The issue of scientific misconduct raises many legal issues. How to deal with them is not always clear, and that is one of the difficulties we have faced to build up this project.
Here are some questions that have been raised, and the positions our website is based upon. Feel free to discuss these issues on the corresponding blog posts!

1. How to use the term “misconduct”?

- One of the difficulties to address the issue of scientific misconduct at the international level stems from the wide diversity of definitions and procedures among countries and institutions. For instance, the US Office of research integrity has adopted “fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in proposing, performing, or reviewing research, or in reporting research results.” as a definition. The Committee on publication ethics has preferred a broader definition: “Behaviour by a researcher, intentional or not, that falls short of good ethical and scientific standards”.
Indeed misconduct is a general term, therefore it is hard to define it and draw a line between misconduct and good scientific practice. (Similarly, justice is not based on good conduct and bad conduct). Alternatives to defining misconduct include attempts to take inventory of all misbehaviours that undermine science integrity (e.g. in unofficial report by the OECD).

- on this website, we only consider cases that
(i) have been considered as “misconduct” by institutions. In this case we recommend the reader to refer to the corresponding definition of misconduct.
(ii) consist in a behaviour that is explicitly defined as misconduct by some institutions (e.g. plagiarism, cf definition of the ORI)
(iii) are contrary to explicit rules, such as publishing policies (e.g. non-declared conflict of interest), which is most of the time considered to be “misconduct” by institutions.

2. What is an assessment of misconduct?

- Ways to deal with misconduct also greatly vary, between institutions and countries, and with the kind of misconduct involved. For instance, cases of falsification can be dealt with within a university, following an investigation procedure specific to the university. Cases of non-declared conflict of interest or undeserved authorship are more likely to be dealt with by journal editors.
Different kinds of documents therefore report cases of misconduct.

- on this website, assessments include
(i) report of an investigation
(ii) letter from the authors who admit their misconduct (for instance, published in a journal)
(iii) on-site review published in journals (e.g. the Lancet)
Note: Since it is not possible to make an exhaustive list of the types of institutions from which we accept assessments of misconduct, please find below a list of the institutions that provided assessments for the cases listed here.

3. To which extent are these assessments available and public?

- There is no general rule; each institution decides whether it makes such documents available. For instance, the NIH, via the ORI, makes reports available on the Internet during 3 years after the assessment, whereas the NSF keeps all this information private.
The question of whether this information should be public is not easy. For instance, in France, legal judgments are generally public but anonymous. In research, it could be argued that disclosure of the name of the researchers that misbehave can ruin his/her career. However, as long as misconduct concerns the reliability of scientific publications, making a judgment anonymous means refusing to disclose which publication is unreliable. How then to base one’s research project on scientific literature?

- This website only refers to information that is already available on the Internet, and provides links to this information. Again, we insist on the fact that that this information focuses on scientific publications and not on their authors.

4. About the authors: Shall the name of the authors be shown? Shall the name of the author responsible of misconduct be revealed? Shall a research by author be possible?

Please refer to the corresponding blog post for this question.
So far, since the reference of a publication contains the names of the authors, we have considered irrelevant to hide the names of the authors on this website.
Assessments of misconduct always contain the name of the author involved. The name of this author responsible of misconduct is not shown in the list, but is mentioned in the assessment.
Since cases where authors falsify several publications are not rare, we have also decided to allow a research by author.

5. How to avoid defamation?

In general, defamation requires several criteria:
- a statement targets an individual and gives a negative image of him/her
- this statement is false
- the person who makes this statement is aware that it is false
- the statement refers to the person (and not of his/her work for instance)
- the person does not have the possibility of replying to the statement
Indeed, legislation and jurisprudence vary between countries. However, here we focus on the content of the publications, and do not judge their authors.

6. What is the position of this website regarding legislations of different countries?

The website is hosted in France and so is under French legislation.

7. Do we have to deal with the copyright of the publications?

On this website, only references to the publications are available.

Institutions considered as reliable up to now:
- University of Oslo
- Seoul National University
- Office of Research Integrity (US)
- Bell Labs
- on-site review in the Lancet