Responsible Record Keeping Practices: Standards & Practices of Funded Researchers

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The integrity of research requires that research studies be verifiable and replicable. Good research records make this possible. Recent studies, including our own, have suggested that there is a large gap between recognized standards for good research records and actual practice among working scientists. In our prior studies we focused on record keeping practices involved in research misconduct investigations. Record keeping problems were often discovered during misconduct investigations and specific types of record keeping problems were identified. These results could be limited to researchers being investigated or it could be an indication of a wider problem. To answer this question, this project will compare specific ideal practices (standards) with the actual practices of record keeping of 600 PHS funded scientists from a variety of fields. Our prior work has identified (confirmed with focus groups of working scientists) a number of specific record keeping practices which are generally applicable across fields. This has allowed us to develop a questionnaire at the level of research group leaders (Schreier, Wilson and Resnik, 2006) that can be answered meaningfully by a diverse group of researchers. By comparing what researchers report actually happens in their research with the standards they would recommend to new researchers (ideal standards), we will be able to identify those standards to which researchers routinely adhere and those that are more problematic. We will also assess the extent and type of time consuming problems that deviations from ideal standards create for researchers. Since the results will be generally applicable to academic research, they should provide practical guidance to concerned researchers, RCR educators & policy makers. Finally we examine the transmission of good record keeping practices between scientific generations. Respondents will be asked to identify post-docs and graduate students they are mentoring. By comparing the view of the mentors with the views of their mentees, we will be able to assess if the system of transmitting standards is working at the point where it should be strongest (top researchers with their top students). In our prior studies we interviewed 96 research integrity officials from major research universities, and presented the results to four focus groups of active and diverse faculty researchers. This has allowed us to develop 1) a set of Best Practices for record keeping, 2) measures of real practices and ideal record keeping standards meaningful to researchers in diverse academic disciplines and 3) a research design that makes our proposed study compatible with the daily routines of active federally funded researchers.