The 2023 statement has been structured using the template developed by the UK Research and Integrity Office with the Research Integrity Concordat Signatories Group. This statement was approved by the Babraham Executive Committee (BEC) on 18th December 2024.
Advice & guidance Dr Martin Turner is the senior member of staff responsible for overseeing research integrity and is the Institute’s first point of contact for anyone wanting more information.
Mr Simon Jones is the confidential liaison for whistle-blowers or any other person wishing to raise concerns about the integrity of research being conducted under the auspices of the Babraham Institute.
Policies and systems The Institute has in place a comprehensive overarching Research Integrity policy (based on grant awarding body, UK and worldwide research integrity standards) to foster and support integrity in research practices. The policy sets out the responsibilities for all researchers and makes clear the Institute expectations around mentoring, supervision, training and support (including wellbeing), data management, ethical conduct, open science and legal and ethical requirements for research outputs.
The Institute’s Research Integrity policy is underpinned by a suite of Institute policies supporting research integrity, including a Code of Conduct; Research Misconduct; Authorship; Whistleblowing; Equity, Diversity and Inclusion; Harassment and Bullying, Use of Animals in Research; Open Access Publishing; Research Data Management, and these are regularly reviewed and updated to reflect changing need. These are available to all staff on the Institute’s intranet with some policies available externally on the Institute’s website.
As part of the Institute’s continuous reflection on ways of working and to provided assurance that we have robust responses to major strategic, financial and operational risks, we undertake a rotation of internal audits of key business areas (audits completed in 2023/24 are detailed below).
Communications and engagement Research integrity is promoted and supported through several different mechanisms – at the individual research group level, to research leadership and at a community level through training events and seminars. The Institute’s Research Integrity section on the Institute’s intranet site covers: what research integrity is and Institute policies and expectations, available training, good research in practice, human research governance and ethics, and promotes observation of the ARRIVE guidelines in reporting research involving animals, in addition to collecting together relevant resources on all aspects of research integrity.
The biennial Staff Engagement Survey, which ran most recently in January 2024, assessed awareness of Institute policies and processes around whistleblowing and reporting suspected misconduct. Internal communications work aims to raise awareness of policy content and with the platform used to facilitate policy access and management.
Culture, development and leadership During 2023, with the development of the Institute’s Research Culture Statement and the delivery of the Institute Culture Consultation (ICC; both described in more detail below), the Institute made strong progress in defining its vision to enable research excellence, inclusivity and wellbeing.
The Institute’s five strategic initiatives of equity4success (the Institute’s equality, diversity and inclusivity initiative), Green Labs (the Institute’s sustainability scheme), Research Integrity, Technician Commitment and Wellbeing provide focused attention with the areas of their remit. The strategic initiatives are overseen by steering groups which have decision making powers delegated from the Institute’s executive committee.
Training relevant to research integrity is provided on an ongoing basis, with strong input from the Institute’s Bioinformatics training team and statisticians. Current relevant courses cover: statistics, biological data, peer review training; scientific figure design, research integrity: how to be a good scientist; use of OneNote as a laboratory notebook. All staff have access to the Institute’s Learning and Development Hub, with training provision tailored to specific cohorts of staff groups. Mandatory training is provided on challenging inappropriate behaviours (active bystander training), GDPR awareness, unconscious bias, dignity and work, and equality, diversity and inclusion.
Monitoring and reporting The Institute’s Research Integrity Steering Group (RISG) reports to the Babraham Executive Committee (BEC). RISG is chaired by the Associate Institute Director Dr Turner and includes the following roles as members (correct of end 2023):
The RISG has the remit to:
Principles, Practices and Policies: In financial year 2023/34, the Institute completed internal audits of the Institute’s processes and policies relating to General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and fraud risk assessment.
Throughout 2023 the Governance and Policy Office continued their rolling review of policies, in partnership with policy owners, to ensure that these adapt to changes at the Institute and in best practice. A new Health and Wellbeing policy was published to support staff to integrate physical and mental health and wellbeing into day-to-day activities, thereby contributing to ensuring that the Institute provides a positive and healthy working environment.
A joint project across the Governance and Projects Office and Grants Office, with the Head of Contracts, developed a Trusted Innovation and Research Statement, outlining how the Institute approaches assessment of partner suitability, managing information and knowledge sharing, and intellectual assets when considering a new research funder or collaborative partner.
A biennial research integrity (RI) assurance review was initiated in 2023 to assess and ensure the Institute is achieving the standards set out in the Institute RI policy. A periodic review helps provide structure to RI processes and procedures and acts as a good self-check preparatory process for RI audits [by the Institute auditors (RSM)]. The review includes two levels: corporate (overall Institute RI standards) compliance review and individual (sampled) research groups ‘Good Research in Practice’ (GRiP), looking at RI standards compliance ‘in practice on the ground’. The 2023-2024 review report and action plan to implement recommendations was approved by the Institute’s Executive Committee (BEC) on 11th July 2024 and shared with the Audit Committee and Science and Impact Advisory Committee in the first instance, and will help provide assurance to staff, BEC, Trustees, and grant awarding bodies.
To put the Institute’s expectations on Research Integrity into practice within the framework of the Research Integrity assurance review, the following priority actions are in place to ensure open, ethical, rigorous and reproducible research:
Communications and engagement In late 2023 the Babraham Institute ReproducibiliTea journal club was established, which aims to develop skills at creating figures that are both reproducible and more effective visual communications of data and results, whilst also providing constructive feedback to pre-print authors.
Communications and engagement, with relevance to culture, development and leadership From October 2023 to March 2024, the Institute undertook an Institute Culture Consultation as part of a process to develop the Institute as a beacon of best practice in research, research operations and culture over the next four years. The Institute’s vision as a place of research and operational excellence is: to sustain an inclusive community, in a positive environment that values dignity, inclusion, openness and integrity, for everyone to thrive and take pride in their contribution to the delivery of world-class bioscience research that benefits society. A staff-wide consultation focused on defining Team Science and to identify areas where changes would improve our performance as a whole. 45% of the Institute’s staff engaged with the consultation, which included identifying ‘enablers and ‘blockers’ that affect people’s work and experience at the Institute. The findings from this consultation have been used to plan out a four-year Roadmap to embed a Team Science approach and support the positive growth of our culture in order to improve organisational efficiency. The created Roadmap for Team Science – endorsed by the Executive Committee and Board of Trustees - includes work to embed research integrity. and will bring together a programme of work from 2024-2028.
We believe that making organisational improvements in the structures and processes of the Institute will help us improve how we work and interact with each other, including creating a culture of excellence, transparency and trust, which will bring benefits for research integrity.
Culture, development and leadership In 2023, the Institute awarded the inaugural Award for Contributions to Research Integrity, which was successful in receiving several high-quality nominations and subsequently three individuals at the Institute were recognised for their support of research integrity across: leadership in data sharing and championing reproducibility, improving the scientific quality of research, and improving data management practices.
In 2023, the Institute also completed a quinquennial funding review which included a Research Culture Statement that was peer reviewed and graded as part of the Institute Assessment Exercise. This statement sets out the Institute’s strategy to enable research excellence and includes a specific objective to: embed research integrity through governance, policies, process, training and new communication strategy to instil best practice and to align to ‘team-science’ culture.
People: The following activities aim to embed awareness of research integrity, develop required skills and create a safe, positive and supportive working environment:
A pilot training session on peer review was run with PhD student, postdoc and tenure-track group leader involvement. The course provides a general introduction to peer review, covering the purpose of peer review, the role of the reviewer versus the role of the editor and the ethics and responsibilities of peer review.
Three virtual events were run to provided Active Bystander training (183 staff members trained in 2023). The 2023 training sought to catch up with a gap in the provision of training in this area due to the covid-19 pandemic.
Two Dignity at Work training sessions were held in 2023, which were attended by a total of 61 members of staff.
Awareness-raising sessions with researchers across the Institute’s three research programmes covering the ARRIVE (Animal Research: Reporting of In Vivo Experiments) guidelines and their use to improve the reporting of research involving animals – maximising the quality and reliability of published research, and enabling others to better scrutinise, evaluate and reproduce it (delivered in June, July and October 2023).
Visit from Ian Prior (University of Liverpool) to discuss how to develop and implement a technical career framework to support the career development and sustainability of a technical workforce.
The Institute and Newcastle University were jointly awarded a BBSRC Flexible Talent Mobility Award. This will support cross-sector and interdisciplinary knowledge exchange within the biosciences by facilitating mobility between organisations. One objective of the FTMA is to provide professional development opportunities for bioscience research staff, and supporting staff, at all career stages. It is an expectation that 50% of the funding will be used to support early career researchers and research technical professionals.
Sustainability In October 2023, the Institute received a Platinum Award following an SOS-UK Green Impact audit (view announcement). The Institute’s Green Labs strategic initiative led a cross-Campus group of 15 campus organisations, which completed 1,480 environmental actions collectively, in the labs, around campus and through community engagement projects. At the Institute, the actions included revamping the bike repair station, upgrading the least efficient ultra-low temperature freezers, sending over 100 items of equipment for reuse via the UniGreen scheme, planting hedges and sowing wildflower seeds on campus and publishing a Green Labs article setting out how others can galvanise action in their own workplace (article link (open access)).
These actions come in addition to those already in place such as the conference travel policy which encourages train travel and carbon offsetting for essential flights, subsidised bus tickets for staff, sharing sustainability tips through the Institute newsletter and blogs, and recycling schemes for lab media bottles.
Activities relating to the Institute quinquennial review resulted in a coalescence of effort with significant gains for the Institute’s approach to research integrity. The deep dive into research integrity and good research in practice provided by the research integrity (RI) assurance review has established a robust framework for impactful and achievable actions. The Institute Culture Consultation stimulated honest discussion about people’s experience and expectations of the Institute culture and ways this can be improved to benefit everyone. Therefore, in summary, work done across the Institute in 2023 significantly both strengthened the Institute’s approach to research integrity and supported its embedding across the Institute community. The Institute also appreciates the efforts of pioneers of research integrity within its community, such as those recognised by the Research Integrity Prize, bioinformatics, statistics and data management trainers from the Institute’s Bioinformatics team, and those who champion initiatives such as the ReproducabiliTEA journal club.
As identified by the consultants who delivered the ICC report, the Institute is quite often ambitious in its approach, seeking to match what much larger organisations are able to offer. Although the Institute aims to be practical and proportionate in its approach, we recognise the increasing burden of monitoring and reporting progress to external bodies and the risk this presents to the Institute’s ability to take on and deliver new initiatives. As a relatively small organisation we are less able to absorb these activities since we lack economies of scale in our staff resources. Across the many facets of governance, operations and outcomes reporting, we consider this to be one of the major impediments in developing and embedding further good practice.
The Institute’s Research Misconduct Policy is published on our website and describes the processes in place for managing an allegation of research misconduct against an individual or individuals working under the auspices of the Babraham Institute. The Policy describes processes for both initial and full investigations and refers to disciplinary action(s) that might follow from the investigations if it is determined that research misconduct has occurred and outlines the appeals process. Timescales are included to ensure timely investigation of allegations.
The Institute has a variety of forums to enable researchers to communicate their concerns in confidence, including procedures for reporting concerns of misconduct by a third-party employee at either Institute premises, or the premises of their employer. Such procedures can be found in the Institute’s Research Misconduct policy.
Awareness of how to express concerns and respond to poor behaviour was facilitated by participation in an Active Bystander training programme delivered throughout 2023 (three sessions training a total of 183 staff members). There is an ongoing annual session of active bystander training for new Institute members and refresher training for existing staff. Staff also attend mandatory Dignity at Work training.
In 2023 there were no allegations reported to the Institute or formal investigations of research misconduct in any of the following categories: