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Governance and named person
The current named person for research integrity is Richard Treisman, research director and research integrity sponsor.
A research integrity advisor is currently being hired and will take over as named person in the longer term.
The Crick governance structure also includes associate research director John Diffley, who is the research integrity officer and academic training lead, associate research director Julian Downward, the contact for Open Access and our authorship policy, assistant research director James Turner, the research integrity lead, and assistant research directors Katrin Rittinger and Victor Tybulewicz, who are the contacts for our Speak Up campaign and for scientific misconduct concerns.
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Actions and activities
Training
As part of their induction, all new PhD students, postdoctoral fellows and laboratory research scientists attend a mandatory lecture on research integrity and ethics.
Training on research data management, responsible image processing, statistics and citation management is mandatory for PhD students, and is optional for all other Crick staff.
Open research
Almost all Crick research papers are available as soon as they are published, through Open Access at Europe PubMedCentral and in the Crick Figshare repository.
Several transitional agreements have been taken out with publishers, brokered by JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee), to support open access publishing and provide regular feedback to JISC on their open access activities.
Crick researchers are encouraged to post preprints (around 180 preprints were posted in the past year) and to share data, protocols and code in publicly accessible repositories (e.g. Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO), Github and protocols.io).
Process reviews
As signatories to San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DoRA), the Crick assesses the work of existing and new researchers fairly.
The Crick recognises the value of all research outputs, including research publications, datasets, software, and influence on policy and practice.
A statement of scientific significance and author contributions are now requested on CVs, and preprints are accepted in job applications.
In the past year, the group leader application form has been revised to include questions about personal research contributions, visions for the future and contributions that promote diversity, inclusion, and research culture.
External engagement
In the past year the Crick has engaged in the Summer Symposium on Research Integrity, FAIRsFair national roadshow, webinars on UKRI's Open Access policy and Research Resource Identifiers.
The Crick has also engaged regularly with the ASAPbio community and the OA Switchboard advisory group and organised external events on micropublications and on FAIR data.
Posters promoting FAIR data have been presented internally at the Crick as well as at the EMBO/Crick postdoc symposium.
The Crick has communicated with external organisations to learn about their data practices, including GSK, the Wellcome Sanger Institute, and the Beatson Institute.
Process for dealing with allegations of misconduct
The Crick Scientific Misconduct Policy, available to all staff via our intranet, details the principles, procedure, and possible outcomes regarding allegations of scientific misconduct, and provides contact details for those who wish to raise concerns.
Our process is robust, fair and timely, and continues to be appropriate to the needs of our organisation.
Research misconduct investigations
In 2021, there were no formal research misconduct investigations at the Francis Crick Institute. Two allegations were raised, one through the Speak Up portal.
The research director and an assistant research director conducted a preliminary assessment and decided that the allegations did not warrant further exploration under the formal stage of the Crick’s scientific misconduct procedure.
Research environment
The Crick has a Code of Conduct, incorporated into all induction programmes, that details the standards of behaviour expected for all staff.
Crick staff have different roles, and therefore a mixture of formal and informal routes is provided to let staff at any position to feel confident to raise concerns.
In 2021 we also launched our Speak Up service, which allows staff to raise concerns anonymously. Information on raising concerns is disseminated via the intranet, and training and printed booklets developed by the Crick Lab Culture Forum.
