Integrity in Biomedical Research: A Systematic Review of Studies in China

Abstract

Recent empirical evidence has demonstrated that research misconduct occurs to a substantial degree in biomedical research. It has been suggested that scientific integrity is also of concern in China, but this seems to be based largely on anecdotal evidence. We, therefore, sought to explore the Chinese situation, by making a systematic review of published empirical studies on biomedical research integrity in China. One of our purposes was also to summarize the existing body of research published in Chinese. We searched the China National Knowledge Infrastructure, Wanfang Data, PubMed and Web of Science for potentially relevant studies, and included studies meeting our inclusion criteria, i.e. mainly those presenting empirically obtained data about the practice of research in China. All the data was extracted and synthesized using an inductive approach. Twenty-one studies were included for review. Two studies used qualitative methods (interviews) and nineteen studies used quantitative methods (questionnaires). Studies involved mainly medical postgraduates and nurses and they investigated awareness, attitudes, perceptions and experiences of research integrity and misconduct. Most of the participants in these 21 studies reported that research integrity is of great importance and that they obey academic norms during their research. Nevertheless, the occurrence of research misbehaviors, such as fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, improper authorship and duplicate submission was also reported. Strengthening research integrity training, developing the governance system and improving the scientific evaluation system were areas of particular attention in several studies. Our review demonstrates that a substantial number of articles have been devoted to research integrity in China, but only a few studies provide empirical evidence. With more safeguard measures of research integrity being taken in China, it would be crucial to conduct more research to explore researchers' in-depth perceptions and evaluate the changes.

Perceptions of plagiarism by biomedical researchers: an online survey in Europe and China

“…We designed a questionnaire based on the TURNITIN definition of plagiarism [27], our review of documents on scientific integrity in Chinese universities [28] and an interview study of Chinese scholars based in Europe [29]. The survey contained three parts (see Additional file 1).…”

“…Although we developed the questionnaire on the basis of the Turnitin definition of plagiarism [27] and our previous work [28,29], and carefully elaborated it, we acknowledge that it was not formally validated.…”

The Moral Consideration of Artificial Entities: A Literature Review

“…Using a systematic search methodology, we address these questions, provide an overview of the literature, and suggest opportunities for further research. Common in social science and clinical research (see, for example, Higgins and Green, 2008 ; Campbell Collaboration, 2014 ), systematic reviews have recently been used in philosophy and ethics research (Nill & Schibrowsky, 2007 ; Mittelstadt, 2017 ; Hess and Fore, 2017 ; Saltz & Dewar, 2019 ; Yi et al, 2019 ).…”

El plagio, su detección y como prevenirlo en la literatura médica

“…La segunda revisión sistemática, realizada en 2019 por Yi y colaboradores (18), presentó una serie de estudios empíricos publicados sobre la integridad de la investigación y la mala conducta en la investigación biomédica en China. El objetivo fue obtener una visión integral de la investigación existente realizada en China sobre la conciencia, las actitudes, las percepciones y las experiencias de los investigadores biomédicos con respecto a la integridad y la mala conducta de la investigación.…”

“…Los autores concluyeron que el fortalecimiento de la formación en integridad de la investigación, el desarrollo del sistema de gobernanza y la mejora del sistema de evaluación científica fueron áreas de especial atención en varios estudios. Esta revisión demostró que se ha dedicado un número sustancial de artículos a la integridad de la investigación en China, pero solo unos pocos estudios proporcionaron una evidencia diferente a la empírica y por esta razón concluyen que sería crucial realizar más investigaciones para explorar las percepciones en profundidad de los investigadores y evaluar los cambios (18).…”