Summary
Journals and research institutions have common interests regarding the trustworthiness of research publications but their specific roles and responsibilities differ. These draft recommendations aim to address issues surrounding cooperation and liaison between journals and institutions about possible and actual problems with reported research. The proposals will be discussed at various meetings including the World Conference on Research Integrity in May 2017. We will also consider comments and suggestions posted on this preprint.
The main recommendations are that:
National registers of individuals or departments responsible for research integrity at institutions should be created.
Institutions should develop mechanisms for assessing the validity of research reports that are independent from processes to determine whether individual researchers have committed misconduct.
Essential research data and peer review records should be retained for at least 10 years.
While journals should normally raise concerns with authors in the first instance, they also need criteria to determine when to contact the institution before, or at the same time as, alerting the authors in cases of suspected data fabrication or falsification to prevent the destruction of evidence.
Anonymous or pseudonymous allegations made to journals or institutions should be judged on their merit and not dismissed automatically.
Institutions should release relevant sections of reports of research trustworthiness or misconduct investigations to all journals that have published research that was the subject of the investigation.
