In December 2025, Open Pharma attended the STM Research Integrity Day in London; a gathering of publishers, funders and research integrity experts to tackle the most pressing issues in research and publishing. If there’s one message that resonated throughout the day, it’s this: transparency is everything. In this article, we explore other key themes from the meeting and outline how everyone can take action to support and safeguard research integrity.
“We want good research, and we want good research published.”
Publishing Director
Why research integrity matters
Research integrity underpins the credibility of science and, ultimately, the trust patients and the public place in healthcare. Yet the challenges are mounting: image manipulation, paper mills, peer review mills, fake identities and opaque processes threaten the reliability of published research. These issues aren’t confined to one sector but ripple across academia, biopharma and publishing. Furthermore, as systems detecting research integrity threats evolve, so do the tools used to generate and facilitate those threats.
Throughout STM Research Integrity Day, presenters and delegates came together to explore how we, as a diverse research and publications community, can build systems that not only detect research misconduct but actively promote good practice. Here’s a summary of what we discussed.
“Scholarship is not an event, it’s an entire process.”
Journal Editor
Community and open communication
The foundation of integrity is openness. Speakers emphasized the need for honest, open dialogue between funders, publishers and institutions as a cornerstone of integrity and trust in research publications. Too often, concerns are siloed, and fear of reputational damage stifles action against those suspected of research misconduct or (as we are, after all, only human) genuine mistakes.
Integrity is a shared responsibility, and building a culture of trust starts at the community level. While some are taking steps in the right direction, institutions, publishers and funders must work together to set expectations and share best practices to safeguard and prioritize research integrity over commercial competition. In short, effective collaboration must become the norm.
“We have the same goal – making sure the literature is robust and trustworthy.”
Publishing Ethics and Integrity Manager
Accountability and incentivization systems
It’s clear that a ‘publish or perish’ culture has fuelled the rise in research misconduct and the proliferation of predatory publishers. To improve research integrity, we must first address the systems motivating bad actors. Accountability and funding systems need to recognize and reward transparent practices and reproducibility rather than simply the volume of publications. Furthermore, the perception of expressions of concern and retractions as negative outcomes needs to be addressed to remove the fear of admitting genuine errors and safeguarding the overall literature base.
As integrity systems improve, more cases of misconduct will surface; greater recognition of what ‘good’ looks like inevitably means identifying more of the bad. As a community, we need to view this as progress, not a failure, and remain resilient and committed to improving research integrity in the long term. It may well get worse before it gets better, but the pain is worth the gain!
“Can I tell people to publish less?”
Professor
What next?
Protecting and improving research integrity is a long-term goal requiring collaboration across every facet of the research publications ecosystem. Yet every one of us can take action to move us forward by:
- advocating for transparency and collaboration
- supporting systems for accountability
- sharing resources and best practices to strengthen trust in science.
We need to act now, together, to protect scientific integrity. After all, “Scientific literature is one of humanity’s crowning achievements … it needs to be preserved.” Researcher
The views expressed in this blog post are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of Open Pharma or its Members and Supporters.
Sophie Nobes is a Senior Medical Writer at Oxford PharmaGenesis, where she is the Lead of the Open Pharma patient involvement working group. Sophie is also a recipient of the 2026 NISO Plus Scholarship.
Note: Pull quotes included in this article have been anonymized because STM Research Integrity Day took place under Chatham House rules.
