On Tuesday, the Department of Health and Human Services published new policies on research misconduct, which apply to research institutions receiving funding through the U.S. Public Health Service. The policies set standards that institutions must follow when investigating and potentially sanctioning researchers alleged to have engaged in research misconduct. Some of the significant changes include: streamlining the process for expanding inquiries to new leads, granting institutions 90 days to carry out inquiries instead of the previous 60, giving institutions discretion on when they require publications to be corrected, and establishing a clearer process for administering appeals.
HHS says they updated the policies partly in response to “growing public concerns about research integrity” as well as questions institutions have had about how to pursue allegations of research misconduct.
Among the vast numbers of researchers, surely most carry out their work with integrity. Yet every few weeks, it seems, a new high-profile allegation of misconduct — including data fabrication, image manipulation, and publication of faulty research in what are essentially fake journals — breaks into the news. Some have involved the country’s most prestigious institutions. Research misconduct has roiled the world of scientific publishing, too. In May, after retracting more than 11,000 papers, Wiley shuttered 19 health and medical journals found to be compromised by fraudulent science, including the Journal of Oncology, Advances in Preventive Medicine, and the International Journal of Chronic Diseases.
Experts have proposed various solutions to the problem of research misconduct, ranging from requiring training and mentorship in research ethics to using artificial intelligence — the Problematic Paper Screener and the Papermill Alarm are two such tools — to ferret out problematic research. Some have proposed nurturing a new industry of research-fraud investigators, or getting serious by strictly penalizing its lesser forms — a sort of “broken windows” approach. Some are debating which forms of research misconduct to criminalize.
All well and good, but none of these approaches address the root cause of research misconduct: the immense pressure put on researchers to maximize their output of scientific papers.
Fundamental attribution error would have us assume research misconduct is carried out by miscreants. We must all be accountable for our behavior, and to be sure, some serial offenders have perpetrated shocking cases of scientific fraud. Enforcing research integrity, especially in medicine, public health, and the life sciences, is critical to preventing serious harms.
But from a systems perspective, it’s easy to see how today’s research environment incentivizes the very misconduct institutions want to stop. Publishing output is a dominant factor in researchers’ day-to-day livelihoods, affecting their ability to gain and retain employment, qualify for promotion, and attract the funding to carry out their work. “Publish or perish” culture has become entrenched—so much so that software marketed to help researchers present their best case for tenure or promotion is called, literally, Publish or Perish.
In one of the largest surveys on research integrity, researchers themselves reported that the pressure to publish nudges them toward unacceptable research practices. This finding is backed by a systematic review, which found that medical research institutions, which are more likely to hire and promote researchers “carrying voluminous résumés with larger number of published articles,” instill researchers with an “involuntary obsession to publish.” This obsession leads to incidents of plagiarism, carried out with the aim of achieving job security. It also leads to “widespread publication of non-significant research,” fueling the predatory publishing industry.
The pressure to publish isn’t just devaluing the literature. It’s harming researchers. A recent systematic review looking at researchers’ mental health found that at a large majority of research universities, “brutal competition amongst peers to succeed in academia, and an immense pressure to publish papers and win research funding … have left researchers experiencing high levels of stress, which have the potential to impact negatively on their mental health and well-being.” Wellcome found nearly identical trends: In a large survey of primarily medical and biological-science researchers throughout the U.K., they found the pressure to publish is leading to “stress, anxiety, mental health problems, strain on personal relationships, and a sense of isolation and loneliness at work.”
In this context, most research misconduct looks like what chronically overwhelmed people do when striving to meet unrealistic production quotas: They start cutting corners. As the first order of business, then, institutions that want to promote research integrity should assess whether their publishing expectations incentivize researchers to engage in misconduct as a survival strategy. If they do, they should ease up. In Europe, the Zurich Survey of Academics studied workplace environments and has been used to understand how intense pressure to publish influences researchers’ behavior. Generating similar insights at the institutional level could help find specific solutions for re-shifting the balance toward quality over quantity.
Yes, it would mean fewer scientific publications. But there’s already so much chaff in the literature that reducing publishing output would be a win in itself. An astonishing 3.3 million science and engineering articles were published in 2022 — a sea of literature that’s difficult for medical researchers to even navigate.
There’s another argument for institutions to publish less: self-interest. More and more funders want to see their research dollars have real-world impact. This requires disseminating scientific insights to policymakers, journalists, and other stakeholders. But in my frequent conversations with researchers, especially those early in their careers, I regularly hear reports of receiving little or no institutional support for dissemination. It’s common for researchers who are already stretched thin to be given guides on how to “do it yourself” — when dissemination should be a collaborative institutional practice.
Supporting researchers to publish less, and focus more effort on dissemination and engagement, would weaken the perverse incentives that lead to misconduct, starve predatory publishers, foster collaboration, and improve the evidence base for policy and practice. It could also produce cultural benefits, including improved science literacy and greater public appreciation for the scientific process.
How realistic is this? Well, I think it’s realistic enough that it shouldn’t be dismissed as impossible.
In fact, this could become new ground on which institutions compete for talent. Pointing to funders’ increasing interest in seeing research disseminated and translated into impact is the big, relatively new systemic factor that can help institutions rationalize reducing publishing output.
Younger researchers have little clout at these institutions, but the ones I talk to don’t care about publishing 300 papers — they want to create societal impact. I think the institutions that intentionally create a place for them to produce their best work and engage others with it will be highly competitive in the near future.
Pursuing knowledge is one of life’s great joys. A career in research should provide a reliable path toward growth and fulfillment, not a slide toward being overwhelmed and acts of desperation. We’ll always need policies and tools to enforce research integrity. But as institutions start working to align their internal practices with HHS’s new rule, they should also remember their responsibility to create environments that enable researchers to be their best selves.
Paul Martin Jensen is founder and CEO of Etalia, a health research communications and training firm.
