The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity

The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity serves the European research community as a framework for self-regulation across all scientific and scholarly disciplines and for all research settings.

The 2023 Revised Edition of the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity has been updated to ensure that the European Code of Conduct remains fit for purpose and relevant to all disciplines, emerging areas of research, and new research practices. The European Commission recognises the European Code of Conduct as the primary standard for upholding research integrity across all research projects funded by the EU. 

In addition, it increasingly serves as a model for national and institutional codes of conduct, funding guidelines, training initiatives, and discipline-specific standards. For example, the European Code of Conduct forms the foundation for detailed guidelines for responsible Open Science, developed by the Horizon-funded ROSiE project. Similarly, it underpins the living guidelines for promoting the responsible use of generative AI in research, developed by the European Research Area Forum.

The changes in the 2023 revision reflect an increased awareness of the importance of research culture in enabling research integrity and implementing good research practices and place a greater responsibility on all stakeholders for observing and promoting these practices and the principles that underpin them. They likewise accommodate heightened sensibilities in the research community to mechanisms of discrimination and exclusion and the responsibility of all actors to promote equity, diversity, and inclusion. It also takes account of changes in data management practices, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and recent developments in Open Science and research assessment.

ALLEA thanks all stakeholder organisations and projects who generously provided detailed and insightful written feedback during the consultation process. A detailed summary of the stakeholder feedback process and how this informed the 2023 revisions can be downloaded here.

This edition was originally published in English on 23 June 2023. Translations into all EU languages with the support of ALLEA Member Academies are now underway, with many already available (listed below). The previous 2017 edition including all translations can be found here.