Scientific societies and research integrity: What are they doing and how well are they doing it?

Abstract

Scientific societies can play an important role in promoting ethical research practices among their members, and over the past two decades several studies have addressed how societies perform this role. This survey continues this research by examining current efforts by scientific societies to promote research integrity among their members. The data indicate that although many of the societies are working to promote research integrity through ethics codes and activities, they lack rigorous assessment methods to determine the effectiveness of their efforts.

Guidance on research integrity provided by European discipline-specific learned societies: A scoping review

“…Medical and Health Sciences societies, which we found provided the greatest number of guidance documents, likely do so for several reasons, such as the involvement of human subjects in research, and therefore the greater legal repercussions of misconduct, as well as the historical development of professional CoCs within this discipline (31). The relative lack of guidance from societies within other disciplines is particularly striking considering the role of societies within the research landscape and their related responsibilities, which includes providing guidance on correct behaviour as one way of supporting researchers in their professional role (32)(33)(34). Such guidance, especially from disciplines which are currently particularly under-represented in RI initiatives, would be valuable in providing context-sensitive recommendations for researchers on how to conduct research responsibly.…”

Perspectives

“…Promoting ethical policies and codes of conduct has become a major task of specialized bodies within institutes (see Iverson et al 2003). In compliance with international regulations, most universities have established special Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) to safeguard 'research ethics,' about which we write in greater detail in Chap.…”

PLACE: An Open-Source Python Package for Laboratory Automation, Control, and Experimentation

“…ObsPy is designed for processing seismological data but has powerful functionality for processing waveforms or time series of all kinds. The package continues to develop at a rapid pace, yet ObsPy's test-driven approach 28 has yielded stable releases on a regular basis.…”

“…28 We ensure effective data management by incorporating detailed header information, using an efficient and well-established data format, and dynamically saving data to file as it is acquired.…”