Perceptions of research integrity and the Chinese situation: In-depth interviews with Chinese biomedical researchers in Europe

ABSTRACT

Research misconduct has been a threat to Chinese biomedical research. Despite many publications dealing with research integrity in China, little empirical data is available concerning Chinese biomedical researchers’ perceptions of research integrity and misconduct. To learn more about this issue, we interviewed Chinese biomedical researchers in Europe to investigate their perceptions of this issue. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 25 participants until data saturation was reached. The findings indicate that certain aspects of research integrity need elaboration among Chinese biomedical researchers. Participants had a vague understanding of general concepts related to research integrity. Data fabrication, data falsification and plagiarism were perceived as the most severe deviance. Inappropriate authorship (especially gift authorship) and ghost writing were regarded as the most prevalent types of research misconduct in Chinese biomedical research. The harms of certain practices, such as inappropriate authorship, salami publication and multiple submission, were not well recognized. Attitudes toward research misconduct were divided. The current scientific evaluation system, pressures of promotion, motives for fame and other factors were perceived as the main reasons for research misconduct. Participants suggested various measures in addition to existing safeguards to improve research integrity in Chinese biomedical research.

KEYWORDS:

• Research integrity
• research misconduct
• academic morality
• Chinese biomedical research
• Europe

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the interview participants for their participation, which provides valuable data for our work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. Literal meaning of the English term “academic misconduct” refers to misconduct in acdemic activities, which also includes misconduct in the classroom, by teachers or students, and others. Nevertheless, in our interviews, with these terms, we intended to talk about misconduct specifically in research, which was understood by our Chinese participants as well. As stated in previous studies (Cao 2007; Fang, Chen, and Dong 2014; Yi et al. 2017), “学术(academic)” and “研究(research)” share a large overlap in Chinese and “学术不端(academic misconduct)” (rather than “research misconduct”) was the most used when discussing research misconduct, such as fabrication, falsification and plagiarism in research, where the meaning of misconduct in other academic activities, such as misconduct in the classroom is much less discussed.

2. “Research supervisor” is used to mean the person who supervises the research of Master or PhD students and provides them with academic instructions.

Additional information

Funding

The authors would like to acknowledge financial support from the China Scholarship Council (Grant No. 201406090164).