The belief norm of academic publishing states that researchers should believe certain claims they publish. The purpose of this paper is to defend the belief norm of academic publishing. In its defense, the advantages and disadvantages of the belief norm are evaluated for academic research and for the publication system. It is concluded that while the norm does not come without costs, academic research systemically benefits from the belief norm and that it should be (...) counted among those that sustain the practice of academic publishing. (shrink)

Selling science has become a common practice in contemporary universities. This commodification of academia pervades many aspects of higher education, including research, teaching, and administration. As such, it raises significant philosophical, political, and moral challenges. This volume offers the first book-length analysis of this disturbing trend from a philosophical perspective and presents views by scholars of philosophy of science, social and political philosophy, and research ethics. The epistemic and moral responsibilities of universities, whether for-profit or nonprofit, are examined (...) from several philosophical standpoints. The contributors discuss the pertinent epistemological and methodological questions, the sociopolitical issues of the organization of science, the tensions between commodified practices and the ideal of “science for the public good,” and the role of governmental regulation and personal ethical behavior. In order to counter coercive and corruptive influences of academic commodification, the contributors consider alternatives to commodified research and offer practical recommendations for establishing appropriate research standards, methodologies and institutional arrangements, and a corresponding normative ethos. (shrink)

Since the 1980s in the US and the 1990s in Europe, patenting and licensing activities by universities have massively increased. This is strongly encouraged by governments throughout the Western world. Many regard academic patenting as essential to achieve ‘knowledge transfer’ from academia to industry. This trend has far-reaching consequences for access to the fruits of academic research and so the question arises whether the current policies are indeed promoting innovation or whether they are instead a symptom of (...) a pro-intellectual property (IP) culture which is blind to adverse effects. Addressing this question requires both empirical analysis (how real is the link between academic patenting and licensing and ‘development’ of academic research by industry?) and normative assessment (which justifications are given for the current policies and to what extent do they threaten important academic values?). After illustrating the major rise of academic patenting and licensing in the US and Europe and commenting on the increasing trend of ‘upstream’ patenting and the focus on exclusive as opposed to non-exclusive licences, this paper will discuss five negative effects of these trends. Subsequently, the question as to why policymakers seem to ignore these adverse effects will be addressed. Finally, a number of proposals for improving university policies will be made. (shrink)

Traditionally, ‘education through research’ is understood to be a main characteristic of education at the university. In this article we will explore how ‘education through research’ is argued to be of major importance for the European knowledge society, how there is still a reference to the idea of Bildung or liberal education, and what research is presumed to be like if it is to have this edifying potential. It will be argued that the edifying potential of (...) class='Hi'>research is related to a normative component in the research activity and that this normative orientation and its presuppositions are problematic today. This lays the way for the exploration of alternative approaches to the edifying potential of research (with reference especially to Jürgen Mittelstrass and Jacques Derrida) and for the discussion of what could be at stake for ‘education through research’. (shrink)

What does the term academic ethics mean? How does this term relate to others in the academic integrity literature, such as research misconduct? Does conceptual confusion in the study of academic ethics complicate development of valid analyses of ethical behavior in an academic setting? The intended goal of many empirical projects on academic ethics is to draw causal conclusions about the factors that lead to faculty or students possessing or disregarding academic integrity. Yet, (...) it is not clear that scholars using the concept academic ethics are measuring the same phenomenon when they use associated concepts, such as responsible conduct of research. The purpose of this paper is to develop a taxonomy of concepts for the empirical study of academic ethics. Based in research on comparative analysis of democracy, another normatively preferable but multifaceted concept, I argue for a taxonomy of concepts for the study of academic integrity that reduces problems of “conceptual stretching” and challenges to the validity of empirical research in this field. (shrink)

Does organizational governance contribute to academic quality? Two top research universities are observed in-depth: Berkeley and the MIT. Three key factors are listed that help generate consistent and lasting high performance. Priority is allocated to self-evaluation and to the development of talent. Values and norms such as community membership, commitment to the affectio societatis, mutual respect and trust strongly regulate the behaviors of the faculty. Complex inner organizational processes are at work making integration and differentiation compatible. Each (...) of these factors contributes to produce top academic quality in a synergetic way. (shrink)

Data from two national surveys of 4,000 faculty and doctoral students in chemistry, civil engineering, microbiology and sociology indicate that both faculty and students subscribe strongly to traditional norms but are more likely to see alternative counternorms enacted in their departments. They also show significant effects of departmental climate on normative orientations and suggest that many researchers express some degree of ambivalence about traditional norms.

In this chapter, one considers finance at its very foundations, namely, at the place where assumptions are being made about the ways to measure the two key ingredients of finance: risk and return. It is well known that returns for a large class of assets display a number of stylized facts that cannot be squared with the traditional views of 1960s financial economics (normality and continuity assumptions, i.e. Brownian representation of market dynamics). Despite the empirical counterevidence, normality and continuity assumptions (...) were part and parcel of financial theory and practice, embedded in all financial practices and beliefs. Our aim is to build on this puzzle for extracting some clues revealing the use of one research strategy in academic community, model tinkering defined as a particular research habit. We choose to focus on one specific moment of the scientific controversies in academic finance: the ‘leptokurtic crisis’ opened by Mandelbrot in 1962. The profoundness of the crisis came from the angle of the Mandelbrot’s attack: not only he emphasized an empirical inadequacy of the Brownian representation, but also he argued for an inadequate grounding of this representation. We give some insights in this crisis and display the model tinkering strategies of the financial academic community in the 1970s and the 1980s. (shrink)

Social sciences research is entrenched with particular values, beliefs, norms, and practices that students, faculty, and researchers reproduce over time. In this article, the author argues for extending what counts as research within the social sciences to be more inclusive of differing methodologies and writing genres. Using personal narrative, diaries, and poetry, the author demonstrates unconventional ways of thinking about, doing, and writing research. He situates his personal experiences as a Ghanaian/American student within relevant literature to (...) illuminate the merging of his home cultural values with those of the academic community and the contradictions and struggles associated with this process. Ultimately, the story portrays the journey of a graduate student as he challenges traditional research norms to open up spaces for underrepresented students to feel more at home within academe. (shrink)

BackgroundConcerns about research misbehavior in academic science have sparked interest in the factors that may explain research misbehavior. Often three clusters of factors are distinguished: individual factors, climate factors and publication factors. Our research question was: to what extent can individual, climate and publication factors explain the variance in frequently perceived research misbehaviors?MethodsFrom May 2017 until July 2017, we conducted a survey study among academic researchers in Amsterdam. The survey included three measurement instruments that (...) we previously reported individual results of and here we integrate these findings.ResultsOne thousand two hundred ninety-eight researchers completed the survey. Results showed that individual, climate and publication factors combined explained 34% of variance in perceived frequency of research misbehavior. Individual factors explained 7%, climate factors explained 22% and publication factors 16%.ConclusionsOur results suggest that the perceptions of the research climate play a substantial role in explaining variance in research misbehavior. This suggests that efforts to improve departmental norms might have a salutary effect on behavior. (shrink)

Protection of intellectual property as well as its exploitation for monetary benefit have existed for centuries. However, commercialization of intellectual property had not entered the precincts of academic universities in a significant way until the introduction of the Bayh–Dole Act in the 1980s in the United States. The post–Bayh–Dole era has seen a quantitative increase in patenting activity in universities. This article summarizes the ethical conflicts ushered in by increasing commercialization of academic university research. Activities related to (...) the protection and commercial exploitation of intellectual property have led to changes in academic culture that have given room for debate between the puritans and the modernists. Issues contended by the two groups have been identified, and both sides of the argument are discussed. The key to achieving “responsible commercialization of research” is to balance the Bayh–Dole ethos with the traditional Mertonian norms of academic research. (shrink)

This paper explores the ways in which postdoctoral life scientists engage in supervision work in academic institutions in Austria. Reward systems and career conditions in academic institutions in most European and other OECD countries have changed significantly during the last two decades. While an increasing focus is put on evaluating research performances, little reward is attached to excellent performances in mentoring and advising students. Postdoctoral scientists mostly inhabit fragile institutional positions and experience harsh competition, as the number (...) of available senior positions is small compared to that of young scientists striving for an academic career. To prevail in this competition, publications and mobility are key. Educational work is rarely rewarded. Nevertheless, postdocs play a key role in educating PhD students, as overburdened senior scientists often pass on practical supervision duties to their postdoctoral fellows. This paper shows how under these conditions, postdocs reframe the students they supervise as potential resources for co-authored publications. What might look like a mutually beneficial solution at a first glance, in practice implies the subordination of the values of education to the logic of production, which marginalizes spaces primarily devoted to education. The author argues that conflicts like this are indicative of broader changes in the cultural norms of science and academic citizenship, rendering community-oriented tasks such as education work less attractive to academic scientists. Since education and supervision work are central cornerstones of any functioning higher education and research system, this could have negative repercussions for the long-term development of academic institutions. (shrink)

Artificial general intelligence is a greatly anticipated technology with non-trivial existential risks, defined as machine intelligence with competence as great/greater than humans. To date, social scientists have dedicated little effort to the ethics of AGI or AGI researchers. This paper employs inductive discourse analysis of the academic literature of two intellectual groups writing on the ethics of AGI—applied and/or ‘basic’ scientific disciplines henceforth referred to as technicians (e.g., computer science, electrical engineering, physics), and philosophy-adjacent disciplines henceforth referred to as (...) PADs (e.g., philosophy, theology, anthropology). These groups agree that AGI ethics is fundamentally about mitigating existential risk. They highlight our moral obligation to future generations, demonstrate the ethical importance of better understanding consciousness, and endorse a hybrid of deontological/utilitarian normative ethics. Technicians favor technocratic AGI governance, embrace the project of ‘solving’ moral realism, and are more deontologically inclined than PADs. PADs support a democratic approach to AGI governance, are more skeptical of deontology, consider current AGI predictions as fundamentally imprecise, and are wary of using AGI for moral fact-finding. (shrink)

Neoliberalism is invariably presented as a governing regime of market and competition-based systems rather than as a set of migratory practices that are re-setting the ethical standards of the academy. This article seeks to explore the way in which neoliberalism is shifting the prevailing values of the academy by drawing on two illustrations: the death of disinterestedness and the obfuscation of authorship. While there was never a golden age when norms such as disinterestedness were universally practiced they represented widely (...) accepted aesthetic ideals associated with academic life. By contrast, neoliberal academics embrace a new set of assumptions and norms that stand in sharp relief to many of the values that were previously espoused. Practices that might have been regarded as ethically dubious by earlier generations of academics, such as grantsmanship, self-justificatory expressions of interestedness and tangential claims to authorship, are now regarded as legitimate and positive virtues in a more aggressive age of hyper-performativity. (shrink)

This research explores the relationships between business students’ academic misconduct and their attitudes toward professional ethics, specifically credential embellishment and business unethicality. Based on 135 survey responses from business students in a northwestern university, we tested hypothesized relationships using multiple regression analyses. We found that students’ attitudes toward academic misconduct, especially illicit collaboration and exam cheating, were positively correlated with their attitudes toward credential embellishment, unethical business operations, and unethical employee practices. In addition, gender yielded meaningful differences (...) related to perceptions of both dimensions of business unethicality. We emphasize the importance of ethics education, and suggest actionable remedies including placement of strict policies, promotions of shared norms and cultures, and curriculum redesign guidelines for business educators and administrators. (shrink)

What does unethical behavior look like in everyday professional practice, and how might it become the accepted norm? Examinations of unethical behavior often focus on failures of individual morality or on psychological blind spots, yet unethical behaviors are generated and performed through social interactions across professional practices rather than by individual actors alone. This shifts the focus of behavioral ethics research beyond the laboratory exploring motivation and cognition and into the organizations and professions where unethical behavior is motivated, justified, (...) enabled and supported in specific social contexts. For instance, when pharmaceutical firms fund academic research, how do the funding arrangements intersect with individual behaviors that are typical in academic research? In turn, how do academic-industry interactions affect scientific norms, particularly those involving compliance with rules, regulations, and ethical codes of conduct? A social organization approach to ethics allows us not only to examine ethics in practice, but also to tease apart unethical behaviors that might operate on an unreflective level and become accepted as “just the way it is.”. (shrink)

In 2019, a new national Ethics Review Authority (Etikprövningsmyndigheten, EPM) was created in Sweden. In 2020, Sweden’s Ethical Review of Research Involving Humans Act was revised, tightening this legislation, and increasing penalties for its infraction. This article draws on empirical material generated by artistic research conducted with a norm-critical contemporary music ensemble. Two of the musicians who collaborated with this research identify as disabled. Consequently, in accordance with EPM, my artistic research was subject to mandatory ethics (...) review. Reflecting critically on my own experience of seeking ethical approval for this artistic research project, I show how EPM’s process of ethics review enacts scientific boundary work in Sweden that privileges the interests of academic disciplines that are already well-established. As a corrective to EPM’s scientific boundary work I propose the application of an ethics of care that recognises the complex relationalities that exist between research institutions, researchers and research participants. (shrink)

Drawing on the critical discourse analysis of journals and working papers from 2011-2020 referring to the at-risk of poverty or social exclusion composite indicator (AROPE), we shed light on how benchmarks technicize academic discourse, particularly in its part contributed by economists. First developed to measure progress towards the poverty target set in the EU's Europe 2020 strategy, AROPE has easily permeated academic debate. Its anchoring in statistical procedures and expertise has allowed it to function in this debate as (...) a neutral and purely technical measurement tool, obscuring the interests and normative choices underlying its design and implementation. As a result, the discursive practices associated with the benchmark have led to the reproduction and legitimization of the anti-poverty policy objectives of the Europe 2020 strategy. Simultaneously, AROPE has provided a 'cognitive infrastructure' that enabled an economic view of the world geared towards raising competitiveness. It has made it possible to assess which Member State is doing well and which is doing poorly, and making recommendations on how the laggards should improve. Our analysis shows that benchmarks such as AROPE support the process of shaping Europe as a supranational entity, creating a picture of common European problems with uniform definitions, on the basis of which it is possible to divide Member States into better and worse performers and even promote common solutions through good practices. We conclude by highlighting that the academic discourse around AROPE, generated mainly by economists, reflects the growing interdependence of the academic and political spheres and the pressure for research to have social and political impact. (shrink)

Breaches of research integrity have gained considerable attention due to high-profile scandals involving questionable research practices by reputable scientists. These practices include plagiarism, manipulation of authorship, biased presentation of findings and misleading reports of significance. To combat such practices, policymakers tend to rely on top-down measures, mandatory ethics training and stricter regulation, despite limited evidence of their effectiveness. In this study, we investigate the occurrence and underlying factors of questionable research practices (QRPs) through an original survey of (...) 3,005 social and medical researchers at Swedish universities. By comparing the role of the organizational culture, researchers´ norms and counter norms, and individual motivation, the study reveals that the counter norm of Biasedness—the opposite of universalism and skepticism—is the overall most important factor. Thus, Biasedness was related to 40–60% of the prevalence of the questionable practices. The analysis also reveals the contradictory impact of other elements in the organizational environment. Internal competition was positively associated with QRP prevalence, while group-level ethics discussions consistently displayed a negative association with such practices. Furthermore, in the present study items covering ethics training and policies have only a marginal impact on the prevalence of these practices. The organizational climate and normative environment have a far greater influence. Based on these findings, it is suggested that academic leaders should prioritize the creation and maintenance of an open and unbiased research environment, foster a collaborative and collegial climate, and promote bottom-up ethics discussions within and between research groups. (shrink)

Scholars and policy-makers have expressed concerns about the crediting of coauthors in research publications. Most such problems fall into one of two categories, excluding deserving contributors or including undeserving ones. But our research shows that there is no consensus on “deserving” or on what type of contribution suffices for co-authorship award. Our study uses qualitative data, including interviews with 60 US academic science or engineering researchers in 14 disciplines in a set of geographically distributed research-intensive universities. (...) We also employ data from 161 website posts provided by 93 study participants, again US academic scientists. We examine a variety of factors related to perceived unwarranted exclusion from co-author credit and unwarranted inclusion, providing an empirically-informed conceptual model to explain co-author crediting outcomes. Determinants of outcomes include characteristics of disciplines and fields, institutional work culture, power dynamics and team-specific norms and decision processes. (shrink)

The proponents of the entrepreneurial university have claimed that it implies adjustments in the normative structure of science. In this article, I will critically examine whether a qualitatively new kind of academic ethos can emerge from the commercialization of academic research. The traditional conception of norms of science as institutionalized imperatives is distinguished from the constructivist conception of norms as strategic or ideological resources. An empirical case study on the commercialization of the research of (...) one academic language-technology group is presented. The case study does not support the constructivist conclusion that the norms of science are malleable at will. (shrink)

Public participation in scientific research has gained prominence in many scientific fields, but the theory of participatory research is still limited. In this paper, we suggest that the divergence of values and goals between academic researchers and public participants in research is key to analyzing the different forms this research takes. We examine two existing characterizations of participatory research: one in terms of public participants' role in the research, the other in terms of (...) the virtues of the research. In our view, each of these captures an important feature of participatory research but is, on its own, limited in what features it takes into account. We introduce an expanded conception of norms of collaboration that extends to both academic researchers and public participants. We suggest that satisfying these norms requires consideration of the two groups' possibly divergent values and goals, and that a broad characterization of participatory research that starts from participants' values and goals can motivate both public participants’ role in the research and the virtues of the research. The resulting framework clarifies the similarities and differences among participatory projects and can help guide the responsible design of such projects. (shrink)

Cross-border academic collaborations in conflict zones are vulnerable to escalated turbulence, liability concerns and flagging support. Multi-level stakeholder engagement at home and abroad is essential for securing the political and financial sustainability of such collaborations. This study examines the multilayered stakeholder arrangements within an international academic health science network contributing to peace-building in the Middle East. While organizational forms in this collaboration change to reflect the structural, epistemic and political expectations of various support groups operating locally and globally, (...) the legitimacy of the international research and its contribution to the peace-building process last as long as institutional norms of academic enterprise – integrity, impartiality and collegiality – are sustained. This paper analyzes the reconciliatory strategies used by the collaborating health scientists to mitigate organizational turbulence, reduce resource asymmetries and continually build and rebuild bridges across stakeholder communities. (shrink)

In recent years, exposome research has been put forward as the next frontier for the study of human health and disease. Exposome research entails the analysis of the totality of environmental exposures and their corresponding biological responses within the human body. Increasingly, this is operationalized by big-data approaches to map the effects of internal as well as external exposures using smart sensors and multiomics technologies. However, the ethical implications of exposome research are still only rarely discussed in (...) the literature. Therefore, we conducted a systematic review of the academic literature regarding both the exposome and underlying research fields and approaches, to map the ethical aspects that are relevant to exposome research. We identify five ethical themes that are prominent in ethics discussions: the goals of exposome research, its standards, its tools, how it relates to study participants, and the consequences of its products. Furthermore, we provide a number of general principles for how future ethics research can best make use of our comprehensive overview of the ethical aspects of exposome research. Lastly, we highlight three aspects of exposome research that are most in need of ethical reflection: the actionability of its findings, the epidemiological or clinical norms applicable to exposome research, and the meaning and action–implications of bias. (shrink)

Capitalist dynamics in knowledge production are not limited to situations in which economic interests influence researchers’ practices. Building on laboratory studies and the French “pragmatic” tradition in sociology, this article proposes an approach to tackle more pervasive capitalist logics at work in contemporary research and their consequences. It uses the term epistemic capitalism to denote the accumulation of capital, as worth made durable, through the act of doing research, in and beyond academia. In doing so, it conceptualizes capitalism (...) primarily not as a system of circulation and accumulation of monetary value but rather as a cultural way of producing, attributing, and accumulating specific forms of worth, which need not be monetary. Empirically, the article studies variants in epistemic capitalism by addressing the differing role of the accumulation of different forms of capital and the regimes connected to it in two institutional settings in Austria, academic life science laboratories and biotechnology start-up companies. Concluding, it argues that analytically dissociating the concept of capitalism from its link to economic value allows a finer-grained cultural analysis of the importance and effects of processes of accumulation in contemporary research. It ends with discussing the normative implications of these findings for debates about the commercialization of academia. (shrink)

Interdisciplinarity is often framed as crucial for addressing the complex problems of contemporary society and for achieving new levels of innovation. But while science policy and institutions have provided a variety of incentives for stimulating interdisciplinary work throughout Europe, there is also growing evidence that some aspects of the academic system do not necessarily reward interdisciplinary work. In this study, we explore how mid-career researchers in an environmental science research center in Sweden relate to and handle the distinct (...) forms of uncertainty that arise from conflicting institutional and policy impulses. Our material suggests that interdisciplinary academics are often confronted with and at times themselves operate with a surprisingly dichotomous, value-laden view of their research practice. Disciplinarity is primarily associated with the ideals of scientific rigor, while interdisciplinarity becomes conflated with application-oriented work and a lack of ‘theory.’ We also draw attention to the underlying practical dynamics that reproduce this tension and entangle it with the very process of academic socialization. Specifically, we analyze the ambivalent consequences of the various work-arounds that researchers rely on to carve out opportunities for ongoing interdisciplinary research within heterogeneous funding landscapes. These tactics turn out to be undermined by the overriding normative power of formal career incentives at universities, which continue to emphasize the ideals of the individual high-performing academic who publishes in disciplinary journals and attracts the most selective grants. Under such circumstances, the work-arounds themselves become an insidious mechanism that allows researchers to stay in academia but systematically marginalizes their voices and epistemic ambitions in the process. (shrink)

In the wake of ChatGPT’s release, academics and journal editors have begun making important decisions about whether and how to integrate generative artificial intelligence (AI) into academic publishing. Some argue that AI outputs in scholarly works constitute plagiarism, and so should be disallowed by academic journals. Others suggest that it is acceptable to integrate AI output into academic papers, provided that its contributions are transparently disclosed. By drawing on Taylor’s work on academic norms, this paper (...) argues against both views. Unlike “traditional” forms of plagiarism, use of generative AI can be consistent with the norms that should underlie academic research. In these cases, its use should neither be prohibited nor required to be disclosed. However, some careless uses of generative AI do threaten to undermine the quality of academic research by mischaracterizing existing literature. This, not “AI plagiarism,” is the real concern raised by ChatGPT and related technologies. (shrink)

Dependence in nanotechnology on external funding and academic-industry relationships has led to questions concerning its influence on research directions, as well as the potential for conflicts of interest to arise and impact scientific integrity and public trust. This study uses a survey of 193 nanotechnology industry and academic researchers to explore whether they share similar concerns. Although these concerns are not unique to nanotechnology, its emerging nature and the prominence of industry funding lend credence to understanding its (...) researchers’ views, as these researchers are shaping the norms and direction of the field. The results of the survey show general agreement that funding sources are influencing research directions in nanotechnology; many respondents saw this influence in their own work as well as other researchers’ work. Respondents also agreed that funding considerations were likely to influence whether researchers shared their results. Irrespective of their institutional affiliation or funding status, twice as many researchers as not considered financial conflicts of interest a cause for concern, and three times as many respondents as not disagreed financial conflicts of interest in nanotechnology were uncommon. Only a third was satisfied with the way that conflicts of interest are currently managed and believed current procedures would protect the integrity of nanotechnology research. The results also found differences in views depending on researchers’ institutional affiliation and funding status. (shrink)

The Foundations of Positive and Normative Economics: A Handbook is the first book in a new series by Andrew Caplin and Andrew Schotter. There is currently no guide available on the rapidly changing methodological frontiers of the field of economics. Economists have been introducing new theories and new sources of data at a remarkable rate in recent years, and there are widely divergent views both on how productive these expansions have been in the past, and how best to make progress (...) in the future. The speed of these changes has left economists ill at ease, and has created a backlash against new methods. The series will debate these critical issues, allowing proponents of a particular research method to present proposals in a safe yet critical context, with alternatives being clarified. This first volume, written by some of the most prominent researchers in the discipline, reflects the challenges that are opened by new research opportunities. The goal of the current volume and the series it presages, is to formally open a dialog on methodology. The editors' conviction is that such a debate will rebound to the benefit of social science in general, and economics in particular. The issues under discussion strike to the very heart of the social scientific enterprise. This work is of tremendous importance to all who are interested in the contributions that academic research can make not only to our scientific understanding, but also to matters of policy. (shrink)

BackgroundBrazil is among the sixteen countries that conducts the most clinical trials in the world. It has a system to review research ethics with human beings made up by the National Commission on Research Ethics and 779 Research Ethics Committees, in 2017. The RECs are supposed to follow the same rules regarding their membership, although the RECs that review Social Science and Humanities researches must respect Resolution 510/16. There are Brazilian RECs that review SSH and clinical trials. (...) This study aimed to analyze the academic professional profile of the members of the CONEP and Brazilian RECs, their adequacy to the norms, and the challenges faced by the REC’s Chairs to compose their membership. MethodsAll 779 Brazilian RECs’ chairs are invited to fill in a questionnaire informing academic and professional background of the RECs members, and 92 answered. However, eight were excluded for having sent an incomplete questionnaire, leaving a total of 84 participants. The variables were described by absolute and relative frequency. The Chi-square test and ANOVA was used to analyze regional differences related difficulties to compose the committee. The significance level was 95%. ResultsThe results showed a predominance of members from the biomedical area, while 33% were members of the Social Sciences and Humanities and 5.5% were community representatives. As for the academic degree, there were PhD and masters. The divergences in relation to the guidelines result from the difficulties of having participants in some areas and the little interest in the work carried out by the committees.ConclusionThe RECs are partially adequate to the norms and their performance may be compromised by the low participation of community representatives. The organization of REC’s specifics to review biomedical research could improve the ethical review process, ensuring a membership more qualified for these protocols. (shrink)

Konstantin Pollok offers the first book-length analysis of Kant's theory of normativity that covers foundational issues in theoretical and practical philosophy as well as aesthetics. Interpreting Kant's 'critical turn' as a normative turn, he argues that Kant's theory of normativity is both original and radical: it departs from the perfectionist ideal of early modern rationalism, and arrives at an unprecedented framework of synthetic a priori principles that determine the validity of our judgments. Pollok examines the hylomorphism in Kant's theory of (...) normativity and relates Kant's idea of our reason's self-legislation to the 'natural right' tradition, revealing Kant's debt to his predecessors as well as his relevance to contemporary debates on normativity. This book will appeal to academic researchers and advanced students of Kant, early modern philosophy and intellectual history. (shrink)

This paper re-examines the relevance of three academic norms to contemporary academic life – communism, universalism and disinterestedness – based on the work of Robert Merton. The results of a web-based survey elicited responses to a series of value statements and were analysed using the weighted average method and through cross-tabulation. Results indicate strong support for communism as an academic norm defined in relation to sharing research results and teaching materials as opposed to protecting intellectual (...) copyright and withholding access. There is more limited support for universalism based on the belief that academic knowledge should transcend national, political, or religious boundaries. Disinterestedness, defined in terms of personal detachment from truth claims, is the least popular contemporary academic norm. Here, the impact of a performative culture is linked to the need for a large number of academics to align their research interests with funding opportunities. The paper concludes by considering the claims of an alternate set of contemporary academic norms including capitalism, particularism and interestedness. (shrink)

While there is a large and ever-expanding body of work on the fields of business ethics and corporate social responsibility, there is a noted absence of a single source on the methodology and research approaches to these fields. In this book, the first of its kind, leading scholars in the fields gather to analyse a range of philosophical and empirical approaches to research in business ethics and CSR. It covers such sections as historical approaches, normative and behavioural methodologies, (...) quantitative, qualitative and experimental perspectives, grounded theory and case methodologies, and finally a section on the role of the researcher in research projects. This book is a valuable and essential read for all researchers in business ethics and CSR, not only for those starting out in the fields, but also for seasoned scholars and academics. (shrink)

Synthetic biologists design and engineer organisms for a better and more sustainable future. While the manifold prospects are encouraging, concerns about the uncertain risks of genome editing affect public opinion as well as local regulations. As a consequence, biosafety and associated concepts, such as the Safe-by-design framework and genetic safeguard technologies, have gained notoriety and occupy a central position in the conversation about genetically modified organisms. Yet, as regulatory interest and academic research in genetic safeguard technologies advance, the (...) implementation in industrial biotechnology, a sector that is already employing engineered microorganisms, lags behind. The main goal of this work is to explore the utilization of genetic safeguard technologies for designing biosafety in industrial biotechnology. Based on our results, we posit that biosafety is a case of a changing value, by means of further specification of how to realize biosafety. Our investigation is inspired by the Value Sensitive Design framework, to investigate scientific and technological choices in their appropriate social context. Our findings discuss stakeholder norms for biosafety, reasonings about genetic safeguards, and how these impact the practice of designing for biosafety. We show that tensions between stakeholders occur at the level of norms, and that prior stakeholder alignment is crucial for value specification to happen in practice. Finally, we elaborate in different reasonings about genetic safeguards for biosafety and conclude that, in absence of a common multi-stakeholder effort, the differences in informal biosafety norms and the disparity in biosafety thinking could end up leading to design requirements for compliance instead of for safety. (shrink)

This scoping review addresses the issues of responsible conduct of research (RCR) that can arise in the practice of research-creation (RC), an emergent, interdisciplinary, and heterogeneous field at the interface of academic research and creative activities. Little is yet known about the nature and scope of RCR issues in RC, so our study examined three questions: (1) What are the specific issues in RC in relation to RCR? (2) How does the specificity of RC influence the (...) understanding and practice of RCR? (3) What recommendations could help address the issues highlighted in the literature To answer these questions, we conducted a scoping review of the academic literature (n = 181 texts) dealing with RCR in RC. We found that researcher-creators faced some very different RCR challenges in comparison with their colleagues in the rest of academia. Addressing these issues is important for both the RCR and RC communities in order to ensure that the rapid development of this field occurs in line with the norms of RCR which, nonetheless, should be adapted to respect the particularities of RC and allow its contributions to the academic world. (shrink)

Funding is an important mechanism for exercising influence over ever more parts of academic systems. In order to do so, funding agencies attempt to export their functional and normative prerequisites for financing to new fields. One essential requirement for fundees is then to construct research processes in the form of a project beforehand, one that is limited in time, scope and content. This article demonstrates how the public funding of doctoral programs expands this model of project research (...) from experienced academics to the socialization process for the new academic generation. This process of “projectification” underlies funding-driven institutional changes in doctoral training. A multi-level comparative study of German policies, funding mechanisms and organizational frameworks for doctoral training demonstrates the emergence of a specific model of predefined PhD projects. The investigation of doctoral training practices reveals that socio-epistemic preconditions regulate whether research fields adopted or rejected this demanding model. This result contradicts widespread claims about a radical change in doctoral training and suggests focusing on the actual practices of field-specific doctoral research. (shrink)

Edwin Southern developed a blotting technique for DNA in 1973, thereby creating a staple of molecular biology laboratory procedures still used after several decades. It became a seminal technology for studying the structure of DNA. The story of the creation and dissemination of this technology, which was not patented and was freely distributed throughout the scientific community, stands as a case study in open science. The Southern blot was developed at a time when attitudes about commercial intrusion into health (...) class='Hi'>research were beginning to change and the practical value of molecular genetics was becoming apparent to industry. Interest from industry in fundamental molecular biological techniques meant that scientists began to think about commercial uses of their work even in otherwise "basic" research. The unpatented Southern blot is contrasted with later patented technologies, particularly microarray methods, which were created in the same environment by many of the same people, but which followed significant changes to UK policies encouraging commercialization of academic research and a norm shift friendlier to such commercialization within academic molecular biology. Professor Southern's personal experience illuminates how the technologies evolved, and his views provide insight into how scientists' attitudes about commercialization have changed. (shrink)

This paper applies Beck and Ajzen’s (Journal of Research in Personality 25:285–301, 1991 ) extended version of the theory of planned behaviour model to the decisions of students to engage in academic dishonesty (cheating and lying). The model proposes that students’ intentions to engage in dysfunctional behaviours may be influenced by attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavioural control and moral obligation. This study was done using a survey questionnaire of 363 undergraduate students at a West Indian University. Based (...) on the extended version of the theory of planned behaviour, with the exception of subjective norms which only predicted students’ intentions to cheat, it was found that attitudes, perceived behavioural control and moral obligation were significant predictors of students’ intentions to perform academic dishonesty behaviours in the form of cheating and lying. The results of the study have given further support to the use of the extended version of the theory of planned behaviour. Implications are discussed. (shrink)

The persistent gender inequalities in higher education are an ongoing concern among academics. This paper investigates how male and female academics perceive the need for gender-related changes to support academic women’s career advancement in China. Drawing on 40 interviews with male and female academics at a leading Chinese research university, this paper finds that attitudes among male academics were overwhelmingly negative toward the necessity for gender-related changes, whereas the female academics’ responses varied. Two underlying issues cause the relatively (...) similar degrees of unwillingness of men and women to make gender-related policy changes at universities. First, these academics had a strong belief in merit-based rules for promotion, which embedded gender blindness in the name of ‘fairness’. Second, the power of individual choice was the determining factor for women’s career progression, although both men and women acknowledged that their traditional cultural beliefs were rooted in processes and practices that systematically disadvantaged women. The findings expose academics’ low expectations for the successful creation or implementation of institutional policies that support academic women’s career development, considering that male academics did not support gender-related changes, and female academics were not united in their perspectives. In addition, socio-cultural norms were a critical obstacle. The findings suggest that the successful implementation of any gender policies must meet two conditions: they should stress equal opportunities for both sexes and should not jeopardize the perceived ‘fair’ meritocracy in academia. (shrink)

This book is an easy to read, yet comprehensive introduction to practical issues in research ethics and scientific integrity. It addresses questions about what constitutes appropriate academic and scientific behaviors from the point of view of what Robert Merton called the “ethos of science.” In other words, without getting into tricky questions about the nature of the good or right (as philosophers often do), Koepsell’s concise book provides an approach to behaving according to the norms of science (...) and academia without delving into the morass of philosophical ethics. The central thesis is that: since we know certain behaviors are necessary for science and its institutions to work properly (rather than pathologically), we can extend those principles to guide good behaviors as scientists and academics. The Spanish version of this book was commissioned by the Mexican National Science Foundation (CONACyT) and is being distributed to and used by Mexican scientists in a unique, national plan to improve scientific integrity throughout all of Mexico. Available now in English, the examples and strategies employed can be used throughout the English speaking research world for discussing issues in research ethics, training for scientists and researchers across disciplines, and those who are generally interested in ethics in academia. (shrink)

Since the 1980s scholars have been increasingly confronted with expectations to orient themselves toward societal and economic priorities. This normative demand for societal responsiveness is inscribed in discourses aimed at increasing the usefulness, competitiveness, and control of academia. New performance criteria, funding conditions, and organizational forms are central drivers of this debate – thereby, they change the conditions in which scholars conduct research and advance their careers. However, little is known so far about the impact these institutional changes have (...) on the habitus of academics. This article analyzes how stable and consistent habitus formations among academics turn out to be in the course of institutional changes. We compare the habitus formations of two generations of German scholars before and after institutional changes gained pace in Germany. Three distinct habitus formations can be identified, which we refer to as “self-fulfilling,” “self-surpassing,” and “self-asserting.” These habitus formations hold across the two generations, but the lines between them become blurry in the new generation. (shrink)

The article highlights one of the possible explanations for the culture of imitation and the tendency toward lowering standards in the academic environment. It deals with the concept of caconomics, which was elaborated by Italian researchers Diego Gambetta and Gloria Origgi. Based on rational choice theory, they elaborate a model of a situation when participants prefer low-quality standards while declaring high-quality ones. This model allows to identify the structural factors behind unscrupulous academic practices. It shows that dishonesty and (...) imitation may be not so much the result of the bad intentions of individuals, but rather a distorted norm that relies on a certain rational calculation within the framework of a vicious system. The concept of kakonomics turns out to be interesting and fruitful when considering the failures of reforms in Ukrainian science and education. In particular, the manifestation of the kakonomics mechanisms is demonstrated with the survey of publications of Ukrainian PhD and doctoral students in foreign journals. The requirement to have publications in such journals is intended to increase international visibility of Ukrainian researcher`s works. However, it turned out that most of the PhD and doctoral students (who submitted their dissertations in 2018-2022) had publications in low-quality or predatory journals. These data can serve as empirical evidence of the failure of reforms carried out through directive requirements imposed in a bureaucratic manner. Data also show that efforts to increase standards without taking into account the extent to which the academic environment is able to meet that new demands will encourage imitation. As a result, such situation leads to the system of anti-meritocratic selection, and researchers who truly adhere to high standards are disadvantaged compared to imitators. (shrink)

In the applied sciences and in engineering there is often a significant overlap between work at universities and in industry. For the individual scholar, this may lead to serious conflicts when working on joint university–industry projects. Differences in goals, such as the university’s aim to disseminate knowledge while industry aims to appropriate knowledge, might lead to complicated situations and conflicts of interest. The detailed cases of two electrical engineers and two architects working at two different universities of technology illustrate the (...) kinds of problems individual scholars face in university–business collaborations. These cases are based on qualitative interviews and additional data and demonstrate that, while value conflicts emerge on the organizational level, it is primarily the individual researcher who must deal with such conflicts. This analysis adds to existing studies in two ways: first, it explicitly addresses normative issues framed in terms of ethical and social values, thereby going beyond the common social-science perspective of university–business collaboration. Secondly, it provides qualitative insights, thereby identifying details and issues not apparent in quantitative studies. In particular, it is evident that university–industry collaborations are prone to value conflicts not only in research but also in education and job training. (shrink)

Academic education largely concerns knowledge and skills. Where there is attention to ethics, this tends to focus on study-related misconduct such as plagiarising assignments and, more recently, methodological misconduct. The current paper argues that it is also essential to teach students about social misconduct in science, with a focus on questionable collaboration practices. First, this would increase future early career researchers’ ability to succeed and avoid academic snares. Enhancing this ability would appear to be an ethical responsibility going (...) hand-in-hand with our attempts at endowing students with skills that we know could be exploited. Second, such teaching would establish authoritative norms about collaborative practices that are and are not acceptable. This would help to adjust scientific attitudes in next generations of graduates, to the benefit of both themselves and science. Teaching on science-specific social misconduct would also naturally tie in with addressing general forms of antisocial conduct which also occur in academia, such as bullying or sexual harassment. The paper provides a framework for defining and recognizing questionable collaboration practices, and for how to provide students with the attitudes, concepts and skills necessary to protect themselves as they enter the reality of the academic arena. (shrink)

BackgroundThe areas of Research Ethics (RE) and Research Integrity (RI) are rapidly evolving. Cases of research misconduct, other transgressions related to RE and RI, and forms of ethically questionable behaviors have been frequently published. The objective of this scoping review was to collect RE and RI cases, analyze their main characteristics, and discuss how these cases are represented in the scientific literature.MethodsThe search included cases involving a violation of, or misbehavior, poor judgment, or detrimental research practice (...) in relation to a normative framework. A search was conducted in PubMed, Web of Science, SCOPUS, JSTOR, Ovid, and Science Direct in March 2018, without language or date restriction. Data relating to the articles and the cases were extracted from case descriptions.ResultsA total of 14,719 records were identified, and 388 items were included in the qualitative synthesis. The papers contained 500 case descriptions. After applying the eligibility criteria, 238 cases were included in the analysis. In the case analysis, fabrication and falsification were the most frequently tagged violations (44.9%). The non-adherence to pertinent laws and regulations, such as lack of informed consent and REC approval, was the second most frequently tagged violation (15.7%), followed by patient safety issues (11.1%) and plagiarism (6.9%). 80.8% of cases were from the Medical and Health Sciences, 11.5% from the Natural Sciences, 4.3% from Social Sciences, 2.1% from Engineering and Technology, and 1.3% from Humanities. Paper retraction was the most prevalent sanction (45.4%), followed by exclusion from funding applications (35.5%).ConclusionsCase descriptions found in academic journals are dominated by discussions regarding prominent cases and are mainly published in the news section of journals. Our results show that there is an overrepresentation of biomedical research cases over other scientific fields compared to its proportion in scientific publications. The cases mostly involve fabrication, falsification, and patient safety issues. This finding could have a significant impact on the academic representation of misbehaviors. The predominance of fabrication and falsification cases might diverge the attention of the academic community from relevant but less visible violations, and from recently emerging forms of misbehaviors. (shrink)

Because academic entrepreneurship is an innovation driving force in China’s economy, teachers are key knowledge creators in the process of entrepreneurship. Therefore, it is particularly important to give attention to the individual psychological mechanism factors at play in the process of teachers in higher education academic entrepreneurship. The purpose of this study is to identify individual psychological capital and role conflict issues among university teachers in China. To accomplish this aim, we investigated the emergence of positive academic (...) entrepreneurial intents, continued through the process of academic entrepreneurship, and clarified the impact of psychological capital and role conflict on entrepreneurial intent. Based on the theory of planned behavior, we constructed a research model from the perspective of entrepreneurial intent prior to entrepreneurial action. We established a cohort of teachers in 17 higher education institutions in southern China, with psychological capital and role conflict as the prior independent variables and the teachers’ academic entrepreneurial intent as the dependent variable. Using quantitative analysis, SPSS 22.0, and AMOS 23.0, we conducted reliability and validity tests, correlation analysis, and structural equation models on the collected data. We reached the following conclusions: psychological capital has a positive effect on attitudes toward academic entrepreneurship; psychological capital has a positive effect on perceived behavioral control; role conflict has a negative effect on perceived behavioral control; academic entrepreneurial attitudes have a positive effect on academic entrepreneurial intent; perceived behavioral control has a positive effect on academic entrepreneurial intent; subjective norms have a positive effect on academic entrepreneurial intent. We also provide some suggestions about academic entrepreneurship for university administrators. (shrink)

The role of the Research Ethics Committee (REC) in the design, conduct and dissemination of scientific research is still evolving and many important questions remain unanswered. Hence, the aim of this paper is to address some of the uncertainty that exists around the role and responsibilities of RECs and to discuss some of the controversy that exists over the criteria that RECs should follow when evaluating a research proposal. The discussion is organised around five of the major (...) roles currently performed by RECs when assessing proposals in the biomedical sciences. It will be shown that these five roles need to be critically evaluated and reassessed. The five roles addressed are: assessing the legitimacy and validity of the informed consent process, second, conducting a comprehensive risk/benefit analysis, third, assessing the validity of a research proposal, fourth, ensuring that researchers observe the social norms, values, customs, traditions and laws that prevail in the community or jurisdiction in which the research will be conducted and finally, monitoring the research project as it unfolds and providing an ongoing advisory and consultancy service to both new and experienced researchers. In reassessing the role of the REC, this paper concludes with a set of general recommendations for RECs. These provide some guidance on the minimum criteria that should be followed when RECs evaluate proposals. These guidelines will be beneficial for new and experienced members of REC, and will help to make the process a more objective, efficient and standardised process. The guidelines will also be beneficial for researchers in the biomedical sciences who are preparing proposals for ethical review. (shrink)

Academic publications of empirical public health research often entail recommendations for moral action that address practitioners and policy makers. These recommendations are regularly based on implicit moral judgments with the underlying reasons not explicitly stated. In this paper, we elaborate on the moral relevance of such judgments and the need to explain them in order to account for academic argumentation. We argue for an explicit reporting of bridge principles to increase the transparency of the reporting of public (...) health research. The reporting of bridge principles can inform readers, support them in understanding the relationship between empirical and normative claims in a specific paper, and may pave new ways for the rigorous reporting of empirical research that has moral implications. Furthermore, it can be used to classify studies to systematically address the justification for their argumentation. (shrink)

An interest in economic development has been extended to a set of research universities which since the late nineteenth century had been established, or had transformed themselves, to focus upon discipline-based fundamental investigations.21 The land-grant model was reformulated, from agricultural research and extension, to entrepreneurial transfers of science-based industrial technology by faculty members and university administrators.The norms of science, a set of values and incentives for proper institutional conduct,22 have been revised as an unintended consequence of the (...) second revolution. This has happened through an accretion of gradual organisational changes that often go unnoticed, and through conflict that disrupts the status quo and makes change evident. The two forms of normative change became apparent in the emergence of group research and in controversies over conflicts of interest. With extensive financial support from government, large research groups began to replace the traditional form of professor and graduate student—still commonplace in the humanities—as the typical way of organising research, although group leaders were called “individual investigators”.23 Possessing many of the characteristics of a small business, apart from the profit motive, some of these research groups or “quasi firms” are only a short step away from turning into companies when the opportunity arises.Disputes about conflicts of interest are a step towards the transformation of norms. How they are resolved suggests the shape of the new norm; their continuation indicates that the outcome is still in question; their intensification increases the likelihood that a practice will be defined as deviant. Some conflicts of interest will be resolveable as norms change; others will be defined as fraud and be dealt with by the legal system. Conflicts of commitment may also be amenable to resolution, for example, by granting leave to establish a company. Integrating campus and company research reduces some of the potential for conflict, especially when the university holds the intellectual property rights in question.Under these new normative conditions what is left of the idea of the university as a source of disinterested expertise? As molecular biology departments have developed a complex network of industrial ties a new critical discipline of environmental science has grown up in academia. Universities are flexible institutions, capable of reconciling many diverse missions. (shrink)

The fact that information and communication technologies (ICTs) increasingly shape our online and offline lifeworlds has lead to the emergence of a new societal threat in the form of vulnerabilities in critical ICT systems that may be exploited by malicious actors. Cybersecurity researchers work on finding such vulnerabilities and on identifying new attack vectors, i.e. they systematically step into the role of attackers. Normatively, however, the goal of this research is to strengthen ICTs against cyberattacks and, thus, to reduce (...) the societal threat. However, this implies a dual-use potential: as in any discipline, results in cybersecurity research need to be published at some point and the disclosure of vulnerabilities to software companies and ICT administrators is an integral part of ensuring that ICT vulnerabilities are closed; such a disclosure, however, can be misused by attackers, as well. Thus, instruments for ethical orientation in regard of these dual-use issues seem to be necessary to identify potential issues and to guide researchers in dealing with them. While corresponding resources, such as codes of conduct, already exists for cybersecurity research, we will show that they currently do not adequately address the need for ethical orientation in the academic context. This, we argue, creates the need for a new research ethics culture in cybersecurity research. (shrink)