respondent’s own department, and — for serious cases — at least one external, cross-institutional member. It should not include a standing HR representative as a voting member, because the panel’s task is to determine whether fabrication, falsification or plagiarism occurred, which is a different test to the workplace-conduct standard HR applies in disciplinary proceedings.

    • Cross-disciplinary membership that avoids conflicts of interest with the respondent’s own department or research group
    • At least one external member drawn from outside the institution for investigation-stage (not preliminary assessment-stage) cases
    • Separated roles across stages: an initial assessor, a fact-finding inquiry panel, and — only where warranted — a formal investigation committee
    • A documented recusal process for declared conflicts of interest
    • An independent secretariat, provided by the research integrity office itself rather than by HR

    Panel members require training on the institution’s misconduct policy and, where applicable, national frameworks such as the UKRIO Code of Practice for Research, which sets out five core principles — honesty, rigour, transparency and open communication, care and respect, and accountability — as the basis on which allegations are assessed.

    Why Independence from HR Is Non-Negotiable

    Independence from HR matters because a misconduct investigation establishes a factual finding about the integrity of the research record — a different exercise to the reasonable-conduct standard HR applies in employment disciplinary proceedings. Conflating the two risks the investigation being challenged as procedurally unfair, or as a pretext for an unrelated employment dispute.

    The two functions are sequential, not parallel. UK institutional codes typically specify that HR-led disciplinary procedures begin only once a research integrity office has confirmed a misconduct finding through its own separate process; King’s College London’s published Code of Good Conduct in Research is a public example of an institution setting out both processes as distinct. Confidentiality is a further reason for separation: misconduct proceedings protect the reputations of complainants, respondents and witnesses alike, and narrowing the circle of people with case access — rather than routing it through a general HR caseload — helps preserve that.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    What Does a Research Integrity Office Do?

    A research integrity office owns institutional policy on responsible research conduct, coordinates training for staff and students, and manages the formal process — assessment, inquiry and, where warranted, investigation — for allegations of research misconduct. It reports outcomes to senior leadership but does not itself impose employment sanctions.

    What Is the UK Research Integrity Office, and How Is It Different from an Institutional Office?

    UKRIO is an independent UK charity, established in 2006, that advises around 160 subscribing institutions and helped develop the Concordat to Support Research Integrity. It is a sector-wide advisory body, not a substitute for the internal office each institution must run to handle its own cases.

    What Are the Five Principles of Research Integrity?

    Under the UKRIO Code of Practice for Research, the five commonly cited principles are honesty, rigour, transparency and open communication, care and respect, and accountability. These principles inform how research integrity offices and panels assess whether an allegation meets the threshold for a formal misconduct finding.

    What Counts as Research Misconduct?

    Research misconduct generally covers fabrication, falsification and plagiarism, alongside proceeding without required ethical approvals and manipulating data, materials or processes to misrepresent results. A research integrity office defines the precise scope in institutional policy, aligned to national frameworks such as the Concordat to Support Research Integrity.

    Implications for Institutions Building or Reforming an Office

    The revised Concordat to Support Research Integrity (2025) sharpens its fifth commitment — accountability and continuous improvement — which puts explicit pressure on institutions to evidence, not merely assert, that their office structure is independent in practice. Institutions still relying on an RIO who reports through a research-office middle layer, or panels that include HR as a standing member, should treat this as a governance gap to close rather than an administrative preference.

    The wider research administration function increasingly treats research integrity governance as core infrastructure rather than a compliance afterthought, alongside ethics review and research governance offices. As AI-assisted data analysis and image manipulation raise new detection challenges, panels with genuine cross-disciplinary and external representation — reporting through a line insulated from both departmental and HR pressure — will be better placed to investigate credibly and defend their findings if challenged.

  • UK Research Integrity Office vs US ORI: Comparing Oversight Models

    For institutions with staff, students, or funding on both sides of the Atlantic, understanding how research misconduct is handled is not an academic curiosity — it shapes compliance obligations, reporting duties, and reputational risk. The UK Research Integrity Office (UKRIO) and the US Office of Research Integrity (ORI) are the two most frequently cited reference points for research integrity oversight in the English-speaking research world, yet they sit at opposite ends of the regulatory spectrum: one advisory, one statutory. This analysis sets out what separates the UK’s Concordat-based, self-governing model from the US’s federally regulated assurance regime, and what that gap means in practice for institutions and publishers operating across both jurisdictions.

    Overview: two philosophies of oversight

    The UK has no statutory research-integrity regulator. Instead, oversight is distributed across independent charities, a voluntary sector-wide concordat, and each institution’s own governance. The US, by contrast, ties oversight of biomedical and behavioural research directly to federal funding: any institution receiving Public Health Service (PHS) money — chiefly through the National Institutes of Health (NIH) — must operate under enforceable federal regulation.

    This is the single most important distinction for anyone comparing the two systems: the UK model relies on reputational and contractual incentives to drive good practice, while the US model relies on funding-conditional legal compliance.

    The UK model: UKRIO, the Concordat, and self-governance

    UKRIO was established in 2006 as an independent charity. It offers confidential, impartial advice to researchers, institutions, and members of the public on good research conduct and on handling allegations of misconduct — but it does not investigate cases itself. That responsibility sits with the research organisation where the alleged conduct occurred, guided by UKRIO’s Code of Practice for Research.

    Sitting alongside UKRIO is the Concordat to Support Research Integrity, first published by Universities UK in 2012 and substantially revised in 2019. The Concordat is a voluntary framework, not legislation, built around five commitments:

    • Maintaining the highest standards of rigour and integrity in research
    • Conducting research in an appropriate, ethically sound, and legally compliant way
    • Supporting a research environment that is underpinned by a culture of integrity
    • Using robust and fair processes to investigate allegations of misconduct
    • Working openly and transparently, including public reporting on research integrity

    UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and Research England are among the Concordat’s signatories, alongside the UK’s major research funders and universities. More recently, UKRI has moved to strengthen system-level coordination through a Committee on Research Integrity, intended to work alongside UKRIO on cross-sector oversight rather than to replace institutional responsibility — a signal that the advisory model is being reinforced rather than converted into a regulator.

    One point that is often glossed over: UKRIO’s Code of Practice defines misconduct more broadly than the classic fabrication-falsification-plagiarism (FFP) triad. It also covers matters such as proceeding without necessary ethical approval, misrepresenting data or authorship, and breaching a researcher’s duty of care — a wider net than the narrower legal definition used in the US.

    The US model: ORI and federal regulatory assurance

    The Office of Research Integrity sits within the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), under the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health. Its jurisdiction is defined by federal regulation — 42 CFR Part 93 — and applies to institutions receiving PHS funding, which includes the large majority of federally funded biomedical and behavioural research in the United States.

    Unlike UKRIO, ORI operates within an assurance framework: institutions receiving PHS funds must file an institutional assurance confirming they have policies and procedures for handling misconduct allegations that meet federal standards. Institutions still conduct the initial investigation, but ORI reviews and can reopen or challenge that process. Where misconduct is confirmed, ORI can recommend administrative actions to HHS, ranging from supervision and certification requirements to debarment from federal funding — a consequence with no direct UK equivalent, since UKRIO has no power to withhold funding from anyone.

    Critically, the federal definition of research misconduct that ORI enforces is narrower than UKRIO’s: fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism (FFP) only, as set out in 42 CFR §93.103. Authorship disputes, data-management failures, or ethics-approval breaches that UKRIO would treat as misconduct concerns typically fall outside ORI’s formal jurisdiction, though they may still be handled under an institution’s own policies.

    Comparing the two models side by side

    Feature UK: UKRIO / Concordat US: Office of Research Integrity
    Legal status Independent charity; voluntary sector concordat Federal agency within HHS
    Established 2006 (UKRIO); 2012, revised 2019 (Concordat) 1992
    Governing basis No statute; reputational/contractual adoption Federal regulation, 42 CFR Part 93
    Investigatory role Advisory only; institutions investigate Reviews/oversees institutional investigations
    Misconduct definition Broader — includes ethics-approval and duty-of-care breaches Narrower — fabrication, falsification, plagiarism only
    Enforcement power None; promotes good practice via guidance Can recommend sanctions, including funding debarment
    Scope All disciplines, all UK research organisations PHS-funded biomedical/behavioural research
    Funding model Subscribing institutions pay for UKRIO’s services Federally funded as part of HHS budget

    Common questions on research integrity oversight

    What is the UK Research Integrity Office?

    The UK Research Integrity Office (UKRIO) is an independent charity, established in 2006, that provides expert advice and guidance on good research practice and the handling of misconduct allegations. It has no statutory or investigatory powers — responsibility for investigating allegations remains with individual research institutions.

    What does the US Office of Research Integrity do?

    The Office of Research Integrity (ORI) is a federal agency within the US Department of Health and Human Services. It oversees research-misconduct policy for Public Health Service-funded research, reviews institutional investigations, and can recommend administrative sanctions, including funding debarment.

    What counts as research misconduct under UKRIO’s Code of Practice?

    UKRIO’s Code of Practice for Research defines misconduct more broadly than fabrication, falsification and plagiarism alone, also covering breaches such as proceeding without ethical approval, misrepresenting data, and failing in a researcher’s duty of care — a wider net than the US federal definition.

    What are the core commitments of the Concordat to Support Research Integrity?

    The Concordat to Support Research Integrity, revised in 2019, sets out five commitments covering rigour and transparency, appropriate governance, a supportive research environment, robust misconduct investigation, and transparent public reporting — voluntarily adopted by UK universities and funders including UKRI.

    Implications for multinational institutions and publishers

    For institutions operating research programmes, joint ventures, or staff exchanges across the UK and US, the practical consequence of these two models is a compliance asymmetry. A collaboration that falls short of UKRIO’s broader Code-of-Practice standard may still be technically compliant with ORI’s narrower FFP definition, and vice versa — an ethics-approval lapse that UKRIO would flag as a misconduct concern may sit outside ORI’s formal jurisdiction entirely.

    • Research administrators managing joint UK-US grants should map both frameworks into a single institutional misconduct policy rather than defaulting to whichever funder’s rules are stricter on paper.
    • Publishers and journal editors handling cross-border authorship disputes should recognise that a “no finding” outcome from a US institution under ORI’s FFP standard does not necessarily mean the same conduct would clear UKRIO’s Code of Practice, or vice versa.
    • Funders operating in both jurisdictions benefit from Concordat-style transparent reporting commitments even where they are not legally required, since it narrows the gap with ORI’s assurance-based accountability.

    Outlook: converging pressures, diverging structures

    Neither system shows signs of formally converging. The UK’s 2019 Concordat revision and UKRI’s growing coordination role reinforce, rather than replace, the advisory model; the US assurance regime remains anchored in federal regulation that would require congressional or HHS rule-making to change materially. What is converging is expectation: international publishers, funders such as Horizon Europe, and bodies like COPE and the Committee on Publication Ethics increasingly expect institutions to demonstrate research-integrity governance regardless of which national model applies. For multinational institutions, the practical answer is not to wait for the UK and US to align, but to build internal policy that satisfies the stricter of the two standards on every point where they diverge.

  • Whose Responsibility Is It to Identify and Report Research Misconduct? UK and US Duties Explained

    Search interest in “whose responsibility is it to identify and report research misconduct” spikes around research-ethics coursework and institutional training, but the confusion it reflects is real and consequential. The honest answer is that whose responsibility it is to identify and report research misconduct depends on the role: the duty is shared, not singular, and it is formalised differently in the UK and the US. Principal investigators, co-authors, supervisors, peer reviewers, editors and institutional officers each hold a piece of the obligation, and neither UK nor US frameworks let any one of these roles opt out.

    This explainer sets out who owes a formal duty to report, which institutional office receives and manages that report, and what legal protection exists for the person who raises the concern.

    Who Carries the Individual Duty to Report?

    The starting point in both UK and US frameworks is that everyone involved in producing, reviewing or supervising research shares a duty of vigilance. A widely cited analysis of collaborative authorship, published in PMC (Helgesson et al., 2017), concludes that “every author shares the responsibility to be attentive to signs of misconduct” and is obliged to act if fraud or fabrication is suspected in a paper they co-author — co-authorship does not dilute individual accountability.

    In practice, the individuals expected to identify and escalate concerns include:

    • Principal investigators (PIs) — responsible for the conduct of their research programme and for acting on concerns raised by team members.
    • Co-authors and collaborators — expected to query irregularities in data, methods or results before a manuscript is submitted or published.
    • Supervisors of doctoral and early-career researchers — responsible for training on research standards and for reporting concerns about supervisees’ conduct.
    • Peer reviewers and journal editors — obliged under Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) guidance to raise suspected fabrication, falsification or plagiarism (FFP) identified during review, rather than simply rejecting the manuscript.
    • Institutional Review Board / ethics committee members — responsible for flagging non-compliance with approved protocols.

    None of these roles constitutes the sole responsible party. That is the most common misconception behind the search query: there is no single “correct” answer among a multiple-choice list of individuals, because UK and US institutional policy assign the duty collectively.

    Institutional Duty: RIOs, Named Persons and Responsible Officers

    Once an individual raises a concern, formal responsibility shifts to a designated institutional office. The terminology and statutory basis differ between the UK and US, though the underlying model — an initial assessment, followed by a full investigation panel with external academic input — is similar in both systems.

    In the UK, the Concordat to Support Research Integrity (Universities UK, revised 2019) requires every signatory institution to have a published misconduct procedure and to designate a responsible individual — commonly titled the Named Person or Responsible Officer — to receive and triage allegations. UK Research and Innovation’s April 2025 guidance for research organisations goes further, requiring any organisation receiving UKRI funding to investigate allegations of research misconduct involving its staff or students, regardless of who funded the specific project in question. The UK Research Integrity Office (UKRIO) is not a statutory regulator; it is an independent advisory body that publishes a model procedure institutions can adopt or adapt.

    In the US, the equivalent office is the Research Integrity Officer (RIO), a role every institution receiving Public Health Service funding must designate under 42 CFR Part 93. The federal Office of Research Integrity (ORI), within the Department of Health and Human Services, oversees PHS-funded misconduct activity, defines fabrication, falsification and plagiarism (FFP) in federal regulation, and can review institutional findings on appeal.

    Aspect United Kingdom United States
    Sector-wide framework Concordat to Support Research Integrity (Universities UK, rev. 2019) 42 CFR Part 93 (HHS/PHS regulations)
    Designated institutional role Named Person / Responsible Officer Research Integrity Officer (RIO)
    Federal/national oversight body None statutory; UKRIO advises, UKRI mandates investigation for its grantees Office of Research Integrity (ORI), HHS
    Core definition used Fabrication, falsification, plagiarism and other serious deviations from accepted practice Fabrication, falsification, plagiarism (FFP) per 42 CFR §93.103
    Whistle-blower statute Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 (amends Employment Rights Act 1996) Retaliation protections built into 42 CFR Part 93 institutional assurances

    Common Questions on Reporting Research Misconduct

    Who has the primary responsibility for investigating allegations of research misconduct?

    The host institution holds primary investigative responsibility, not the individual who raises the concern. A designated officer — the Research Integrity Officer in the US or the Named Person in the UK — triages the allegation, and a panel including external academic members conducts the full investigation if warranted.

    Who do you report research misconduct to?

    Concerns should go to the institution’s designated contact — typically the Research Integrity Officer, Named Person, or a supervisor/department head who escalates it formally. Many institutions also run confidential ethics or research-integrity hotlines for concerns raised anonymously.

    Who oversees research misconduct nationally?

    In the US, the Office of Research Integrity oversees PHS-funded misconduct activity on behalf of HHS. In the UK, no single statutory regulator exists; UKRIO provides advisory guidance and a model procedure, while UKRI mandates investigation as a funding condition for its grantees.

    What conduct counts as research misconduct under federal regulations?

    US federal regulation (42 CFR Part 93) defines research misconduct as fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism (FFP) in proposing, performing, or reviewing research, or in reporting results. Honest error and legitimate differences of scientific opinion are explicitly excluded.

    Whistle-Blower Protections: Reporting Without Retaliation

    Fear of retaliation is the most cited reason researchers stay silent about suspected misconduct, so both jurisdictions build legal protection into the reporting pathway.

    • UK: The Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998, which amends the Employment Rights Act 1996, protects workers who make a “protected disclosure” — including a reasonable belief that a legal obligation, such as a research or funding-body requirement, is being breached — from dismissal or detriment.
    • US: Institutions holding PHS funding must provide, as a condition of their assurance under 42 CFR Part 93, protection for complainants and witnesses against retaliation, and must diligently protect confidentiality where feasible during the assessment and inquiry stages.

    Institutional attribution practices also support accountability once an investigation is under way. Contributor role taxonomies used at submission — such as CRediT, which CASRAI originated in 2014 and which is now stewarded by NISO as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022 — make it easier for investigators to establish which named author was responsible for which specific contribution, rather than relying on blanket authorship credit. Research administrators building or reviewing misconduct procedures may find it useful to consult CASRAI’s overview of contributor role taxonomies and the individual CRediT roles alongside broader guidance on authorship standards.

    Implications for Research Administrators and Institutions

    For research administration offices, three practical implications follow from the shared-duty model:

    • Policy visibility matters as much as policy existence. The Concordat requires institutions not just to have a procedure but to publicise it to staff and the public — a written policy that nobody can find fails the spirit of Commitment 4.
    • Reporting channels need redundancy. Because responsibility is distributed across PIs, supervisors, co-authors and reviewers, a single named contact is not enough; institutions typically also need a confidential hotline route and a clear escalation path via department heads.
    • Investigation and disciplinary process must stay separate. UKRIO and ORI guidance both stress that the misconduct investigation determines what happened; any resulting disciplinary action is a distinct, subsequent process, with its own procedural safeguards.

    Institutions that receive UKRI funding should also note that the funder’s own guidance, updated in April 2025, requires investigation of allegations against staff or students as a condition of the funding relationship — independent of whether the specific allegation concerns a UKRI-funded project.

    A Shared, Structured Duty

    There is no single office or job title that owns research misconduct reporting end to end. Individual researchers — PIs, co-authors, supervisors and reviewers — carry a front-line duty to notice and escalate; a designated institutional officer (Research Integrity Officer in the US, Named Person or Responsible Officer in the UK) carries the duty to receive, triage and investigate; and national bodies (ORI in the US; UKRIO advisory guidance and UKRI funding conditions in the UK) set the framework both operate within. As funders sharpen their compliance requirements — UKRI’s April 2025 guidance being the most recent UK example — institutions should expect the expectation of distributed accountability, not a single responsible party, to keep hardening rather than simplifying.

  • Becoming a Research Integrity Officer: Role, Remit and Career Pathway

    As UK universities and research institutes face growing scrutiny over reproducibility, authorship disputes and data fabrication cases, the research integrity officer has moved from a part-time academic add-on to a defined, increasingly professionalised post within research governance teams. For research administrators considering a move into this specialism — or institutions building the role for the first time — the practical questions are consistent: what does the job actually involve, how is it distinct from a research ethics post, and what does it pay.

    What Does a Research Integrity Officer Do?

    A research integrity officer (RIO) is the named individual — sometimes a dedicated post, sometimes a senior academic holding the title alongside other duties — responsible for an institution’s response to concerns about the conduct of research. The remit sits within research governance rather than within a single department, because misconduct allegations can touch grants, publications, supervision and institutional reputation simultaneously.

    Core duties typically include:

    • Managing misconduct allegations — receiving, triaging and, where warranted, formally investigating concerns about fabrication, falsification, plagiarism or other breaches of good research practice.
    • Policy ownership — drafting and maintaining the institution’s research integrity policy and investigation procedures, aligned to the Concordat to Support Research Integrity.
    • Advice and training — briefing researchers, supervisors and postgraduates on responsible research conduct, data management and authorship practice.
    • Horizon-scanning — tracking changes to funder and regulatory requirements and briefing senior leadership on their implications.
    • External liaison — reporting to funders, and in serious cases coordinating with bodies such as UKRIO or equivalent national offices, when an institution’s own procedures require external assurance.

    Unlike a compliance officer, the RIO role is deliberately dual-facing: part investigator, part educator. That combination is what distinguishes it from adjacent research-governance posts and is a recurring theme across UK job descriptions for the role.

    Common Questions About the Role

    What does a research integrity officer do?

    A research integrity officer manages an institution’s response to alleged research misconduct, advises staff and students on good research practice, develops integrity policy, delivers training, and liaises with funders and oversight bodies such as UKRIO or, in the US, the Office of Research Integrity.

    What are the core principles of research integrity?

    In the UK, the Concordat to Support Research Integrity sets out five commitments: honesty, rigour, transparency and open communication, care and respect, and accountability. These underpin institutional policy and RIO casework across the sector.

    What is an integrity officer?

    An integrity officer is a role, not exclusive to research, focused on upholding ethical standards and investigating breaches of conduct within an organisation. In a research setting this narrows to allegations of fabrication, falsification and plagiarism, plus wider good-practice oversight.

    What is the UK Research Integrity Office?

    The UK Research Integrity Office (UKRIO) is an independent charity, not a regulator, that provides confidential advice, training and a Code of Practice for Research to institutions and individuals — it does not employ institutional research integrity officers directly.

    Research Integrity Officer vs Research Ethics Officer

    The two titles are frequently confused, including in job adverts, but the remits are distinct and often sit in separate reporting lines within the same institution.

    Dimension Research Integrity Officer Research Ethics Officer
    Primary focus Conduct of research after it has started — misconduct allegations, data integrity, authorship disputes Approval of research before it starts — participant welfare, consent, risk to human/animal subjects
    Typical trigger A complaint, whistleblower report or funder query about existing work A new study protocol requiring ethical review before data collection
    Governing framework Concordat to Support Research Integrity; institutional misconduct procedure Institutional Research Ethics Committee (REC) terms of reference; Declaration of Helsinki-derived norms
    Reporting relationship Often reports to the Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research or Registrar Often reports to, or chairs, a Research Ethics Committee
    External counterpart UKRIO (UK); Office of Research Integrity (US); ENRIO members (EU) National/institutional research ethics committee networks

    In practice the two functions overlap at the edges — an ethics breach discovered mid-study can escalate into a misconduct investigation — which is why some smaller institutions combine both under a single research governance lead. Larger research-intensive universities more often separate them into distinct posts.

    Career Pathway and UK Salary Bands

    There is no single accredited qualification that leads directly into the role, which mirrors the position taken by UKRIO and by sector guidance more broadly. Instead, institutions typically recruit against a combination of research background, governance experience and demonstrable case-handling skill. Common entry routes include:

    1. Academic-to-governance move — a PhD-holding researcher moves into research office or governance work, often via a research ethics committee or integrity champion role first.
    2. Research administration progression — an experienced research administrator or grants manager takes on integrity casework as their portfolio grows, then formalises it into a dedicated post.
    3. Legal, compliance or audit background — professionals with investigation, HR-casework or regulatory experience move into research settings, particularly at larger institutions with dedicated Research Governance or Research Integrity offices.
    4. Direct RIO appointment — increasingly common at research-intensive universities, advertised as a standalone senior professional-services post rather than an academic add-on.

    Salary bands vary by institution, grading framework (most UK universities use HERA-derived single pay spines) and whether the post is a stand-alone specialism or combined with wider research governance duties. As an indicative guide only:

    Post level Typical UK context Indicative salary band
    Research Integrity Adviser / Officer Mid-career professional-services role, single institution Broadly £35,000–£48,000
    Senior Research Integrity/Governance Officer Case-handling lead, policy ownership Broadly £48,000–£60,000
    Head of Research Integrity/Governance Strategic lead, reports to senior leadership, larger research-intensive institution Broadly £60,000+

    These bands are indicative only — always verify against the specific institution’s published grading and current job advert, since London weighting, faculty co-funding and combined governance/ethics portfolios all shift the figure materially.

    What This Means for Institutions

    As funders and publishers tighten expectations around data availability, image integrity checks and authorship accuracy, institutions without a clearly defined RIO post risk slower, less consistent responses to misconduct concerns — a reputational and compliance exposure that research administration leadership increasingly treats as a governance priority rather than an academic-freedom afterthought. Clear separation from the research ethics function, rather than folding both into one overstretched role, tends to produce faster case turnaround and clearer audit trails for funders such as UKRI.

    Authorship disputes in particular sit at the intersection of both functions and are a growing share of RIO caseload as contributor-role expectations become more explicit; institutions benefit from RIOs who understand current authorship norms as well as misconduct procedure.

    Outlook: A Professionalising Field

    Expect continued formalisation of the RIO role through the later 2020s: more standalone advertised posts, clearer competency frameworks referencing the Concordat to Support Research Integrity, and closer alignment between UK institutional practice and European counterparts coordinated through ENRIO. For research administrators and early-career researchers weighing a move into this specialism, the practical route in remains consistent — build governance, casework and policy experience, engage with UKRIO’s training resources, and be explicit in applications about the distinction between integrity and ethics remits, since institutions are increasingly hiring for one or the other rather than a blended generalist post.