The Growing Need for Transparency: A Source of Frustration and Pride
By Marianna Evola
Transparency elicits trust, secrecy elicits suspicion. Academic research is a transparent
endeavor because it promotes trust in the research community. I use these lines quite
often when I lead conversations on responsible research with students. However, recently
I've been contemplating how transparency addresses the growing number of concerns
related to responsible research. Pretty much every topic of RCR training begins with
a discussion on the importance of transparency. Luckily transparency has been central
to the integrity of research and scholarship since the start, so students have a good
grasp or the importance of transparency. However, students have not always thought
about how important it is to broadly apply the practice of transparency to all stages
of a research project. From conceptualizing an idea to publishing a study, we are
not allowed any secrets and of course, we are never permitted to purposefully omit
any aspect of a research methodology from our research presentations or publications.
We have very high expectations of transparency from our colleagues and we train our
students to be actively transparent in their research endeavors.
No, I'm not a blind idealist. I'm aware that we can all identify one or two colleagues
that are not fully transparent in their research reports. However, their research
and decisions are often discussed with shaking heads and shoulder shrugs. Their research
is not wholly trusted. Their lack of transparency is judged as engaging in deception,
so their work is deemed questionable at best. Students are not often overtly informed
about these colleagues because we want our students to embrace positive research practices,
not engage in gossip. However, gradually as students gain knowledge and status in
their discipline, they notice the missing pieces in the research reports and note
that their mentor does not reference those articles. Gradually, students get strong
mentoring that research cannot be trusted if it is not transparent.
We encourage students to engage in transparency from the day that they start in the
lab, often as undergrads. We know when students walk into the lab they will make mistakes,
fail to follow instructions and cost the lab time and money as they learn to conduct
research. As such, many of these first lessons on transparency occur when students
make critical research errors. Mentors practice patience and deep breathing so that
we will be approachable and not react in anger when students come to us with costly
errors. Well, that was my strategy but I have to admit that my deep breathing was
more often a growling sigh with a healthy eye roll. Then after a moment of silence,
I would rally the team to correct the problem or clean up the mess. That being said,
my students did come to me to report errors which suggests that to some extent, I
maintained the aura of approachability. Since then, as my former students have developed
their own careers, they have complimented me on my patience when they recall their
mistakes. The memories are generally triggered while they are struggling to maintain
composure while mentoring their own students. Regardless, my students learned the
importance of transparency when they braved coming to me with mistakes and problems.
Now they mentor the importance of transparency with their own students. Practicing
and teaching the importance of transparency is a historical tradition in the research
world.
So, if transparency is such a long standing practice inherent to the research world,
why is there ever any confusion regarding the need to be transparent? Are researchers
purposely engaging in deception? The answer to that is, absolutely not. Rather, there
is an increase in the number and complexity of regulations associated with research.
Thus, it is difficult for researchers to stay abreast of their need to maintain transparency
with the ever growing and changing regulations. In addition, technology has evolved,
such as plagiarism detection software, which is creating greater scrutiny and accountability
of academic research. Finally, the focus and nature of academic research is also evolving
so that more researchers are focused on translational research so that they can possibly
market their ideas and reap the rewards of their sweat and creativity. All of these
evolutions in research are creating a need for transparency in a manner or degree
which did not previously exist. As such, with research careers and regulatory oversight
rapidly evolving, academic researchers can easily and accidentally fail to meet growing
standards of transparency. And sadly, in the competitive research world, these mistakes
can be misinterpreted as purposeful deception and one's research reputation can inadvertently
be damaged.
So, how do you protect yourself? I think the first step is to go back and evaluate
what it means for a researcher to be transparent? At a recent presentation on the
issue of self-plagiarism, I asked the students in attendance to define transparency.
After a pause, the students began to try and define the term and largely they approached
the definition as being truthful in research reports and never being deceptive. Now,
of course, the students were blind-sided with the question during my presentation
so I did not expect them to provide a perfect response, rather I wanted to get a feel
for their understanding of transparency. However, as the students finished their definition
of transparency, it was interesting to note that their definitions lacked a proactive
component to transparency that is likely critical for promoting trust.
Transparency is proactive full disclosure of practices and activities. Yes, we are
required to answer questions honestly and not be deceptive. However, like so many
attributes of academic research, we hold ourselves and our colleagues to a higher
standard. It is not enough to merely answer questions honestly, we must proactively
provide all pertinent information. Researchers don't just answer questions, rather
we are required to provide our audience with a list of invasive questions by disclosing
all the skeletons in our research closet. We enable our audience to ask challenging
questions by providing them with the questions. As such, the audience is readily able
to question whether our practices and activities are appropriate. In a sense, transparency
enables the audience to say "No". Hence, transparency comes with an element of vulnerability.
However, due to the growing regulatory environment of academic research, researchers
are accountable far beyond their academic audience. Researchers are now required to
be transparent to a plethora of regulatory committees, all of which are empowered
to say "No". They are, of course, accountable for their research activities, but researchers
are also accountable for personal business that could be perceived to be related to
their research endeavors, in the form of conflicts of interest. In other words, research
ideas and practices are increasingly vulnerable to restriction and oversight, but
so is personal business (i.e., conflicts of interest) that is related to research
endeavors. It is worth remembering that these regulatory committees are made up of
research colleagues that want to promote research productivity while also enhancing
ethics and transparency. I work with multiple faculty committees and their support
staff and all of these committees are pro-research but they exist for a reason. All
of these committees exist because our academic ancestors made bad choices and as such,
systems for oversight were created. As such, the second step for researchers to take
to ensure that they meet growing transparency standards is to utilize these committees.
When committees request additional information from investigators, what they are saying
is that additional transparency is needed to meet regulatory standards.
In addition, technology, such as plagiarism detection software, has enabled editors,
research sponsors, reviewers and competitors to easily assess our entire research
and publication history. As such, the ethics of historical publication practices,
such as recycling the text from published methods, are being questioned and debated
(/research/scholarly-messenger/2016/October/rcr-self-plagiarism.php). These technologies make it critical for researchers to be aware of the standards
of their discipline and the expectations for transparency. I warn students to educate
themselves on the accepted practices of their discipline and whether their professional
societies, research sponsors or high ranking publications consider recycling published
methods to be self-plagiarism. And, even if it is currently acceptable, students should
be clearly transparent about recycling methods so that their actions cannot be construed
as deceptive. Hence, the third step that investigators should take to make sure that
they are meeting transparency standards is to familiarize themselves with the expectations
of their professional societies, research sponsors and publishers.
The academic research world has always had high standards to promote the integrity
of research. Not only were we not permitted to be deceptive, the practice of transparency
minimized the likelihood that one's audience would perceive deception in our research
practices. Now the regulatory world and technology are holding us to an even higher
standard of transparency. Researchers need to be aware that there are growing standards
because our practices are under increased scrutiny and as such, research reputations
are vulnerable. We can be resentful of the increased scrutiny, and we all are, on
occasion. A bit of grumbling and resentment is expected. However, we can also remember
that the rudimentary ethics and research standards that are widely accepted today
were probably resented by our academic ancestors. They, no doubt, grumbled as they
witnessed the infancy of ethics in research. Our academic ancestors set the standard
of transparency and the research world continues to refine the practice today, holding
us accountable to growing standards of transparency. We have high ethical standards
that have largely been self-imposed. Those standards can be difficult to meet. We
should be proud.
Marianne Evola is the director of the Human Research Protection Program in the Office of Research & Innovation. She is a monthly contributor to Scholarly Messenger.
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