UKRIO and UKRN statement on 2025 refreshed Concordat
4th April 2025,
The publication of the refreshed Concordat to Support Research Integrity marks an important milestone in the ongoing effort to maintain the highest standards of research integrity and safeguard the UK’s reputation as a global leader in high quality research.
The UK Research Integrity Office (UKRIO) and UK Reproducibility Network (UKRN) welcome its release and endorses the principles it communicates. We maintain that the implementation of the Concordat will help ensure that research integrity remains at the heart of the UK’s research culture and practice.
Supporting good practice in the community
UKRIO: Since the Concordat was first published in 2012, UKRIO has been at the forefront of supporting the UK research community in embedding its five commitments into research practices, systems, and culture. We have provided in-depth advice, guidance, and training on its implementation, helping research organisations navigate the complexities of operationalising rigorous standards for research integrity. A key part of this support has been our Self-Assessment Tool for the Concordat, which helps organisations assess and enhance their adherence to the Concordat’s principles. This work forms a central part of our efforts to enhance the UK’s research practices and culture, sitting alongside our extensive programme of events and training for researchers and organisations, our regular and in-depth information, advice, and guidance on critical issues, and our role in shaping conversations and initiatives on research integrity. The principles of the Concordat have been embedded in our work since its launch in 2012, and we work with our 150+ subscribers, the wider research community, and policymakers to implement this crucial national guidance.
UKRN: UKRN was launched in 2019, at the time of a major revision to the Concordat. Since then, it has brought together actors across the research system, including researchers, research enablers, institutions, funders and publishers, to promote rigorous and transparent research. For staff and students, this includes a large and growing range of resources supporting open research in different disciplines, and related training. For institutions, UKRN supports a diverse community of practice, reforming how researchers are recruited, promoted and appraised, to better recognise openness and rigour. UKRN has also facilitated novel approaches to improving rigour, such as innovative publishing platforms, reproducibility checks at institutions and ‘registered report funding partnerships’ with funders and publishers. Collaboration across the research system is key to realising the aspirations of the Concordat.
An evolved Concordat
We recognise the significant progress that has been made in this refreshed Concordat, which reflects the ongoing evolution of the research environment. We have published a separate briefing document setting out the changes, so researchers and organisations understand their new responsibilities. Among the most welcome changes are the stronger emphasis on leadership and culture, a broader focus on all those involved in research – including research-enabling staff alongside researchers – and a more holistic approach to research integrity in systems, policies, and environments. These are critical interventions to ensure research integrity is woven into organisational culture and researcher behaviours and becomes a more inherent part of everyday research practice.
The revisions also demonstrate a growing recognition of the need for clear and accessible mechanisms for reporting concerns about breaches in research integrity. This is essential for fostering a culture of openness, transparency, and reflection in research. By making it easier for researchers to voice concerns and report issues, we can help to create a safer, more supportive environment in which integrity standards are upheld, as outlined in the UKRIO 2024 report Barriers to Investigating and Reporting Research Misconduct.
The need for further evolution
Despite the many positive changes in this refreshed Concordat, UKRIO and UKRN believe there is still work to be done to ensure that the framework:
- Fully addresses the challenges facing research integrity
- Increases both take-up and adherence across research organisations, including private, public, and third sector organisations
- Supports sustained and long-term change in the research landscape
In particular, we believe that further strengthening is needed in four critical areas:
Tackling poor and questionable research practices
Research misconduct, when it happens, does disproportionate damage to trust in research, and must be tackled effectively (see below). However, a stronger focus on improving the overall rigour and transparency of UK research would have a far greater impact on its trustworthiness and implies profound changes to the way we value and support research. The need for rigour and transparency has never been greater.
The decision to assess higher education institutions on People, Culture, and Environment in the upcoming Research Excellence Framework in 2029 reflects the growing recognition that such factors can and do influence research quality. While interventions at the institutional level are valuable, promoting a culture that fosters and drives research integrity will require a systems-level change involving collaboration between researchers, research employers, funders, publishers, and policy makers on a national and global scale.
Practical examples of how to improve rigour and transparency include researchers adopting open research practices as appropriate in all disciplines, institutions implementing procedures to support and reward them for doing so, and funders more clearly and consistently recognising this work in how funding programmes are designed and implemented. The Concordat could go further in setting expectations in these and related areas.
Reporting and addressing breaches of research integrity
While the refreshed Concordat acknowledges the importance of transparent reporting systems, we feel there is room for further clarification and guidance on the process and responsibilities of both individuals and organisations to prevent, address, and report breaches of research integrity. Researchers must have confidence that their concerns will be treated seriously and fairly, and that the processes for investigating potential QRPs and misconduct will be both robust and transparent.
The revision falls short of outlining clear expectations for institutions to use systems and language that destigmatise and normalise raising concerns, and to adopt a nationally-agreed model process to investigate and report potential breaches of research integrity, one of the recommendations of Barriers to Investigating and Reporting Research Misconduct. We would like to see more detailed expectations for how institutional policies on reporting and addressing concerns should be designed to be accessible, effective, and in line with a national template. By using an agreed national process, there would be fewer errors when responding to concerns and involved parties would be reassured the process of investigation was following a standard procedure adopted across all sectors of the research community.
Accountability
We believe the refreshed Concordat does not go far enough to establish concrete measures for monitoring and holding organisations accountable for their commitment to research integrity. While the document encourages institutions to establish processes for self-assessment and review, we feel there is a need to enforce more robust compliance.
For example, while employers are subject to external oversight of their implementation of the Concordat by research funders through the terms and conditions of funding grants, funders have no such external oversight and are only required to self-report. Given that external oversight has driven improvements in employers since the Concordat was published, it is a missed opportunity to not include a comparable external mechanism to encourage funders themselves to adhere to it.
Such oversight could form part of measures to drive adoption and implementation of the Concordat’s principles and responsibilities across all sections of UK research. In addition, as recommended by Barriers to Investigating and Reporting Research Misconduct, Government should collect and report on serious breaches of research integrity, such as research misconduct cases. This would not only enable a better understanding of its prevalence and underlying drivers, but also monitor the effectiveness of any processes, procedures, or training adopted.
Streamlining and harmonisation of reporting requirements
We acknowledge the longstanding calls from research organisations to streamline and harmonise the reporting requirements associated with the Concordat and related reporting mandated by research grants. It is disappointing that the refreshed Concordat does not mandate such harmonisation. Implementing these changes would reduce administrative burdens and bureaucracy, freeing up time and resources for other employer-led activities that support good research practice and a healthy research culture.
We welcome the addition in the 2025 Concordat that funders are responsible for ‘reducing unnecessary burden on the research community and employers’ and ‘incorporating proportionate checks’. However, the 2019 edition contained a responsibility for funders to ‘explore ways of streamlining their requirements to reduce duplication, inconsistency and/or conflict’ and it is disappointing that this has been dropped.
Since 2019, employers have been obligated to produce annual institutional research integrity statements in line with the Concordat, a valuable addition to the research integrity landscape. However, this has not led to a reduction in the level of mandated bespoke reporting to individual funding bodies. We hope to see progress in this area, with annual statements being accepted as partial fulfilment of funder reporting requirements and the adoption of a harmonised, streamlined format for the remainder.
Next steps
We believe the publication of the refreshed Concordat is a significant step forward in strengthening research integrity across the UK. At the same time, we believe it has the potential to go further; particularly in how it tackles the critical issue of reporting and addressing breaches of research integrity through a universal process. Additionally, we believe more could be done to improve the accountability of funders and employers to its commitments and harmonise reporting requirements for research grants.
UKRIO and UKRN welcome the refreshed Concordat to Support Research Integrity and fully supports its Signatories and the research community in advancing its important commitments. We are dedicated to working with the community to ensure that the refreshed Concordat is fully implemented and its principles are embedded throughout the research sector.
UKRIO will continue to provide practical guidance, resources, and training to support the adoption of the Concordat and help individuals and institutions to strengthen their research integrity practices and foster a positive research culture. This will synergise with our in-depth exploration of critical issues in research integrity, such as our priority workstreams on AI use in research, authorship in research outputs, enhancing research culture, and addressing breaches of research integrity. We will continue to collaborate with the research community in the UK and beyond, working with our network of over 150 subscriber organisations and other stakeholders. We are also committed to working alongside the Concordat Signatories to evolve and refine the document further, ensuring it remains robust and relevant in an ever-changing research environment.
UKRN will continue to enable collaboration across the research system, and internationally via the federation of reproducibility networks worldwide. Over the next year it will set up special interest groups to enable this system-wide collaboration in targeted areas including computational reproducibility, arts research, qualitative research and sharing research protocols and methods.
By working together, we can ensure that the highest standards of research integrity continue to guide and shape the future of UK research.
About the Concordat
The Concordat is the UK’s governing document on research integrity, including requirements on specific aspects of research integrity such as research culture, research ethics and addressing breaches of good practice. Through its five ‘commitments’, or principles, and responsibilities for individuals and organisations, it is a framework to support the integrity and trustworthiness of research.
Originally published in 2012, the Concordat was extensively revised in 2019 to reflect the findings of a UK Parliamentary enquiry on research integrity. It has now undergone a review to ensure that it will continue to support research integrity in the UK in the coming years. To view the Concordat, visit its webpage.