CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: research misconduct reporting

  • 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.

  • Procedure for the Investigation of Misconduct in Research: A Step-by-Step Committee Guide

    When a university receives a formal allegation of research misconduct, the committee handling it needs a defensible, evidence-based procedure for the investigation of misconduct in research — not an improvised process assembled under pressure. UK institutions have historically anchored their local policies to the UK Research Integrity Office (UKRIO) template procedure, most recently revised in 2023. That document has now been sunset: UKRIO published a replacement, the Detailed Procedure for Investigating Breaches of Research Integrity, in December 2025, alongside long-standing US practice codified by the Office of Research Integrity (ORI). This guide synthesises both models into one practical procedure — covering intake, inquiry, formal investigation and reporting — that institutional committees can apply directly.

    What Counts as Research Misconduct

    Most frameworks converge on a common core: fabrication, falsification and plagiarism (FFP). ORI applies this narrow FFP definition when it proposes federal findings against researchers funded by the US Public Health Service. UK practice, shaped by the Concordat to Support Research Integrity (Universities UK), is broader.

    UK institutional policies typically also capture:

    • Mismanagement of conflicts of interest that were not properly declared
    • Breach of duty of care to research participants, patients or animals
    • Misrepresentation of involvement, including ghost or guest authorship
    • Improper handling of a misconduct allegation itself, including victimising a whistleblower

    Committees should confirm which definition their institutional policy uses before opening a case. Scope decisions made at intake determine whether a matter proceeds as misconduct, as poor research practice, or as a contributorship dispute better resolved through clearer role attribution.

    The Procedure at a Glance: Four Phases from Intake to Report

    Institutional procedures differ in their exact labels but converge on the same underlying logic. The table below maps UKRIO terminology against the ORI model used across US federally funded research.

    Generic phase UKRIO term ORI (US) term Core purpose
    1. Intake Receipt of Allegations Allegation Log the complaint and confirm it falls within scope and jurisdiction
    2. Screening Assessment Inquiry Establish whether there is a prima facie case warranting full investigation
    3. Formal investigation Investigation Investigation Panel-led evidentiary examination, typically with an external member
    4. Outcome Outcome / Report Investigation Report / adjudication Findings, sanctions and correction of the research record
    5. Appeal Appeal (institution-specific) Institutional and federal oversight review Review of process fairness and proportionality of any sanction

    Step-by-Step: Running Each Phase

    The sequence below reflects UKRIO’s revised phase structure and ORI’s assessment-inquiry-investigation model, condensed into a working checklist committees can follow.

    Phase 1: Intake and Initial Screening

    The designated Research Integrity Officer or Named Person logs the allegation in writing, confirms it concerns research conducted under the institution’s auspices, and checks it is not vexatious, out of time, or already covered by another process such as a student misconduct or HR grievance procedure. Both the respondent and complainant are typically notified that a review has opened.

    Phase 2: The Inquiry (Preliminary Assessment)

    A small screening panel gathers initial evidence — underlying data, correspondence, relevant publications — to decide whether a prima facie case exists. This is a fact-finding exercise, not a determination of guilt. Many cases close here because the conduct reflects honest error or a legitimate difference of scientific opinion rather than misconduct.

    Phase 3: The Formal Investigation

    If the inquiry finds sufficient grounds, a Formal Investigation Panel is convened, usually including at least one member external to the institution. The panel interviews the complainant, respondent and witnesses, scrutinises data and lab records, and applies the balance-of-probabilities standard used across UK and most US institutional procedures.

    Phase 4: Outcome, Reporting and Correcting the Record

    The panel issues a written report: allegations upheld, partially upheld, or not upheld. Where misconduct is confirmed, action can include disciplinary sanctions, retraction or correction of affected publications, and notification of co-authors, journals, funders and, where relevant, professional or regulatory bodies.

    Phase 5: Appeal

    Most institutions allow an appeal limited to procedural irregularity, new evidence, or disproportionate sanction, heard by a senior figure with no prior involvement in the case. The appeal outcome is normally final at institutional level, though funders such as UKRI may separately review an institution’s handling of a case tied to their funding.

    Answer-First: Committee FAQs

    What are the phases of a research misconduct allegation?

    Most procedures run through four to five phases: intake (logging and scoping the allegation), inquiry or assessment (checking for a prima facie case), formal investigation (panel-led evidence review), and outcome and reporting, followed by an optional appeal stage.

    What is the first phase in response to a research misconduct allegation?

    The first phase is intake, sometimes called Receipt of Allegations. A designated Research Integrity Officer logs the complaint in writing, confirms it falls within the institution’s jurisdiction and definition of misconduct, and notifies the respondent before any evidence review begins.

    Who investigates allegations of research misconduct?

    The employing or funding institution investigates in the first instance, usually through a Formal Investigation Panel including an external member. Bodies such as UKRIO and ORI provide advice and procedural frameworks but do not typically run individual case investigations themselves.

    Whose responsibility is it to identify and report research misconduct?

    Reporting is a shared duty. Principal investigators, co-authors, reviewers, students and professional staff must raise good-faith concerns, usually to a named Research Integrity Officer. Institutional policies typically protect whistleblowers from retaliation once a concern is raised honestly.

    Roles, Prevention and Governance Implications

    Investigation procedures are remedial — they respond after harm has occurred. Prevention is cheaper and protects institutional reputation long before a case reaches a panel. Evidence-based measures include mandatory research integrity training at induction and supervision milestones, data management plans reviewed at project setup, and clear contributor-role disclosure on every output.

    Authorship disputes are a recurring trigger for misconduct allegations. Transparent attribution of who did what — using a structured framework such as the CRediT contributor role taxonomy, which CASRAI originated in 2014 and which is now stewarded by NISO as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022 — reduces the ambiguity that often escalates into a formal complaint. Institutions embedding role transparency into their research administration workflows give committees clearer evidence to work with if a dispute does arise.

    The governance stakes are rising. UKRI’s April 2025 guidance for research organisations ties funder confidence directly to the robustness of an institution’s misconduct procedure, and poorly documented cases increasingly surface in funder audits and, where publications are affected, in retraction and correction notices tracked by services such as Retraction Watch. Committees that document each phase properly do more than defend individual decisions on appeal — they protect the institution’s standing with funders and publishers.

    Looking ahead, expect UKRIO’s December 2025 Detailed Procedure and equivalent US federal guidance to keep converging on shared definitions, external panel membership and proportionate, documented outcomes. Institutions that update their local policy to reference the current UKRIO and ORI models now, rather than after their next case, will be better placed to run a fair, defensible investigation when an allegation lands.