Improving Systems to Promote Research Integrity

Research integrity is manifested thru the use of honest and verifiable research methods with adherence to accepted professional codes. Recently, trustworthiness in research has been challenged by various forms of research misconduct, such as analytical flexibility, data dredging, HARKing (hypothesis after research knowledge), plagiarism, and selective and distorted reporting. Drivers of research misconduct have been identified as institutional--publication incentives to pursue a career, researcher--metric of success is publication volume, and the journal-- more likely to accept papers with positive. The open-access mode propelling the proliferation of predatory journals is causing a dilemma to sound research reporting. Measures were established to curtail research integrity challenges, such as study registration, open data, common reporting standards, a team of rivals, and blind analysis. This report will elaborate and provide insight into what influenced research misconduct, how it can be mitigated, and how to maintain a credible research environment.