HE-R02 — Research Ethics and Integrity

Course Code: HE-R02  |  School: School of Higher Education  |  Cluster: Research Management

Level: Intermediate  |  Estimated duration: 6 weeks (approximately 40 hours)  |  Language: English  |  Certificate: Professional Certificate (non-degree)  |  Format: Self-paced with AI support under human supervision

Overview

Research ethics in its modern institutional form was built out of atrocity. The Nuremberg Code followed the Nazi medical experiments; the Belmont Report followed the Tuskegee syphilis study; the Declaration of Helsinki has been revised repeatedly in response to failures in international trials. That history matters because it explains why ethics review is procedural and adversarial rather than collegial, and why researchers who find it burdensome are nonetheless obliged to submit to it.

This course covers both ethics, concerned with the treatment of participants and communities, and integrity, concerned with the honesty of the research record. The two are governed by different instruments and different institutional bodies but they fail together: a research culture that tolerates sloppy authorship practices tends also to tolerate weak consent practices. The ALLEA European Code of Conduct is used as the primary integrity framework.

Substantial attention is given to research with communities that have historical reason to distrust researchers. Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s critique of extractive research practice is required reading, and learners working with indigenous, minority or vulnerable populations are expected to engage with questions of data sovereignty and community benefit rather than treating consent forms as sufficient.

Learning outcomes

On completion, a successful learner will be able to:

1. Trace the historical development of research ethics governance and explain why current procedures take the form they do.
2. Apply the principles of respect for persons, beneficence and justice to concrete research designs.
3. Design an ethically defensible consent process appropriate to the population and method involved.
4. Distinguish research misconduct from questionable research practices and explain why the latter causes greater aggregate harm.
5. Apply authorship and contributorship standards and resolve realistic authorship disputes.
6. Prepare a complete ethics review application including risk assessment and mitigation.
7. Evaluate research involving vulnerable populations and communities for extractive practice and design for reciprocity.

Who this course is for

Doctoral researchers, early-career academics, ethics committee members, research integrity officers, research managers, and supervisors responsible for the ethical conduct of research students.

Prerequisites

No formal prerequisites. Learners should have a research project, real or proposed, that can serve as the object of the applied tasks.

Syllabus

Module 1 — History, Instruments and Why Review Exists

The governance architecture of research ethics is a record of specific failures, and knowing those cases changes how the rules read. This module establishes that history and the instruments it produced.

Lessons. 1.1 Nuremberg, Tuskegee, Milgram and the formation of review  ·  1.2 The Belmont Report and its three principles  ·  1.3 The Declaration of Helsinki and its revisions  ·  1.4 National and institutional review architecture

Deliverable. A diagnostic note analysing one historical research ethics failure and identifying which current safeguard exists because of it.

Module 2 — Consent, Risk and Participant Protection

Consent is a process rather than a document, and the document is frequently the least informative part of it. This module designs consent for real conditions, including low literacy, hierarchy and online research.

Lessons. 2.1 Informed, ongoing and withdrawable consent  ·  2.2 Capacity, coercion, incentive and the problem of dependent relationships  ·  2.3 Risk assessment, minimisation and the calculation of benefit  ·  2.4 Anonymity, confidentiality and their limits under law

Deliverable. An analytical brief presenting a consent process and risk assessment for one specific study, with the failure points identified.

Module 3 — Integrity and the Research Record

Fabrication and falsification are rare and catastrophic; selective reporting, p-hacking, salami publication and undisclosed conflicts are common and cumulatively more damaging. The module addresses both.

Lessons. 3.1 Fabrication, falsification and plagiarism  ·  3.2 Questionable research practices and the replication crisis  ·  3.3 Pre-registration, transparency and reproducibility  ·  3.4 Investigation processes, whistleblowing and retraction

Deliverable. A design artefact: an integrity risk assessment for one research design, naming the specific practices to which it is vulnerable and the safeguards adopted.

Module 4 — Authorship, Credit and Conflict

Authorship disputes are the most frequent integrity complaint in most institutions, and they arise from norms that differ sharply between disciplines. The module makes those norms explicit and negotiable in advance.

Lessons. 4.1 ICMJE criteria, CRediT taxonomy and disciplinary variation  ·  4.2 Gift, ghost and honorary authorship  ·  4.3 Supervisor–student credit and the power asymmetry  ·  4.4 Conflict of interest declaration and management

Deliverable. An evaluation report resolving three realistic authorship disputes with reference to explicit standards.

Module 5 — Research with Communities and Vulnerable Populations

Formal consent can be obtained for research that remains extractive, and communities repeatedly studied without benefit have well-founded reason to refuse. This module designs for reciprocity rather than mere compliance.

Lessons. 5.1 Decolonising methodologies and the critique of extractive research  ·  5.2 Community consultation, co-design and negotiated benefit  ·  5.3 Indigenous data sovereignty and governance of community data  ·  5.4 Research in conflict, post-disaster and highly unequal settings

Deliverable. An implementation plan for community engagement in one study, specifying negotiated benefit, data governance and the community’s right to withdraw.

Module 6 — Capstone: A Full Ethics Application

The capstone produces a complete, submission-ready ethics application together with a reflective commentary on the ethical difficulties the application form does not capture. Both parts are assessed.

Lessons. 6.1 Completing the application accurately  ·  6.2 Writing risk and mitigation persuasively and honestly  ·  6.3 Preparing participant-facing documents  ·  6.4 Reflecting on residual ethical difficulty

Deliverable. A complete ethics review application for one study, with participant documents, plus a 1,000-word commentary on the ethical issues the form fails to surface.

Assessment

Pass mark 70 per cent. All assessed components must be attempted. Every mark in this course is issued by a human assessor; no assessment outcome is generated automatically.

Rubric criteria

Each assessed artefact is marked against four criteria at four levels (distinction, pass with merit, pass, fail).

1. Ethical reasoning. Principles are applied to specifics rather than restated, and genuine dilemmas are engaged rather than avoided.
2. Procedural competence. Applications and documents meet the standards a real review committee would apply.
3. Integrity awareness. Questionable research practices relevant to the design are identified and specifically guarded against.
4. Respect and reciprocity. Participants and communities are treated as parties with interests, not as data sources.

Reading list

Core. ALLEA (2023) The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity, revised edn. Berlin: All European Academies.

• National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research (1979) The Belmont Report: Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office.
• World Medical Association (2013) Declaration of Helsinki: Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects, as amended. Ferney-Voltaire: WMA.
• Israel, M. (2015) Research Ethics and Integrity for Social Scientists: Beyond Regulatory Compliance, 2nd edn. London: Sage.
• Macfarlane, B. (2009) Researching with Integrity: The Ethics of Academic Enquiry. New York: Routledge.
• Smith, L. T. (2021) Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, 3rd edn. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Academic integrity and use of AI

Generative AI may be used in this course as a drafting, translation and critique aid, and its use must be disclosed. Every submission carries a short use-of-AI statement naming the tools used, the tasks they performed and the checks the learner applied to the output. Using AI to fabricate data, invent sources, impersonate an interview participant, or produce an artefact the learner cannot explain in a live viva is prohibited.

All citations are verified before submission; a reference that cannot be located by the assessor is treated as fabricated. Fabrication, plagiarism and undisclosed ghost-authorship result in failure of the component and referral to the academic integrity panel. Marks in this course are issued by human assessors, and any learner may be asked to defend a submission orally before a mark is confirmed.