The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity

Forewordl l lScience is expected to enlarge mankind’s knowledgebase, provide answers to global challenges,and guide decisions that shape our societies. Yetwhen science is compromised by fraudulent activities,not only the research enterprise stumbles, butalso society’s trust in it. Thus, researchers and leadersthroughout the world should ensure that scienceis trustworthy to our best knowledge. This can beachieved by education, promoting a culture of integrity,and by development of and compliance withjoint rules and norms.In this remit, the European Science Foundationhas fostered research integrity since its inception,but in a more explicit manner since 2000 when itpublished a landmark science policy briefing on recommendationson best practices, ‘Good ScientificPractice in Research and Scholarship’. One of therecommendations envisages, as an important taskfor the National Academies, the formulation ofcodes of good scientific practice. At the Europeanlevel ALLEA (ALL European Academies – theEuropean Federation of 53 National Academies ofSciences and Humanities) adapted a Dutch documentfrom the Royal Netherlands Academy into the‘Memorandum on Scientific Integrity’ (2003), whichhas been translated into several languages and is inuse in many countries today.ESF continued to promote international debatearound this topic by organising in 2007 the FirstWorld Conference on Research Integrity, togetherwith the Office for Research Integrity of the USPublic Health Service, which brought together theleading international stakeholders in the field andhighlighted the need for international collaborationand consensus. In 2008, a survey was carriedout on research integrity structures, ‘Stewards ofIntegrity – Institutional Approaches to Promoteand Safeguard Good Research Practice in Europe’.A dedicated debate platform was then set up, an ESFMember Organisation Forum on Research Integrity,that assembled 31 research funding and performingorganisations from 22 countries, together withALLEA. The work of this group produced the consensusdocument ‘The European Code of Conductfor Research Integrity’, launched at the SecondWorld Conference on Research Integrity held inJuly 2010. The Code addresses the proper conductand principled practice of systematic research inthe medical, natural and social sciences and thehumanities. It stands as a canon for self-regulationwith clear recommendations, and is now on the wayto being taken as a reference template for implementationthroughout Europe. It is not intended toreplace existing national or academic guidelines, butto represent a Europe-wide agreement on a set ofprinciples and priorities for the research community.The Code is provided in this booklet in two forms,the Executive Summary and the full Code.Human curiosity and science are borderless,and so must be the policies that surround them.Global research collaboration is unthinkablewithout a common understanding of the rules ofintegrity. This is why the next step is to develop aninternational Code of Conduct for scientists andstakeholders worldwide.Professor Marja MakarowChief Executive, ESFProfessor Jüri EngelbrechtPresident, ALLEA3The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity