When research integrity fails, the institution must handle the fallout
Collaboration and shared digital solutions give universities practical ways to protect themselves, says Liam Earney
Recently, one of our member institutions told us about its frustration at paying to make an article open access, only for the paper to be retracted later because of concerns about research integrity. The article processing charge was not refunded, which caused university managers some discomfort: their institution had invested in improving the visibility of work that could no longer be trusted.
Working with the UK’s education and research organisations to deliver digital infrastructure and shared services, we are seeing a rising tide of stories from institutions concerned about growing threats to research integrity. The threats are anxiety-inducing for everyone who thinks the quality of research matters, but from an institutional point of view the worry is amplified. Even though the university in this story was not at fault it took both a financial and a reputational hit.
A recurrent theme
Today, research integrity is a thread that is woven into so many of the challenges that our members and customers ask for help with. We hear concerns about economic models that are predicated on ever-increasing publication volumes, the incentives inherent in ‘publish or perish’ that pressure researchers to cut corners and adopt questionable practices, the challenges and uncertainties arising from the integration of GenAI into the research lifecycle, and the desire to promote open research practices that encourage transparency and methodological rigour over novelty.
I’ll be talking about some of these issues – and how we’re providing tools, guidance and strategies to tackle them – at OpenAthens’ Access Lab one-day conference later this month. It is great to have this opportunity because issues around research integrity aren’t just becoming more frequent, they’re getting more complicated too.
Publishers add their concerns
Publishers are also highlighting evolving threats across the publication lifecycle, citing fake peer-review rings, paper mills and opaque editorial practices as significant risks. They, too, say that pressure to increase output is intensifying the problem. Retractions have reached unprecedented levels; one publisher saw more than 8,000 papers withdrawn, in 2023 alone.
This is all a sign of systemic manipulation of the scholarly record.
Undisclosed post-publication changes, hidden use of large language models (LLMs) and weak version control are not only integrity failures but security vulnerabilities. They undermine traceability and make it easier for fraudulent work to persist undetected, as documented by René Aquarius and Kim Wever (see first-time scientific sleuths prompt nine retractions for neurosurgery group for more about what they discovered).
As the voices of disquiet get louder, we’re already focused on finding practical solutions. I head up our consultancy, licensing, research management and digital transformation work, making sure we can help our members and customers respond to the challenges they face. We’re providing secure research infrastructures, negotiating sector-wide publishing agreements, supporting institutions with digital resource management and enhancing access to digital resources so researchers are encouraged and supported to do high-quality work.
People power
While I’ll talk more about all that at Access Lab, it’s worth noting that institutions already have staff in many specialisms who, by working effectively together, can help to shift their organisation from reacting to crises towards building a culture where integrity and security are embedded throughout the research process.
There are the senior leaders who set expectations and align incentives with responsible assessment principles, and who can make sure integrity and security functions are properly resourced. There are research integrity teams who develop policy, coordinate investigations and monitor retractions. Library and information professionals guide researchers in evaluating information sources and identifying unreliable outlets, while also playing a key role in promoting the open practices that improve transparency and reproducibility. The research office and partnerships staff carry out due diligence on collaborators, advise on funder requirements and embed integrity clauses in agreements, while academic staff and early-career researchers model responsible behaviour, engage openly with post-publication critique and teach students how to navigate their increasingly complex information environment.
And of course, whoever in the institution delivers it, regular research integrity training helps researchers recognise red flags, interpret retraction notices and avoid building on compromised work.
Specialist support and advice
Looking out into the wider scholarly publishing environment, universities and research organisations can protect themselves against risk by implementing clear publisher policies aligned with guidance from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE), World Association of Medical Editors (WAME) and International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). And they can press for transparent handling of corrections and retractions. Transparency over post-publication changes is also essential.
Supporting initiatives such as the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) and the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA), discourages the misconduct that volume-driven metrics sometimes gives rise to. These organisations are spearheading work to develop best practice in assessing scholarly research and to move to more effective and nuanced assessment methods. Negotiating with publishers for quality assurance, not just output, can help to reinforce this.
We are fortunate in the UK to have a range of organisations working in this space, including the UK Committee on Research Integrity (UKCORI) (which last year published a revised version of the concordat to support research integrity), the UK Research Integrity Office (UKRIO) and the UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN). In Europe, the Netherlands-based International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers (STM) is also focused on projects around research integrity and open research.
These are all good places to learn more and gain support, and organisations such as the Higher Education Policy Institute and UKSG have both published useful resources if you’d like to read more.
Liam Earney is managing director for HE and research at Jisc. He’ll be speaking about ‘access with integrity: protecting the quality of research’ at Access Lab 2026 UK and EMEA on Wednesday 25 February at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester.