CASRAI Dictionary

Tag: uk research misconduct

  • Research Integrity Annual Statement Requirements for UK Universities

    Research integrity annual statement requirements flow from Commitment Five of the UK Concordat to Support Research Integrity: every signatory employer of research — universities, government departments, and independent research organisations — must publish a short, public annual statement summarising its research-integrity activity and disclosing high-level data on formal misconduct investigations. A research integrity annual statement is a publicly available, governing-body-approved document reporting an institution’s progress against the Concordat’s five principles: honesty, rigour, transparency and open communication, care and respect, and accountability.

    What the Concordat actually requires

    The Concordat to Support Research Integrity was first published by Universities UK in 2019 and revised in 2025. Commitment Five requires signatory organisations to “publish an annual statement” describing how they support research integrity and to include data on formal research misconduct investigations conducted that year.

    There is no single legally mandated format. The UK Committee on Research Integrity (UKCoRI) and the Research Integrity Concordat Signatories (RICS) Group commissioned a common template — distributed via the UK Research Integrity Office (UKRIO) as a self-assessment tool — to standardise reporting, but its use remains voluntary. This is why statement quality and completeness still vary sharply across the sector.

    Required sections: what goes in the statement

    Whether an institution uses the RICS template or writes its own, a compliant statement needs to cover the same ground. The table below maps required content against what the recommended template adds on top of the bare Concordat obligation.

    Section Required by Commitment Five Added by the RICS/UKRIO template
    Governance and oversight Yes — named senior owner Named committee, reporting line to Council/Senate
    Culture and training activity Yes — summary of activity Structured prompts on induction, CPD, open research training
    Policies and systems in place Yes Cross-reference to ethics review, data management, authorship policies
    Misconduct investigation data Yes — numbers required Standardised categories (plagiarism, fabrication, falsification, other)
    Reflection and forward plan Implied (“summary of activities”) Explicit “next 12 months” section
    Sign-off and publication Yes — governing-body approval, public URL Standard approval statement wording

    Each statement should also name a senior point of contact for research integrity queries — a practice UKRIO’s guidance treats as effectively mandatory even though the Concordat text does not use that word. The statement must be approved by the institution’s governing body and hosted at a stable, publicly accessible URL, since UKCoRI and RICS collect these links centrally each year.

    How misconduct-case numbers are — and aren’t — disclosed

    Commitment Five requires “data on the number of research misconduct investigations conducted,” but it does not prescribe a taxonomy, a reporting period, or a denominator. In practice this produces wide variation: some institutions report raw investigation counts, others report allegations received versus investigations opened versus proven findings, and a minority report nothing more than a narrative sentence.

    UKCoRI’s 2025 review of statements published between 2022 and 2024 — the largest analysis of its kind, following an earlier 2023 review of 280 statements from 2019/20–2021/22 — found that annual statements were available for 78% of institutions for the 2022/23 cycle and 75% for 2023/24, meaning roughly a quarter of signatories had no traceable statement at all in the most recent year reviewed. Where investigation data was reported, the review found the top three cited reasons for misconduct allegations were consistently:

    • Plagiarism
    • Failure to meet legal, ethical, or professional obligations
    • Misrepresentation

    Government departments and independent research organisations that sign the Concordat — the UK Health Security Agency and the Ministry of Defence among them — tend to publish shorter, more standardised statements against a customised template, according to UKCoRI’s companion analysis of non-HEI signatories. HEI statements, by contrast, show more variation in depth: the review found monitoring and evaluation of stated activities remains limited even where the narrative content is strong.

    Common questions, answered directly

    What is the Concordat to Support Research Integrity?

    The Concordat to Support Research Integrity is a UK sector agreement, first published by Universities UK in 2019 and updated in 2025, under which signatory universities, funders, and research organisations commit to five principles — honesty, rigour, transparency, care and respect, and accountability — and to publishing an annual statement on their progress.

    Is there an official template for the annual statement?

    There is a recommended template, commissioned by the RICS Group and distributed by UKRIO as part of a self-assessment tool, but no institution is legally required to use it. Most Russell Group and post-92 universities now use it or a close variant to aid year-on-year comparison.

    Who checks whether universities comply with the Concordat?

    No single regulator audits compliance. UKCoRI periodically commissions independent reviews — most recently covering statements published 2022–2024 — that assess coverage and quality across the sector, but publication itself is on an honour system enforced by peer visibility rather than sanction.

    What counts as research misconduct under the Concordat?

    The Concordat frames research misconduct as fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, and other serious breaches of the honesty and rigour principles, alongside failures to meet legal, ethical, or professional obligations — the three categories UKCoRI’s analysis found most frequently cited across published statements.

    Best practice: what the Open University does differently

    Several structural choices separate stronger statements from weaker ones. The Open University is a useful reference point: it names its Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Research and Innovation as the explicit institutional point of contact for research integrity matters and as the office responsible for investigating misconduct allegations — addressing the named-contact expectation that many statements leave implicit. It also maintains a public archive of its statements dating back to 2020 at a stable URL, satisfying the transparency and accountability principles beyond the single-year minimum.

    Common gaps against this standard include: publishing the statement only internally rather than at a public URL; omitting a named senior contact; reporting a single aggregate misconduct figure with no breakdown by category or outcome; and failing to link the statement back to the institution’s research ethics or authorship policies, which weakens the “systems in place” section that the RICS template expects.

    Implications for research administrators

    For research administrators, the annual statement is not a compliance afterthought — it is one of the few Concordat-derived documents external funders, publishers, and prospective staff can actually inspect. Institutions that adopt the RICS/UKRIO template structure, publish consistently year-on-year, and disaggregate misconduct data by category give funders and collaborators a materially clearer signal than a narrative paragraph can. As UKCoRI continues its periodic sector reviews, the gap between the roughly three-quarters of institutions with a traceable statement and full sector coverage is likely to remain the most visible measure of Concordat compliance in the years ahead.

    Research administration teams building or auditing a statement should also review related governance obligations set out in institutional research administration policy, and consult standard definitions of research-integrity terminology in the CASRAI research dictionary when aligning statement language with sector norms.

  • Vietnam Research Integrity Crackdown: New Enforcement System

    Vietnam’s Ministry of Science and Technology introduced a binding national framework on 25 May 2026 that replaces voluntary integrity guidance with tiered sanctions – written warnings, retractions, funding claw-backs and permanent project bans – logged on a new National Digital Platform. The Vietnam research integrity crackdown is notable less for its penalty ladder than for what it reveals: a research system that expanded output rapidly is now trying to build enforcement infrastructure – a registry, an investigative chain of command, funder linkage – in a single directive, rather than over the decades it took comparable systems elsewhere.

    Research misconduct enforcement infrastructure is the set of institutions, registries and procedural rules a research system uses to detect, investigate, sanction and publicly record integrity violations. Vietnam’s 25 May 2026 directive is an attempt to construct that infrastructure from a near-standing start.

    What did the Ministry of Science and Technology announce?

    Vietnam’s Ministry of Science and Technology published guidance on 25 May 2026 requiring every science and technology organisation in the country to adopt formal rules against research misconduct and follow a defined investigation-and-sanction process. Before the directive, integrity expectations existed mainly as general principles promoted on a voluntary basis, without a consistent enforcement mechanism across institutions.

    The framework names four categories as the most serious violations: fabricating data, plagiarising others’ work, concealing conflicts of interest, and acts that distort the true nature of research. It also addresses generative-AI misuse directly, classing fabricated AI data or images, and citing unverified AI-generated material as a reference, as sanctionable conduct. Confirmed violations must be logged on the National Digital Platform for Science, Technology and Innovation Management, creating a permanent, searchable record.

    How is Vietnam building enforcement infrastructure from scratch?

    Three infrastructure elements distinguish this directive from a simple penalty list. First, a central registry: the National Digital Platform gives Vietnam a national record of confirmed violations, a component many systems only add after years of institution-only files. Second, a distributed investigative chain: heads of individual research organisations, not a single national office, are charged with running periodic inspections, monitoring retraction patterns, and operating complaint-intake procedures. Third, preventive obligations built in at launch – mandatory plagiarism checks before submission, retained raw data and research logs, and disclosure of funding, conflicts of interest and AI use.

    Notably, this formal apparatus is arriving after an informal one had already taken root. Tu Van Duong, a senior researcher at Purdue University, founded a Facebook group dedicated to scientific integrity in Vietnam that has grown to more than 300,000 members, according to Retraction Watch. Duong described the Ministry’s directive as an “important milestone” that converts principles his community had already been discussing informally into “concrete mandates” and a “binding obligation.” Vietnam’s enforcement infrastructure is therefore being built on two tracks at once – a bottom-up integrity community that predates regulation, and a top-down registry that formalises it.

    Vietnam is not the only fast-publishing system doing this in parallel. Daniel Barr, principal research integrity advisor at RMIT University in Australia, has pointed to Thailand’s Research Integrity Network (THRIN) as a comparable case: a recently established cross-institutional body connecting academics, experts and administrators rather than a single statutory regulator. Barr argues that principles-based frameworks like Vietnam’s and Thailand’s are well suited to systems where research spans many disciplines and institutional types – but only if the framework also supports responsible practice, not just punishment.

    How does Vietnam’s build-out compare with established systems?

    Judged purely on infrastructure components rather than penalty severity, Vietnam’s May 2026 framework is compressing into one directive what other systems built over one to three decades.

    System Formal infrastructure dates to Central public registry Investigative model Funder linkage Explicit AI-misuse clause
    United States (ORI) 1989-1992 (PHS oversight bodies consolidated into ORI) Yes – published case summaries Institutional inquiry, ORI oversight of PHS-funded research Federal funding debarment Added later, via updated guidance
    Germany (DFG) 1998-1999 (Rules of Good Scientific Practice, Ombudsman system) Partial – sanctions list Institutional ombudspersons, DFG appeal panel 1-8 year funding exclusion Added later, via updated guidance
    United Kingdom (UKRIO / Concordat) 2006 (UKRIO) / 2012 (Concordat, revised 2019) No – institution-level records only Institutional investigation under UKRI’s Good Research Practice policy UKRI can require investigation as a funding condition Under active revision (2025 UKRI guidance)
    Thailand (THRIN) Recently established No – network coordination role Cross-institutional coordination, not a single regulator Indirect, via member institutions Not yet standardised
    Vietnam (MST framework) 25 May 2026 Yes – National Digital Platform, built at launch Distributed – heads of individual organisations mandated to investigate Funding return and project bans Yes – built in from day one

    Two things stand out. Vietnam is the only system in this comparison to launch a searchable national registry and an explicit AI-misuse clause simultaneously, rather than retrofitting either years after the founding framework. It is also the only one relying entirely on a distributed model – individual institution heads, not a national investigative office – to do the actual case work, which is precisely the part Tu Van Duong warns could leave the framework “merely existing on paper” if implementation and monitoring are not rigorous.

    Answer-first questions on research misconduct

    What are the consequences of misconduct in research?

    Confirmed misconduct can trigger correction or retraction of the publication, loss of funding eligibility, employment termination, and degree revocation. Beyond the individual, it damages institutional credibility, undermines public trust in the literature, and can harm the colleagues and whistleblowers who rely on or expose the affected work.

    What is research misconduct UK?

    UK Research and Innovation defines research misconduct as fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, or other serious deviations from accepted practice in proposing, performing, reviewing or reporting research. UK institutions investigate under their own procedures, guided by the Concordat to Support Research Integrity and UKRI’s Good Research Practice policy.

    What are the 5 unethical practices in research?

    Commonly cited categories are falsification of data, failure to credit others’ contributions, plagiarism, undisclosed conflicts of interest, and biased design or interpretation driven by outside influence. Vietnam’s framework converges on a narrower set of four “most serious” categories, adding concealment of AI use as a fifth, newer concern.

    How serious is misconduct?

    Severity ranges widely: a first procedural lapse may draw only a written warning, while confirmed fabrication or plagiarism can end a career through funding debarment, degree revocation or criminal referral for misuse of public funds. Vietnam’s tiered structure, like the US and German models, scales the response to the offence rather than applying one blanket punishment.

    Implications for institutions – and what happens next

    For research administrators outside Vietnam, the framework is a live test of a proposition many funders are already testing: that integrity infrastructure can be launched all at once, rather than assembled piecemeal. Three things follow.

    • Distributed enforcement needs central audit, not just central logging. A national registry only deters misconduct if institution-level investigations feeding it are consistent; without a body auditing how heads of organisations conduct inspections, the registry risks recording only what gets reported.
    • AI-misuse clauses written in at launch avoid a costly retrofit. The US, German and UK systems all had to amend decades-old frameworks to address generative AI; Vietnam’s framework, and any new system built after 2026, can reasonably be expected to include equivalent language from day one.
    • Grassroots integrity communities are an infrastructure asset. Duong’s 300,000-member group functioned as an informal reporting and awareness network before the Ministry’s framework existed. Institutions building their own research administration policies can treat existing communities of practice as a resource for compliance culture, not just a symptom of prior gaps.

    Vietnam’s National Digital Platform will take time to populate, and consistency across thousands of institutions and provincial science agencies is untested. The most useful signal over the next year will not be the penalty ladder itself but whether cases are actually investigated, logged and made visible – the same accountability gap that has historically limited less-centralised systems. Definitions of the underlying terms – fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, retraction – are tracked in CASRAI’s research integrity dictionary for institutions mapping their own policy language against Vietnam’s.

  • 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?

    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.

    Framework Scope Misconduct reporting to the body Effective / published
    Concordat to Support Research Integrity All UK research employers (signatory-based) Annual statement only, no case-level reporting 2012; refreshed 2025
    UKRI Policy on the Governance of Good Research Practice UKRI-funded research and grant holders UKRI-specific notification duties for funded projects Ongoing, periodically updated
    SFC Research Integrity Policy Scottish HEIs receiving SFC funding; SFC-funded research activity Mandatory outcome reporting within one month of a formal investigation’s conclusion Published 26 May 2026; effective 1 September 2026

    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.

  • How UKRIO Defines Research Misconduct: UK Guide

    UKRIO defines research misconduct as behaviours that deliberately or recklessly fall short of the standards expected in the conduct of research, from the initial idea through to reporting outcomes and peer review. This is a working, principles-based definition rather than a closed list of banned acts, and it is deliberately broader than the US Office of Research Integrity’s fabrication-falsification-plagiarism (FFP) standard.

    In UKRIO’s own words: research misconduct is “behaviours that deliberately or recklessly fall short of the standards expected in the conduct of research.” That single sentence, not a statute, is the operative UK working definition research offices build their procedures around.

    What is UKRIO’s working definition of research misconduct?

    UKRIO does not create a statutory definition of research misconduct. It adopts the definition set out in the Concordat to Support Research Integrity, published by Universities UK in 2019, under Commitment 4 and Annex A. UKRIO’s own guidance and its model Procedure for the Investigation of Misconduct in Research (Version 2, March 2023) state explicitly that the definition used throughout is “taken from the Concordat to Support Research Integrity.”

    The Concordat-derived definition requires two elements: a departure from expected standards, and either intent or recklessness behind it. UKRIO describes the boundary as “a spectrum rather than a hard and fast line” — a deliberate design choice that keeps the definition workable across every discipline UK research offices oversee, from clinical trials to computational modelling.

    Which behaviours does UKRIO’s definition capture?

    UKRIO’s published guidance lists specific behaviours that fall within its working definition. These are illustrative, not exhaustive, but they anchor most institutional investigations:

    • Fabrication — making up data, results, or other research information such as patient consent.
    • Falsification — manipulating or selecting processes, materials, equipment, or data to present a false impression or outcome.
    • Plagiarism — using others’ ideas, intellectual property, or work without permission or acknowledgement.
    • Misrepresenting data or other information in proposing, performing, or reporting research.
    • Breaching legal, ethical, or professional requirements — for example proceeding without the necessary ethics approval or informed consent for human participants, animals, or human tissue.
    • Proceeding without necessary permissions or approvals being in place.
    • Failing to declare or manage conflicts of interest appropriately.

    Because the definition covers “all stages in the research cycle,” it extends beyond data collection into peer review conduct and reporting — a scope UK research offices sometimes overlook when they draft misconduct policies focused narrowly on data integrity.

    How does UKRIO’s definition compare with ORI and UKRI Research England?

    Three UK/US frameworks use visibly different formulations, and the differences matter for cross-border collaborations and grant compliance:

    Body / framework Core formulation Scope Governing source
    UKRIO (adopting the Concordat) “Behaviours that deliberately or recklessly fall short of the standards expected in the conduct of research” Open, behaviour-based; covers the whole research cycle, including peer review Concordat to Support Research Integrity, Universities UK, 2019
    US Office of Research Integrity (ORI) Fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism (FFP) Closed, three-act list; scoped to Public Health Service (PHS)-funded research 42 CFR Part 93 (US federal regulation)
    UKRI / Research England (funder condition) Fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, “or other serious deviations from commonly accepted practices” Closed FFP core plus an open “serious deviations” clause UKRI grant terms and conditions

    ORI’s PHS-scoped FFP standard is the narrowest of the three because it is a statutory list tied to federal funding. UKRI’s funder-condition definition sits in the middle: it names FFP explicitly but adds an open “serious deviations” clause. UKRIO’s Concordat-based definition is the broadest of the three, because it is anchored to a standard of expected behaviour rather than to a closed list of acts — which is precisely why UK research offices need their own institutional Code of Practice to give it operational teeth.

    Where does UKRIO’s definition deliberately stay vague?

    UKRIO’s definition leaves at least three things unsettled by design, and understanding why matters as much as knowing the wording.

    First, UKRIO does not itself specify what “the standards expected” are. It states that these standards “are those that your organisation will normally have put in place either in a Code of Practice for research or research handbook” — pushing the substantive content of the definition down to each institution, funder, or learned society.

    Second, the Concordat draws a case-by-case line between research misconduct and questionable research practice (QRP), defined in Annex A (page 13) as “minor infractions or research practices, including avoidable errors, which fall short of the definition of intentional research misconduct.” Genuine errors and reasonable methodological disagreement, however strongly disputed, sit outside the misconduct definition entirely — but distinguishing an “avoidable error” from “reckless” conduct is a judgement made on the facts of each case, not a bright-line test.

    Third, UKRIO frames misconduct as “a spectrum rather than a hard and fast line,” which is workable across disciplines precisely because it resists codification into a fixed act list — the trade-off UK research offices absorb in exchange for that flexibility.

    What does this mean for UK research offices?

    Because UKRIO’s definition is principles-based rather than a closed statute, UK research offices carry three practical obligations. They must maintain their own Code of Practice for Research (or equivalent) that states, in terms specific to their disciplines, what “standards expected” means locally — the Concordat requires this under Commitment 4. They must document any departure between their institutional definition and the Concordat wording, since an open definition raises dispute risk if a respondent argues the standard applied was undefined or inconsistently applied. And investigation panels must still make a fact-specific finding on intent or recklessness for every allegation, rather than concluding misconduct from a poor outcome alone.

    UKRIO’s model Procedure for the Investigation of Misconduct in Research operationalises this: it imports the Concordat definition verbatim and sets out common features most UK institutional procedures share — an initial assessment, a panel investigation with external academic input, a written report, and an appeal stage. The definition and the procedure are designed to work together, not as separate standards.

    As UK research integrity oversight matures — with more institutions publishing named-officer processes and more funders cross-referencing the Concordat in grant conditions — the vagueness UKRIO deliberately preserves in the definition is likely to remain the deliberate trade-off for a system built on institutional self-regulation rather than statutory command.

    Common questions about research misconduct

    What are the three types of research misconduct?

    The three internationally recognised core acts are fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism (FFP) — the categories used by the US ORI. UKRIO recognises these same three acts as core examples but extends its working definition beyond them to cover ethics breaches, undeclared conflicts of interest, and unauthorised research activity.

    What is an example of research misconduct?

    A researcher inventing patient consent records, or manipulating raw data to produce a more favourable result, are both clear examples. Under UKRIO’s definition, proceeding with a human-participant study without the required ethical approval also counts as misconduct, even without fabricated data.

    What is research misconduct in the UK?

    In the UK, most institutions and funders anchor their definition to the Concordat to Support Research Integrity (Universities UK, 2019), which UKRIO also adopts. UKRI’s grant conditions separately define misconduct as FFP “or other serious deviations from commonly accepted practices.”

    What counts as research misconduct?

    Under UKRIO’s definition, conduct counts as misconduct only where it involves intent or recklessness and falls short of the standards an institution’s Code of Practice sets out. Genuine errors and honest methodological disagreements are explicitly excluded, however serious their consequences.

    For related standards work on contributor accountability and research governance, see CASRAI’s research administration resources and research integrity dictionary terms.

  • NHMRC Research Misconduct: The Australian Code

    NHMRC research misconduct is not something Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council investigates itself. Under the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research 2018, misconduct is defined as a serious breach that is intentional, reckless or negligent, and it is the funded research institution — not NHMRC — that runs the investigation, with NHMRC acting only as funder, policy owner and post-finding decision-maker.

    The Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research is the joint national framework issued by NHMRC, the Australian Research Council (ARC) and Universities Australia that sets the principles, responsibilities and breach-handling model every publicly funded Australian researcher and institution must follow.

    What Counts as Research Misconduct Under the Code?

    The 2018 Code replaced “misconduct” as the primary compliance concept with “breach” — any failure to uphold the Code’s principles of honesty, rigour, transparency, fairness, respect and accountability, classified on a spectrum from minor to serious.

    Research misconduct is the Code’s recommended label for the top of that spectrum: a serious breach that is also intentional, reckless or negligent. Institutions need not use the word “misconduct” in their own policies, letting them run Code investigations separately from unrelated processes such as enterprise-agreement discipline.

    • Fabrication, falsification and plagiarism are the clearest examples of serious breaches.
    • Failure to obtain ethics approval, authorship disputes and data-management failures can also qualify if reckless or negligent.
    • Honest error and genuine differences of scientific judgement are explicitly excluded.

    This is deliberately broader than some overseas definitions — a point that matters when Australian findings are compared with those from other countries (see the jurisdiction comparison below).

    Does NHMRC Investigate Research Misconduct Itself?

    No. NHMRC’s own position is unambiguous: it does not investigate allegations of research misconduct or potential breaches of the Code. That responsibility sits with the “Administering Institution” — the university, medical research institute or hospital that receives the NHMRC grant.

    NHMRC’s role is defined by its Research Integrity and Misconduct Policy, first issued 31 May 2019, which requires Administering Institutions to notify NHMRC when a potential or confirmed serious breach involves NHMRC-funded research. NHMRC then decides on its own precautionary or consequential actions — separate from, and after, the institution’s investigation.

    • Precautionary actions can be applied while an investigation is still under way.
    • Consequential actions follow a confirmed finding and can include recovering grant funds or restricting future funding applications.

    How Are Potential Breaches Investigated?

    Investigations follow the Guide to Managing and Investigating Potential Breaches of the Australian Code, produced jointly by NHMRC, ARC and Universities Australia as the practical companion to the Code. It sets a model process rather than a single mandatory procedure, so implementation varies by institution size and history.

    The Guide’s stages typically run:

    • Initial assessment — a triage step to check the complaint has substance.
    • Preliminary assessment — an “assessment officer” makes enquiries and reports to a “designated officer”, who decides whether a breach occurred and how serious it is.
    • Investigation — for potential misconduct, a panel hears the case, the respondent can answer the allegations, and a report goes to a senior “responsible executive officer” for decision.

    Because each institution runs its own process, outcomes and timeliness are not standardised nationally — a gap a 2026 peer-reviewed analysis in Accountability in Research flagged as producing inconsistent handling of comparable allegations.

    What Role Does ARIC Play, and What Happens After a Finding?

    The Australian Research Integrity Committee (ARIC), jointly established by NHMRC and ARC, is the only national review body in the system. Both complainants and respondents can ask ARIC to review whether an institution’s process was procedurally fair and consistent with the Guide.

    ARIC does not re-investigate the facts or overturn the finding — it reviews process only. Its annual reporting shows it typically completes only a handful of reviews a year, fewer than one per Australian university, reflecting how rarely a case escalates beyond the institution.

    Where ARIC identifies a process failure, it makes recommendations to the NHMRC CEO, who can advise the institution to take remedial action. There is no independent statutory body that can compel a rerun of the investigation or impose sanctions directly on a researcher.

    How Does Australia’s Model Compare With the UK and US?

    Searchers comparing “research misconduct Australia” with UK practice are usually asking one thing: is there a national investigator anywhere, or is it always institution-led? The honest answer, across all three major English-speaking research systems, is that none of them has a single statutory national investigator who runs the case itself — but the definitions and oversight layers differ sharply.

    Jurisdiction Governing framework Definition scope Who investigates National oversight
    Australia Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research 2018 Broad — any serious, intentional/reckless/negligent breach Institution (Administering Institution) ARIC — process-fairness review only
    United Kingdom Concordat to Support Research Integrity Set by each institution under Concordat principles Institution (university/employer) UKRIO — independent advisory body, no investigative powers
    United States ORI Public Health Service Policy Narrow — fabrication, falsification, plagiarism (FFP) only Institution, with federal ORI review of PHS-funded cases Office of Research Integrity — federal, statutory

    The UK’s Concordat, stewarded by Universities UK, obliges signatories to publish an annual integrity statement, but UKRIO is an independent charity offering advice, not a regulator with enforcement powers. The US ORI is the outlier: a genuine federal body with a narrower, FFP-only statutory definition applied to Public Health Service-funded research. Australia sits between the two — a broader definition than the US, but the same institution-led investigation model as the UK.

    Answer-First Q&A

    Why can’t I find a public register of research misconduct cases at UQ or UNSW?

    Australia has no national public register of institutional misconduct findings. Because Administering Institutions like the University of Queensland and UNSW investigate and report internally, case-level detail is disclosed only where a university chooses to publish a summary or a case reaches the media.

    What is the difference between a “breach” and “research misconduct”?

    A breach is any failure to meet the Code’s principles, ranging from minor to serious. Research misconduct is the Code’s recommended term specifically for a serious breach that is also intentional, reckless or negligent — not every breach meets that threshold.

    What happens if a university’s investigation is handled poorly?

    A complainant or respondent can ask the Australian Research Integrity Committee (ARIC) to review the institution’s process for procedural fairness. ARIC cannot overturn the finding itself; it can only recommend remedial action to the NHMRC CEO if the process fell short of the Guide.

    Can NHMRC withdraw funding over a misconduct finding?

    Yes. Once an Administering Institution confirms a serious breach involving NHMRC-funded research, NHMRC can apply consequential actions, including recovering grant funds and restricting the researcher’s eligibility for future NHMRC funding applications.

    Implications for Research Administrators

    For research administration teams, the practical takeaway is that compliance obligations sit almost entirely at institutional level. Reporting duties to NHMRC are triggered by the funding agreement, not by any external monitoring, so administrators must build their own notification and case-management workflows against the Guide rather than waiting for national instruction.

    • Track breach classifications consistently, since only “serious” and “intentional/reckless/negligent” breaches trigger NHMRC notification.
    • Document Initial Assessment, Preliminary Assessment and Investigation stages separately — ARIC reviews are won or lost on procedural record-keeping.
    • Expect scrutiny to intensify: the February 2026 ARC–NHMRC Joint Statement on Integrity confirms both agencies are working with Universities Australia to reassess how the system performs.

    Teams treating the Guide as a floor rather than a ceiling — with clearer public reporting than the Code strictly requires — will be better placed if a national oversight body is eventually introduced.

    Where the Framework Is Heading

    Australia’s institution-led model has faced sustained sector criticism for inconsistent outcomes between universities, most visibly the Australian Academy of Science’s 2023 call for a two-tiered national oversight system. The February 2026 ARC–NHMRC Joint Statement signals a formal review is now under way, though no legislative change has yet been announced.

    Until that review concludes, the core structure remains stable: NHMRC sets policy and funding consequences, institutions investigate, and ARIC reviews process — not verdicts. Anyone searching for how a specific case was handled should expect to find that information at the institution, not at NHMRC.

  • Research Misconduct Penalties: Vietnam’s New Tiered System

    Vietnam has become the latest country to formalise research misconduct penalties into a graduated, rules-based system. A 25 May 2026 directive from the Ministry of Science and Technology, first reported by Retraction Watch, moves the country from voluntary integrity principles toward enforceable sanctions — written warnings, public apologies, funding claw-backs and indefinite bans — scaled to the severity of the offence. For institutions and funders elsewhere weighing graduated sanctions frameworks, Vietnam’s approach is a live case study in proportionate enforcement.

    Vietnam’s new framework: what the Ministry announced

    The guidance requires every science and technology organisation in Vietnam to adopt formal rules against research misconduct and to follow a defined process for investigating and sanctioning violations. Before the directive, integrity expectations existed mainly as general principles encouraged on a voluntary basis, without a consistent enforcement mechanism across institutions.

    The framework names four categories as the most serious violations:

    • Fabricating data
    • Plagiarising others’ work
    • Concealing conflicts of interest
    • Acts that distort the true nature of the research

    Notably, the guidance also addresses generative-AI misuse directly — creating fake data or images, or citing unverified AI-generated material as a reference are both classed as violations. Researchers are additionally required to run plagiarism checks before submission, retain raw data and research logs, and disclose funding sources, conflicts of interest and any AI use. Confirmed violations must be logged on Vietnam’s National Digital Platform for Science, Technology and Innovation Management, giving the sanctions a permanent, searchable public record.

    A tiered system: how the penalties scale with severity

    Rather than a single blanket punishment, the framework sets out a ladder of responses, so that a first, low-level infraction is treated differently from deliberate fabrication. This proportionality principle is common to most mature integrity systems, but Vietnam’s version is unusually explicit about which penalty attaches to which tier.

    Severity tier Example conduct Typical sanction
    Lower tier Procedural lapses, inadequate disclosure Written warning, mandatory training
    Mid tier Undisclosed conflicts of interest, authorship disputes Correction/retraction request, public apology, role suspension
    Upper tier Fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, concealed AI misuse Return of research funding, permanent or indefinite project ban

    The Ministry’s move follows years of pressure from documented cases. Retraction Watch’s database records 251 retractions carrying a Vietnamese institutional affiliation, with Ton Duc Thang University and Duy Tan University accounting for the largest share. Investigative reporting by the newspaper Thanh Nien in 2020 found foreign academics were being paid to falsely list affiliations with Vietnamese universities to inflate publication counts and rankings — at one point roughly 70% of Ton Duc Thang’s 2022 publications involved external, unaffiliated researchers. A separate 2022 investigation into a large Russian paper mill placed Vietnamese researchers among its top ten purchasers of fabricated authorship slots.

    Tu Van Duong, a senior researcher at Purdue University, described the directive as an “important milestone,” noting that Vietnam’s integrity expectations had previously relied on general principles and voluntary encouragement rather than binding enforcement.

    Common questions on research misconduct penalties

    What are the penalties for research misconduct?

    Penalties typically form a graduated scale: written warnings and retraining for minor lapses, followed by correction or retraction of publications, mandatory supervision, and — for the most serious cases — loss of employment, revoked degrees, permanent funding bans, and in rare cases criminal prosecution for misuse of public funds.

    What are the three types of research misconduct?

    Most frameworks, including the US federal definition and Vietnam’s new guidance, converge on three core categories: fabrication (inventing data or results), falsification (manipulating data, equipment, or processes to misrepresent findings), and plagiarism (using others’ ideas or words without credit).

    What happens if you get caught for academic misconduct?

    An institutional panel investigates the allegation, typically involving academic peers and external members. If misconduct is confirmed, consequences range from a formal reprimand or required correction through to suspension, termination, degree revocation, and referral to funders or professional bodies for further sanction.

    Who investigates allegations of research misconduct?

    Primary responsibility usually sits with the researcher’s own institution, guided by a code of practice such as the UK’s Concordat to Support Research Integrity. National bodies — Vietnam’s Ministry of Science and Technology, the US Office of Research Integrity, Germany’s DFG — provide oversight, funding sanctions, or an appellate role rather than running every case.

    How Vietnam compares: graduated sanctions worldwide

    Vietnam is not acting in isolation. Several jurisdictions have tightened or formalised research misconduct policy in the same window, reflecting a broader shift toward proportionate, publicly verifiable enforcement.

    Jurisdiction / body Mechanism Notable feature
    United States (ORI, NSF) Debarment from federal funding Confirmed cases published publicly
    United Kingdom (UKRI) Funding withdrawal, application bar Institutions face sanction if investigations are inadequate
    Germany (DFG) Exclusion from applying for funds 1–8 year bans, published sanctions list
    Canada (Tri-Agency) Reprimand to lifetime funding ban Comparatively low public transparency
    Scotland (May 2026) New institutional integrity system requirements Sector-wide baseline standard
    Peru (March 2026) Faculty bonus eligibility rules Bars bonuses for researchers with retractions
    India Grant-application disclosure requirement Five-year retraction history must be declared
    Thailand (THRIN) National research integrity network Cross-institutional coordination body
    Vietnam (May 2026) Tiered warnings to indefinite bans Violations logged on a national digital platform

    The common thread is a move away from vague, principle-only guidance toward codified, tiered sanctions with a public or semi-public record — precisely the design pattern uk research misconduct bodies such as UKRIO have long recommended through the Concordat to Support Research Integrity, and that international bodies including the European Network of Research Integrity Offices (ENRIO) are working to harmonise across borders.

    Implications for institutions and research administrators

    For research administrators, Vietnam’s framework is a useful reference point when reviewing a local research misconduct policy. Three implications stand out:

    • Proportionality reduces case backlog. A defined tier structure lets institutions resolve low-severity cases with training or a warning, reserving lengthy formal investigations for fabrication, falsification and plagiarism.
    • Public logging changes deterrence dynamics. A searchable national record — as opposed to institution-only files — raises the reputational stakes of a confirmed finding, mirroring the public debarment lists already run by the US Office of Research Integrity and Germany’s DFG.
    • AI-specific clauses are becoming standard. Explicitly naming fabricated AI outputs and unverified AI citations as misconduct closes a gap that many older policies, including some still in force across UK and EU institutions, have not yet updated to cover.

    Misattributed or inflated authorship — the practice exposed at Ton Duc Thang and Duy Tan — is itself a form of research misconduct, and one that transparent contributorship reporting can help deter. CASRAI originated the CRediT contributor role taxonomy in 2014 to make individual research contributions auditable; the standard is now stewarded by NISO as ANSI/NISO Z39.104-2022. Institutions building or revising misconduct policy alongside authorship criteria and contributor role disclosure requirements give investigators a clearer evidentiary trail when authorship claims are disputed. For teams mapping their own procedures against comparable frameworks, CASRAI’s research administration resources and research integrity terminology reference are a starting point.

    What comes next

    Vietnam’s National Digital Platform will take time to populate, and enforcement consistency across thousands of institutions and provincial science agencies remains untested. The real signal will be whether confirmed cases are actually logged, sanctioned and made visible — the same accountability gap that has historically limited Canada’s Tri-Agency framework and left some European systems reliant on anonymised summaries rather than named findings.

    What is clear is the direction of travel. Alongside Scotland’s new institutional requirements, Peru’s bonus restrictions, and India’s disclosure rules, Vietnam’s tiered penalties add to a growing body of 2026 evidence that funders and governments are converging on graduated, publicly verifiable sanctions rather than one-size-fits-all punishment. For institutions still relying on ad hoc disciplinary procedures, that convergence is now the benchmark to measure against.