---
title: "Scientific integrity"
chunk: 4/7
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_integrity"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:17:33.558998+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Implementation and assessment of codes of conduct ===
Several case studies and retrospective analyses have been devoted to the reception of codes of conduct in scientific communities. They frequently highlight a discrepancy between the theoretical norms and the "lived morality of researchers".
In 2004, Caroline Whitbeck underlined that the enforcement of a few formal rules has overall failed to answer to a structural "erosion or neglect" of scientific trust. In 2009, Schuurbiers, Osseweijer and Kinderler led a series of interviews in the aftermath of the Dutch code of conduct on research integrity, introduced in 2005. Overall, most respondents were unaware of the code and complementary ethical recommendations. While the principles "were seen to reflect the norms and values within science rather well", they seemed to be isolated from the actual work practices, which "may lead to morally complex situations". Respondents were also critical of the underlying individualist philosophy of the code, which shifted the entire blame to individual researchers without taking into account institutional or community-wide issues. In 2015, a survey of "64 faculty members at a large southwestern university" in the United States "yielded similar results": many of the respondents were not aware of the existing ethical guidelines, and the communication process remained poor. In 2019, a case study on Italian universities noted that the proliferation of research codes "has a reactive nature because codes of ethics are drawn up in response to scandals and as a result are punitive and negative, with lists of prohibitions".
Codes of conduct on research integrity may have a more significant impact on professional identity. Development of research codes has been equated to an internalization of issues related to research integrity within scientific social circles and its close associate with disputed results, which made it a typical form of "knowledge club" governance. In contrast to a wider range of ethical issues that may overlap with more general social debates (such as gender equality), research integrity belongs to a form of professional ethics analogous to the ethical standards applied by journalists or medical practicians. As such, not only does it create a common moral framework but also, incidentally, "justifies the existence of the profession as separate from other professions". While the impact of codes on actual ethical practices remains difficult to assess, they have a more measurable impact on the professionalization of research, by transforming informal norms and customs into a set of predefined principles: "codes in general are supported both by those pursuing them as a vehicle to encourage the greater professionalization of biologists (e.g., an initial stage to introducing professional licensing) and those seeking them to forestall any further regulation."

== Research integrity and open science ==
In the 2000s and 2010s, scientific integrity was gradually reframed in the context of open science, and increased accessibility to scientific publications. The debate on research reproducibility has significantly contributed to this evolution.

=== Ethics of open science ===
The underlying ethical principles of open science predates the development of an organized open science movement. In 1973, Robert K. Merton theorized a normative "ethos of science" structured on a "norm of disclosure". This norm "was far from universally accepted" in the early development of scientific communities and has remained "one of the many ambivalent precepts contained in the institution of science." Disclosure was counterbalanced by the limitations of the publication and evaluation process, that tended to slow down the divulgation of research results. In the early 1990s, this norm of disclosure was reframed as norm of "openness" or "open science".
The early open access and open science movements emerged partly as a reaction against the large corporate model that has come to dominate scientific publishing since the Second World War. Open science was not framed as a radical transformation of scientific communication but as a realization of core underlying principles, already visible at the start of the scientific revolution of the 17th and the 18th century: the autonomy and self-governance of scientific communities and the divulgation of research results.
Since 2000, the open science movement has expanded beyond access to scientific outputs (publication, data or software) to encompass the entire process of scientific production. The reproducibility crisis has been an instrumental factor in this development, as it moved the debates over the definition open science further from scientific publishing. In 2018, Vicente-Saez and Martinez-Fuentes have attempted to map the common values shared by the standard definitions of open science in the English-speaking scientific literature indexed on Scopus and the Web of Science. Access is no longer the main dimension of open science, as it has been extended by more recent commitments toward transparency, collaborative work and social impact. These diverse conceptual dimensions "encompasses (Graph 5) the emerging trends on Open Science such as open code […] open notebooks, open lab books, science blogs, collaborative bibliographies, citizen science, open peer review, or pre-registration"
Through this process, open science has been increasingly structured over a consisting set of ethical principles: "novel open science practices have developed in tandem with novel organising forms of conducting and sharing research through open repositories, open physical labs, and transdisciplinary research platforms. Together, these novel practices and organising forms are expanding the ethos of science at universities."

=== Codification of open science ethics ===
The translation of the ethical values of open science toward applied recommendation was mostly undertaken by institutional and communities initiatives until the 2010s. The TOP guidelines were elaborated in 2014 by a committee for Transparency and Openness Promotion that included "disciplinary leaders, journal editors, funding agency representatives, and disciplinary experts largely from the social and behavioral sciences". The guidelines rely on eight standards, with different levels of compliance. While the standards are modular, they also aim to articulate a consistent ethos of science as "they also complement each other, in that commitment to one standard may facilitate adoption of others.". The highest levels of compliance for each standard include the following requirements: