Abstract
Background
Australian health and medical research funders support substantial research efforts, and incentives within grant funding schemes influence researcher behaviour. We aimed to determine to what extent Australian health and medical funders incentivise responsible research practices.
This great paper offers an extremely helpful analysis of how to promote good practice in the research integrity space. For those of us working in this area, the findings will come as no surprise. Research funding bodies and institutions can play an extremely positive role in incentivising good practice and rewarding the practice we want to see. Conversely, it provides an insight as to why the current distorted incentives are encouraging bad behaviour. A recommended read for research institutions and research funding bodies.
We conducted an audit of instructions from research grant and fellowship schemes. Eight national research grants and fellowships were purposively sampled to select schemes that awarded the largest amount of funds. The funding scheme instructions were assessed against 9 criteria to determine to what extent they incentivised these responsible research and reporting practices: (1) publicly register study protocols before starting data collection, (2) register analysis protocols before starting data analysis, (3) make study data openly available, (4) make analysis code openly available, (5) make research materials openly available, (6) discourage use of publication metrics, (7) conduct quality research (e.g. adhere to reporting guidelines), (8) collaborate with a statistician, and (9) adhere to other responsible research practices. Each criterion was answered using one of the following responses: “Instructed”, “Encouraged”, or “No mention”.
Results
Across the 8 schemes from 5 funders, applicants were instructed or encouraged to address a median of 4 (range 0 to 5) of the 9 criteria. Three criteria received no mention in any scheme (register analysis protocols, make analysis code open, collaborate with a statistician). Importantly, most incentives did not seem strong as applicants were only instructed to register study protocols, discourage use of publication metrics and conduct quality research. Other criteria were encouraged but were not required.
Conclusions
Funders could strengthen the incentives for responsible research practices by requiring grant and fellowship applicants to implement these practices in their proposals. Administering institutions could be required to implement these practices to be eligible for funding. Strongly rewarding researchers for implementing robust research practices could lead to sustained improvements in the quality of health and medical research.
Keywords
Grant, Fellowship, Medical, Research transparency, Research reproducibility, Research integrity
Diong, J., Kroeger, C.M., Reynolds, K.J. s, Barnett, A. & Bero, L.A. (2021) Strengthening the incentives for responsible research practices in Australian health and medical research funding. Research Integrity and Peer Review, 6, 11. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41073-021-00113-7
Publisher (Open Access): https://researchintegrityjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s41073-021-00113-7
