Designing and implementing a research integrity promotion plan: recommendations for research funders

Various stakeholders in science have put research integrity high on their agenda. Among them, research funders are prominently placed to foster research integrity by requiring that the organizations and individual researchers they support make an explicit commitment to research integrity. Moreover, funders need to adopt appropriate research integrity practices themselves. To facilitate this, we recommend that funders develop and implement a Research Integrity Promotion Plan (RIPP). This Consensus View offers a range of examples of how funders are already promoting research integrity, distills 6 core topics that funders should cover in a RIPP, and provides guidelines on how to develop and implement a RIPP. We believe that the 6 core topics we put forward will guide funders towards strengthening research integrity policy in their organization and guide the researchers and research organizations they fund

Research integrity: nine ways to move from talk to walk

Counselling, coaches and collegiality — how institutions can share resources to promote best practice in science

Review of population health research and health services research in Ireland.

The Health Research Board (HRB) today launched its ‘Review of population health research and health services research in Ireland’. The review, informed by the thinking of leading experts, provides clear evidence on the greater role for research in improving the health of the Irish population and the manner in which the Irish health care system functions. It hopes to drive change by grounding concepts in the reality of data, explaining as well as describing the challenges and opportunities that we must all address in the coming years

TechEthos D5.5 Complementing the ALLEA European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity

<p>The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity (hereafter named the "European Code of Conduct"), published by the European Federation of Academies of Sciences and Humanities (ALLEA), serves the European research community as a framework for self-regulation across all scientific and scholarly disciplines and for all research settings. The latest revision of the European Code of Conduct was <a href="https://allea.org/allea-publishes-2023-revised-edition-of-the-european-code-of-conduct-for-research-integrity/">released in June 2023</a> and takes account of the latest social, political, and technological developments, as well as trends emerging in the research landscape. These revisions took place in the context of the EU-funded TechEthos project, with the aim to also identify gaps and necessary additions related to the integration of ethics in research protocols and the possible implications of new technologies and their applications.</p><p>In addition to extensive input from within the ALLEA community, detailed feedback from 31 stakeholder organisations and projects was considered during the revision of the European Code of Conduct. As part of this stakeholder consultation process, the views of the TechEthos consortium partners were collected both in writing and during an online workshop. In addition to input on broader research integrity issues, the unique expertise within the TechEthos consortium allowed for the collection of critical input on the ethical, legal, and societal aspects related to the development and application of new technologies, as well as on the responsible use of new technologies in collecting, analysing, and publishing research results. This deliverable provides a short history of the European Code of Conduct, details the revision process leading to the recently published edition, summarizes the feedback from the TechEthos consortium and implementation thereof, and describes current and ongoing communication and dissemination activities. </p><p>The full version of the European Code of Conduct, as well as a document that summarizes the stakeholder consultation process and its outcomes, can be accessed directly via <a href="https://allea.org/code-of-conduct/">https://allea.org/code-of-conduct/</a>:</p><ul><li>ALLEA (2023) The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity – Revised Edition 2023. Berlin. DOI 10.26356/ECOC. (<a href="https://allea.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/European-Code-of-Conduct-Revised-Edition-2023.pdf">link</a>)</li><li>Summary and Outcomes of the Stakeholder Consultation. (<a href="https://allea.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Feedback-to-Stakeholders-on-2023-ECoC-Revision.pdf">link</a>)</li></ul&gt

Distribution of Oxytetracycline Resistance Plasmids between Aeromonads in Hospital and Aquaculture Environments: Implication of Tn1721 in Dissemination of the Tetracycline Resistance Determinant Tet A

Oxytetracycline-resistant (OT(r)) mesophilic aeromonads were recovered from untreated hospital effluent (72 isolates) and from fish farm hatchery tanks (91 isolates) at sites within the English Lake District, Cumbria, England. The transfer of OT(r) plasmids from these isolates was investigated. Using Escherichia coli J53-1 as a recipient, 11 isolates from the hospital site and 6 isolates from the fish farm site transferred OT(r) plasmids (designated pFBAOT1 to 17). Original isolates were identified using fatty acid methyl ester and fluorescent amplified fragment length polymorphism comparisons as either Aeromonas hydrophila HG3 (eight isolates), A. veronii b.v. sobria HG8 (six isolates), and A. caviae HGB5 (one isolate). One isolate remained unidentified, and one could not be assigned a taxonomic designation beyond the genus level. Plasmids pFBAOT1 to -17 were screened for the presence of the tetracycline resistance determinants Tet A to E and Tet G. Only determinant Tet A (10 plasmids) was detected in these plasmids, with 7 tet gene determinants remaining unclassified. In all cases, Tet A was located on a 5.5-kb EcoRI restriction fragment. Hybridization with inc-rep probes N, P, Q, W, and U showed pFBAOT3, -4, -5, -6, -7, -9, and -11, from the hospital environment, to be IncU plasmids. Further, restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analyses and DNA probing demonstrated that pFBAOT plasmids were closely related to IncU OT(r) plasmids pASOT, pASOT2, pASOT3, pRAS1 (originally isolated from A. salmonicida strains from fish farms in Scotland and Norway, respectively), and pIE420 (isolated from a German hospital E. coli strain). In addition, DNA analyses demonstrated that plasmids pRAS1 and pIE420 had identical RFLP profiles and that all fragments hybridized to each other. The presence of tetracycline resistance transposon Tn1721 in its entirety or in a truncated form in these plasmids was demonstrated. These results provided direct evidence that related tetracycline resistance-encoding plasmids have disseminated between different Aeromonas species and E. coli and between the human and aquaculture environments in distinct geographical locations. Collectively, these findings provide evidence to support the hypothesis that the aquaculture and human compartments of the environment behave as a single interactive compartment

Comparison of the antimicrobial tolerance of oxytetracycline-resistant heterotrophic bacteria isolated from hospital sewage and freshwater fishfarm water in Belgium

The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between antimicrobial tolerance and taxonomic diversity among the culturable oxyretracycline-resistant (Ot(r)) heterotrophic bacterial population in two Belgian aquatic sites receiving wastewater either from human medicine or from aquaculture. The study of Ot(r) heterotrophs and mesophilic Aeromonas spp. allowed comparison of tolerance data at the inter-genus as well as at the intragenus level. In total, 354 independently obtained Ot(r) isolates were subjected to antimicrobial tolerance testing and identified by GLC analysis of their cellular fatty acid methyl esters (FAMEs), by API 20E profiling and/or by Fluorescent Amplified Fragment Length Polymorphism (FAFLP) DNA fingerprinting. In general, Ot(r) hospital heterotrophs displayed a higher frequency (84%) of ampicillin (Amp) tolerance compared to the Ot(r) heterotrophs from the freshwater fishfarm site (22%). FAME results indicated that this effect was linked to the predominance of intrinsically ampicillin-resistant Ot(r) Aeromonas strains over representatives of Acinetobacter and Escherichia coli within the hospital strain set. Among the Ot(r) mesophilic Aeromonas strain set, the global tolerance profiles of the two sites only differed in a higher number of kanamycin (Kan) -tolerant strains (43%) for hospital aeromonads in comparison with the fishfarm aeromonads (8%). To some extent, this finding was correlated with the specific presence of Aeromonas caviae DNA hybridisation group (HG) 4. Collectively, these results suggest that the profiles for Amp and Kan tolerance observed in both sites arose from taxonomic differences in the culturable Ot(r) bacterial population at the generic or subgeneric level. In addition, our identification data also revealed that Enterobacter sp., Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, and A. veronii biovar sobria HG8 may be considered potential indicator organisms to assess microbial tolerance in various compartments of the aquatic environment

Stewards of Integrity: Institutional Approaches to Promote and Safeguard Good Research Practice in Europe

56 pages.In December 2000, the European Science Foundation published a Science Policy Briefing entitled Good Scientific Practice in Research and Scholarship. The time was not coincidental. During the 1990s, there were many major cases of research misconduct that were widely publicised in both the scientific and general media.As research organisations in various countries were undertaking efforts to tackle the problem, there was a need to learn from each other’s experiences and with the idea of the European Research Area (ERA) then burgeoning, discussions began on whether there should be coordinated efforts at the European level.The ESF Science Policy Briefing No. 10 surveyed the then existing policies and practices in Europe and discussed the responsibilities of researchers and research organisations. It called upon ESF Member Organisations, to act, in their diverse roles, as stewards of research integrity.To this end, the European Science Foundation collected information from its Member Organisations and other relevant bodies, and this resulting report presents the policies, approaches and practices to foster good scientific practice found in several European countries.Although the report is not exhaustive both in terms of countries and institutions covered, it provides a basis for an overview of mechanisms to promote good research practice and to handle cases of alleged research misconduct that exist in different European countries.This work and publication was part-funded by the European Commission (Contract No GNBL-2007-00002).Peer reviewe