Research integrity awareness among biology students – Experience from the University of Belgrade

ABSTRACT

The importance of promoting research ethics in higher education has been widely recognized but poorly examined, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. This paper reports the findings of a systematic investigation of students’ knowledge of, experience with, and attitudes to research integrity among bachelor, masters-, and doctoral-level students in the Faculty of Biology at the University of Belgrade. The study was conducted as a self-administered anonymous online survey, consisting of open-ended, multiple-choice, and type-scale questions used to assess rates of knowledge and awareness of research integrity. The overall response rate was 23.4%. While biology students at all levels of the study had a high rate of knowledge about research misconduct, 4.29% admitted plagiarism, 3.28% fabrication of data, 2.78% falsification, and 1.78% presentation of the results or data in a misleading way. The level of the study among students in the Faculty of Biology was not associated with rates of knowledge and awareness on research integrity. Prior ethics training and students’ research experience were associated with increased knowledge on research misconduct, faculty policies that regulate it, and attitudes and perceptions of important research integrity issues. Based on these observations, a series of recommendations for improving research ethics training are presented.

KEYWORDS:

• Research integrity
• research misconduct
• awareness
• students
• biology

Acknowledgments

Author would like to acknowledge Sean Philpott-Jones, PhD for generous help during conduction of survey, data collection and analysis, and manuscript preparation, and professor Paul Cummins from Clarkson University for his useful suggestions and recommendations. Author is thankful to all students from the Faculty of Biology at the University of Belgrade who participated in the study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This study is based on research submitted for Masters Project at Clarkson University, USA. The study was conducted thanks to US National Institutes of Health Fogarty International Center for supporting the Advanced Certificate Program in Research Ethics in Central and Eastern Europe.