A research misconduct severity matrix that could serve to harmonize adjudication of findings

Abstract

The procedures undertaken to investigate a research misconduct are usually dictated by research ethics and integrity policy, prescribed either by the institute or by the national agency overseeing research. This policy would typically contain information on <i>how</i> an investigation should be conducted, as well as a non-exhaustive list of what constitutes research misconduct. Typically lacking from these policies would be a precise prescription of how the degree of severity of research misconduct could be determined. Adjudication of severity may often be left to the discretion of individual research integrity officers, or a committee of enquiry. Owing to the subjectivity of this process, the conclusion reached could vary between investigating officers/committees, even when adjudicating based on similar evidence. This variation would likely have an impact on the sanctions delivered. We hereby propose a research misconduct severity matrix, which considers eight independent ethical elements with different weightage, each assigned a numerical score by factoring against five different shades of severity (from minor to major). The sum of the scores associated with these elements returns the research misconduct severity score, a numerical value which would aid investigating officers/committees in reaching a consensus on misconduct severity, and better standardize sanctions meted out.

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