Research integrity is about your research practices, how you present the findings of your research and how your research impacts on society and the wider world. At Imperial you will work with internationally renowned academic staff who will guide you to design rigorous, robust, and reproducible research methods. This will ensure that your research is lawful and that any adverse impact your research may have on society, natural environment, or animals is justified and minimised. Research integrity is also about presenting the findings of your research in a responsible manner.

The College has adopted the Council for Science and Technology's Universal Ethical Code for Scientists and upholds its three principles, which are:

  • Rigour, Honesty and Integrity
  • Respect for Life, the Law and the Public Good
  • Responsible Communications: Listening and Informing

Research integrity - free online courses for PG students

The primary way to ensure research integrity is to promote and maintain a culture of honesty, openness and responsibility. To this end, the Graduate School has the following professional development opportunities available to postgraduate students:

The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA)

The College has signed the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA).  The ethos behind DORA is to improve the ways in which the output of scientific research is evaluated by funding agencies, academic institutions, and other parties.  The outputs from scientific research are many and varied, including: research articles reporting new knowledge, data, reagents, and software; intellectual property; and highly trained young scientists. Funding agencies, institutions that employ scientists, and scientists themselves, all have a desire, and need, to assess the quality and impact of scientific outputs. It is thus imperative that scientific output is measured accurately and evaluated wisely.

As such the College has signalled that it will assess research based on quality rather than where it is published, for example journal impact factor.  The Graduate School promotes the ethos behind DORA at the following professional development workshops:

  • Writing for publication
  • How to be an effective researcher
  • Global Research Impact and Influence retreat
  • Finish Up Move On
  • Impact in academia webinars
  • Understanding the reviewer

References:

Back to the postgraduate research student handbook