Editorial
On May 31, about 600 delegates from over 50 countries and all continents will gather in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the 4th World Conference on Research Integrity. The inaugural 1st World Conference was held in Lisbon, Portugal, 8 years ago. Attendees heard debates about whether scientific misconduct needed to be addressed or whether science could keep its own house in order. Examples of egregious misconduct featured strongly. And although the main goal of the first conference was to raise awareness of the importance of research integrity globally, the emphasis was on misconduct, its definitions and causes. The 2nd and 3rd World Conferences—held in Singapore and Montreal, Canada, respectively—produced consensus documents on fundamental principles and responsibilities that support research integrity and on specific issues in research collaborations that need care and attention. Strengthening research integrity and responsible conduct of research worldwide (rather than misconduct) became the focus. Many national, institutional, and regional codes, guidance documents, and policies have been written since. Do they help beyond raising awareness? Optimists might say, perhaps; pessimists will say they are just tick-box exercises with wide variations in the definition of misconduct and questionable research practices. So what is needed now is a further leap in thinking to link research integrity with the way research is decided on, done, reported, and rewarded—the research environment. The 4th Conference, with its overall theme of Research Rewards and Integrity: Improving Systems to Promote Responsible Research, is attempting to do so. Keynote and plenary presentations will explore the status quo of the current research environment and the national and institutional reward systems in the form of grant success, career progression, promotion, and appointments. As a next step, the discussions will focus on the role of funders, countries, institutions, and journals and publishers in driving change towards a reward system that breaks out of easy, mindless—and often meaningless—measurements and reflects the true purpose of research: honest, diligent, and transparent scientific inquiry that advances knowledge for the good of society. In 2012, the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment issued a set of recommendations to www.thelancet.com Vol 385 May 30, 2015
improve “the way in which the quality of research output is evaluated”. Its general conclusion is: “do not use journal-based metrics, such as Journal Impact Factor, as a surrogate measure of the quality of individual research articles to assess an individual scientist’s contributions, or in hiring, promotion, or funding decisions.” This is an important start to address a reward system that is at best superficial and imperfect, and at worst (by incentivising quantity over quality) perhaps even encouraging questionable research. The Lancet fully supports this recommendation. But we need to go further. Questionable, unusable, or unneccessary research should not be done in the first place and funders need to think hard about wasted money, time, and effort. In our Series on Research: increasing value, reducing waste, published last year, authors highlighted five areas, from decision making about research to reporting where inefficiency and waste occurs. They estimated that the USA, for example, wasted US$200 billion in 2010. So, on economic efficiency alone, countries should have a strong incentive to pay attention to research integrity and create a research environment that produces usable, needed, and responsible research. Society should demand no less. Researchers themselves, surely, would welcome an environment that frees them from the shackles of imperfect and meaningless metrics and assesses true scientific advance and impact. On Sept 28–30, at a conference in Edinburgh, UK, the authors of the Lancet Series and others will further explore the recommendations and what has been done since publication by researchers, funders, regulators, publishers, industry, and research users. They plan to arrive at a consensus statement and an action plan. The so-called REWARD (REduce research WAste and Reward Diligence) movement will gather momentum. The coming together of the three themes—research integrity; research reward systems; and increasing value and reducing waste in research—is helpful and has greater potential in effecting change than each on its own. Research misconduct will always occur, but while it is important to have robust systems to deal with allegations of fraud, the true challenge we face is creating a sustainable research environment that fulfils science’s true purpose—inquiry to deliver progress for society and our planet. The Lancet
wcri2015
Rewarding true inquiry and diligence in research
For more on the 4th World Research Integrity Conference see http://www.wcri2015.org/ For more on the Lancet Series see http://www.thelancet.com/ series/research For more about the conference in Edinburgh see http:// researchwaste.net/researchwasteequator-conference/
2121
On May 31, about 600 delegates from over 50 countries and all continents will gather in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the 4th World Conference on Research Integrity. The inaugural 1st World Conference was held in Lisbon, Portugal, 8 years ago. Attendees heard debates about whether scientific misconduct needed to be addressed or whether science could keep its own house in order. Examples of egregious misconduct featured strongly. And although the main goal of the first conference was to raise awareness of the importance of research integrity globally, the emphasis was on misconduct, its definitions and causes. The 2nd and 3rd World Conferences—held in Singapore and Montreal, Canada, respectively—produced consensus documents on fundamental principles and responsibilities that support research integrity and on specific issues in research collaborations that need care and attention. Strengthening research integrity and responsible conduct of research worldwide (rather than misconduct) became the focus. Many national, institutional, and regional codes, guidance documents, and policies have been written since. Do they help beyond raising awareness? Optimists might say, perhaps; pessimists will say they are just tick-box exercises with wide variations in the definition of misconduct and questionable research practices. So what is needed now is a further leap in thinking to link research integrity with the way research is decided on, done, reported, and rewarded—the research environment. The 4th Conference, with its overall theme of Research Rewards and Integrity: Improving Systems to Promote Responsible Research, is attempting to do so. Keynote and plenary presentations will explore the status quo of the current research environment and the national and institutional reward systems in the form of grant success, career progression, promotion, and appointments. As a next step, the discussions will focus on the role of funders, countries, institutions, and journals and publishers in driving change towards a reward system that breaks out of easy, mindless—and often meaningless—measurements and reflects the true purpose of research: honest, diligent, and transparent scientific inquiry that advances knowledge for the good of society. In 2012, the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment issued a set of recommendations to www.thelancet.com Vol 385 May 30, 2015
improve “the way in which the quality of research output is evaluated”. Its general conclusion is: “do not use journal-based metrics, such as Journal Impact Factor, as a surrogate measure of the quality of individual research articles to assess an individual scientist’s contributions, or in hiring, promotion, or funding decisions.” This is an important start to address a reward system that is at best superficial and imperfect, and at worst (by incentivising quantity over quality) perhaps even encouraging questionable research. The Lancet fully supports this recommendation. But we need to go further. Questionable, unusable, or unneccessary research should not be done in the first place and funders need to think hard about wasted money, time, and effort. In our Series on Research: increasing value, reducing waste, published last year, authors highlighted five areas, from decision making about research to reporting where inefficiency and waste occurs. They estimated that the USA, for example, wasted US$200 billion in 2010. So, on economic efficiency alone, countries should have a strong incentive to pay attention to research integrity and create a research environment that produces usable, needed, and responsible research. Society should demand no less. Researchers themselves, surely, would welcome an environment that frees them from the shackles of imperfect and meaningless metrics and assesses true scientific advance and impact. On Sept 28–30, at a conference in Edinburgh, UK, the authors of the Lancet Series and others will further explore the recommendations and what has been done since publication by researchers, funders, regulators, publishers, industry, and research users. They plan to arrive at a consensus statement and an action plan. The so-called REWARD (REduce research WAste and Reward Diligence) movement will gather momentum. The coming together of the three themes—research integrity; research reward systems; and increasing value and reducing waste in research—is helpful and has greater potential in effecting change than each on its own. Research misconduct will always occur, but while it is important to have robust systems to deal with allegations of fraud, the true challenge we face is creating a sustainable research environment that fulfils science’s true purpose—inquiry to deliver progress for society and our planet. The Lancet
wcri2015
Rewarding true inquiry and diligence in research
For more on the 4th World Research Integrity Conference see http://www.wcri2015.org/ For more on the Lancet Series see http://www.thelancet.com/ series/research For more about the conference in Edinburgh see http:// researchwaste.net/researchwasteequator-conference/
2121
