Annual Report on Research Integrity 2023-24

Background

The University has, as a member of Universities UK, agreed to adhere to the commitments of the Universities UK Concordat to Support Research Integrity (2019).

1. Summary of actions and activities

Summary of actions and activities that have been undertaken to support and strengthen understanding and the application of research integrity issues.

• The University's Research Sponsorship processes and underpinning policy position are being revised for research which relates to regulatory frameworks as governed by the UK Policy Framework for Health and Social Care (2017), the Medicines for Human Use (Clinical Trials) Regulations (2004) and the Medical Devices Directive (2022)
• The Responsible Metrics guide has been revised to support the Internal Promotions/Conferment process
• The University SharePoint resource to support staff awareness and understanding Security Related Issues in International Research Collaboration – Trusted Research (internal Staff and Student Link) has been developed further in collaboration with the UK Government the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure (CPNI) and the National Security Centre, particularly in terms of trusted research and export control. There is a planned Internation Partnership Workshop in September 2024
• The University’s Rights Retention position has been revised to enable authors, from the 1st October 2024, to retain their intellectual ownership rights to their work to make the Author Accepted Manuscript or Version of Record, where the publisher permits and immediate Open Access at the time of publication with a Creative Commons CC-BY licence under zero embargo. A LibGuide has been developed to support staff and students with this change
• The University is one of the founding institutional members of the CoARA (Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment) National Chapter: United Kingdom
• The University is a case study intuition for the UK Reproducibility Network Open and Responsible Researcher Reward and Recognition (OR4) project and is currently progressing with the OR4 Institutional Maturity Survey
• The Researcher Development Programme (internal staff link) includes training and support for research ethics, governance and integrity

2. Research Misconduct

The University has a Research Misconduct Policy and associated procedures that provide a transparent, timely, robust and fair approach to dealing with allegations of misconduct. Training and guidance to support research misconduct was further enhanced in 2023-24 with the developments outlined in Section 1.

There have been no formal investigations of research misconduct during the academic year 2023-24.