Mentoring for stronger cultures of integrity
Building a culture of integrity in the research community
A lack of a well-developed ethics infrastructure is not an obstacle to building a culture of integrity in the research community. However, it may be challenging to maintain practices is there are no procedures or routines part of an infrastructure in place. In such a context, the responsibility of the research community ever more emphasized, and especially the role of seniors in the community.
One important step in building a culture of integrity is to establish ethics and integrity training. The challenge is to recruit trainers, and therefore, seniors are in a key position to take up that task. In addition, focusing on supervision may be amongst the most powerful means of implementing and spreading a culture of integrity. While taking on the role of mentor is generally a more considered and conscious choice, many more academics supervise student research and the work of junior staff members irrespective of whether they see themselves as mentors or not. Therefore, targeting supervisors may be a fruitful avenue in terms of influencing research cultures. Such an initiative must have the sustained support of the leadership of the academic unit. If leaders do not commit to supporting efforts in creating a culture of integrity, any initiatives are likely to flounder.
The challenge is that institutions may have a tendency to try to maintain status quo, which easily leads to not bringing attention to matters known as problematic. Sometimes negative attention to lack of integrity or ethics is the key to bring issues to the attention of leaders and eventually harness the context for change. At this point, however, much damage is often done to the reputation of the institution, and building back credibility may take a long time. Therefore, a proactive approach involving training and focus on supervision is a far more sustainable strategy in the long run.
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Ethics Education in Science (Statement by the ALLEA Permanent Working Group on Science and Ethics 2013)
Alfredo, K., & Hart, H. (2011). The university and the responsible conduct of research: Who is responsible for what? Science and Engineering Ethics, 17, 447–457.
Aluede, O., Omoregie, E. O., & Osa-Edoh, G. I. (2006). Academic dishonesty as a contemporary problem in higher education: How can academic advisers help. Reading Improvement, 43(2), 97–106.
Anderson, M. S., Horn, A. S., Risbey, K. R., Ronning, E. A., De Vries, R., & Martinson, B. C. (2007). What do mentoring and training in the responsible conduct of research have to do with scientists’ misbehavior? Findings from a national survey of NIH-funded scientists. Academic Medicine, 82, 853–860.
Anderson, M. S., & Louis, K. S. (1994). The graduate student experience and subscription to the norms of science. Research in Higher Education, 35(3), 273–299.
Bertram Gallant, T. (Ed.) (2011). Creating the Ethical Academy. A systems approach to understanding misconduct and empowering change in Higher Education. New York, NY: Routledge.
East, J. (2010). Judging plagiarism: A problem of morality and convention. Higher Education, 59, 69–83.
Printeger. Promoting Integrity as an Integral Dimension of Excellence in Research.
Responsible Conduct of Research. Mentoring. Course portal. Columbia University in the City of New York. Center for Teaching and Learning
UK Research Integrity Office UKRIO: UKRIO and the Royal Society has developed Integrity in Practice resource and toolkit for developing and improving research integrity and supporting positive research culture.
Learning objectives
- Understanding what are the elements contributing to a culture of integrity in research communities
- Being aware of both the implicit and explicit ways in which supervisors and mentors influence the learning processes of their supervises/mentees and others working in the research community
- Understanding the role of and possessing a command of practices that supervisors and mentors employ in establishing a culture of integrity
Introduction
There are features in academic and research environments that are particular powerful in promoting good research conduct and preventing misconduct and the application of poor practices.
First, integration into the academic community serves to prevent research misconduct (True et al. 2011). This implies that an individual with only a loose attachment to one’s academic environment may be more easily prone to adopt poor practices. It could be the result of lack of knowledge about good practices as well as of opportunities to discuss the research with more experienced colleagues.
Second, part of integration is that one has the opportunity to interact with other faculty and exchange views on how to act in situations that require ethical decision-making. For instance, novice members of an academic community learn about ethical guidelines and codes of conduct effectively through relationships and interactions with faculty (McCabe 1993; Anderson and Louis 1994; Aluede et al. 2006). Having access to codes and guidelines is a key step in promoting good research practice, and seniors in the academic community can help newcomers and less experienced colleagues to access these.
But access is just a first step. Seniors play an important role in promoting acceptance of the standards put forth in codes of conduct and guidelines (Alfredo and Hart 2011; Gray and Jordan 2012). Individual academics’ views on academic integrity and their role in promoting it can vary and be highly subjective (e.g. Escámez et al. 2008; East 2010, Löfström et al., 2015). As role models, they communicate what the true standards are and whether they align with those proposed in the codes and guidelines, or not. Research suggests that mentoring is a powerful tool in both decreasing and increasing problematic behaviors and bad research practices (e.g. Anderson et al., 2007). It is important that each academic recognize that they influence those around them and reflect over what kind of culture they end up promoting through their example. In cultures that value high standards of ethics and integrity, the threshold for transgression is higher. While established practices and individual and shared values make up the culture of a research community, it is evidence that the responsibility, too, has a collective nature.
Some well-known cases (e.g. the Stapel case) has shown that a lack of transparency is conducive of misconduct. Also competition and pressure to perform (e.g., Anderson and Louis 1994; Martinson et al. 2005; Löfström and Kupila 2013) may influence how researchers choose to behave. Therefore, while the best academic environments tend to have strong elements of competition, undesirable features can be reduced through focus on positive interdependence (cf. Jonassen, 2000), mutual gain and a shared goal or mission that reaches beyond what each individual can perform.
Seniors in the research community have a particular responsibility to mentor and supervise on research ethics and integrity. They can do so through the following steps towards a culture of integrity:
- Integration to academic community
- Awareness of and access to guidelines
- Acceptance of guidelines
- Positive role-models for newcomers and less experienced colleagues
- Alignment of guidelines with local practices
- Transparency of practices
- Climate conducive of discussion
- A shared mission that reaches beyond individual gain
- Respect of others
Alfredo, K., & Hart, H. (2011). The university and the responsible conduct of research: Who is responsible for what? Science and Engineering Ethics, 17, 447–457.
Aluede, O., Omoregie, E. O., & Osa-Edoh, G. I. (2006). Academic dishonesty as a contemporary problem in higher education: How can academic advisers help. Reading Improvement, 43(2), 97–106.
Anderson, M. S., Horn, A. S., Risbey, K. R., Ronning, E. A., De Vries, R., & Martinson, B. C. (2007). What do mentoring and training in the responsible conduct of research have to do with scientists’ misbehavior? Findings from a national survey of NIH-funded scientists. Academic Medicine, 82, 853–860.
Anderson, M. S., & Louis, K. S. (1994). The graduate student experience and subscription to the norms of science. Research in Higher Education, 35(3), 273–299.
East, J. (2010). Judging plagiarism: A problem of morality and convention. Higher Education, 59, 69–83.
Escámez, J., López, R. G., & Jover, G. (2008). Restructuring university degree programmes: a new opportunity for ethics education? Journal of Moral Education, 37(1), 41–53.
Gray, P. W., & Jordan, S. R. (2012). Supervision and academic integrity: Supervisors as exemplars and mentors. Journal of Academic Ethics, 10, 299–311.
Jonassen, D.H. (2000). Transforming learning with technology: beyond modernism and postmodernism or whoever controls the technology creates the reality. Educational Technology, 40, 21–25.
Löfström, E. & Kupila, P. (2013) The Instructional challenges of Student Plagiarism. Journal of Academic Ethics, 11(3), 231-242.
Löfström, E. & Pyhältö, K. (2015). Ethics in the supervisory relationship: supervisors’ and doctoral students’ dilemmas in the natural and behavioural sciences. Studies in Higher Education, 42(4), 232-247.
Löfström, E., Trotman, T., Furnari, M. & Shephard, K. (2015). Who teaches academic integrity and how do they do it? Higher Education, 69(3), 435-448.
Martinson, B. C., Anderson M. S., & de Vries, R. (2005). Scientists behaving badly. Nature, 435, 737–738 (9 June 2005).
McCabe, D. L. (1993). Faculty responses to academic dishonesty: Honour codes and other contextual influences. Research in Higher Education, 34, 647–658.
True, G., Alexander, L. B., & Richman, K. A. (2011). Misbehaviors of front-line research personnel and the integrity of community-based research. Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics, 6, 3–12.