Our Strategy 2026-2031
Strategy 2026-2031
UKRIO’s strategy, values and direction for the next five years
Our five-year strategy sets out UKRIO’s response to a rapidly changing research landscape. Shaped by more than 200 responses to our strategy consultation, it reflects both the opportunities ahead and the growing complexities facing the research community, from advances in AI and financial pressures within higher education to an increasingly complex international landscape and declining public trust in research.
Since 2006, UKRIO has provided practical, independent support to help practitioners and organisations safeguard and advance research integrity. As the research environment has evolved, so has our role; we work increasingly across the wider research system to address the pressures, incentives, norms and cultures that shape research. Today, our theory of change focuses on working at every level of the research system: empowering individuals, strengthening organisations and influencing the wider system.
Our 2026–31 strategy builds on this approach, setting out how we will work across the breadth of the research system to help the research community navigate a changing landscape and strengthen the conditions in which research integrity can thrive.
Over the next five years, we will deepen our practical support to reduce unnecessary duplication, improve consistency and harmonisation, and build skills and capability. At the same time, we will strengthen our role as a trusted, independent voice, using our unique perspective across the research community to anticipate emerging challenges and opportunities, bring people together around shared solutions, and drive collective action and systemic change.
Our strategic priorities
1
Strengthen the depth and reach of practical support
Shared guidance, tools and procedures to build confidence and organisational capability.
3
Create spaces for shared learning and collective action
Collaborative forums, events and networks that enable the research community to share good practice, tackle emerging challenges and develop collective solutions.
2
Build skills and capacity within the research community
Accessible training, learning resources and professional development that strengthen capability across the research community.
4
Champion research integrity across the system
Thought leadership, advocacy and cross-sector partnerships to strengthen research integrity across the UK’s research system.
Read our previous strategy.
Annual work programme
Our five-year strategy sets our direction; our annual work programme translates it into action.
Each year, we will work with the research community to identify where our support, expertise and influence can make the greatest difference. This ensures our work remains evidence-based, responsive to emerging challenges and opportunities, and focused where it can have the greatest impact, while maintaining a clear focus on our long-term strategic priorities.