Research Integrity Officer

This is a full-time, permanent position on Crick Terms and Conditions of Employment

Reports to: Head of Research Management Support

Context

The Francis Crick Institute is a leading centre of biomedical research and innovation whose mission is to perform-world class discovery research to understand how living things work and to drive benefits for human health.  Dedicated to research excellence, the institute has the scale, vision and expertise to tackle the most challenging scientific questions underpinning health and disease.

The Institute is an independent charity, founded through the vision of six partner organisations: the Medical Research Council (MRC), Cancer Research UK (CRUK), the Wellcome Trust, University College London (UCL), Imperial College London and King’s College London.

The role holder will contribute to the effective and efficient support of research and innovation at the Crick through the delivery of robust management of the Crick’s Research Integrity agenda. To ensure that our research is reliable and trustworthy, all research activities must be conducted with the highest standards of rigour and integrity. Research integrity covers a wide range of activities that, for simplicity, can be subdivided into:

• ensuring that research is carried out well: i.e. that it is of appropriate quality and reproducibility, and free from fabrication and manipulation. This is achieved by providing training, ensuring adherence to ethical, legal, licensing and safety standards, and creating a fair environment in which staff are encouraged to openly raise and discuss concerns;
• ensuring that data is stored properly and published openly: by promoting good research data management, and compliance with FAIR principles and Open Access;
• assessing the work of new and existing researchers fairly: by ensuring that the content and significance of research output is appropriately specified, and that the contributions of researchers are appropriately acknowledged, when making decisions about funding, hiring, tenure, or promotion, as recommended by the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (DoRA)

The Crick already engages in many activities that promote research integrity and wishes to develop further in this area to ensure that we continue to demonstrate best practice and are at all times compliant with our core funders’ requirements and the external standards to which we are signatories, e.g., the Concordat to Support Research Integrity.

The post holder will sit in the Research Management Support team, reporting to the Head of Research Management Support. They will work closely with the Director of Research, the Director of Clinical Research, a newly appointed Research Data Manager, the Academic Training Team and other internal and external stakeholders.

Key responsibilities

These include but are not limited to:

• Working with senior stakeholders internally and at funding bodies to develop research integrity policy, and associated operating procedures
• Engaging proactively with a broad range of stakeholders, internal and external, to support the embedding and promotion of a culture of good research conduct amongst our research community.
• Providing advice and support to staff and students in relation to a range of policies applicable to research integrity, research ethics and governance.
• Developing procedures for enquiring into allegations of misconduct in research and scholarship.
• Developing and maintaining information resources for all staff and students on all aspects of research integrity and relevant regulatory requirements.
• Working with the Academic Training Team to develop and deliver training for all Crick staff, including PhD students, postdocs, LRSs and Group Leaders.
• Maintaining a strong awareness of changing policy, guidance and legislation, and the wider governance environment by working with a range of external stakeholders.
• Briefing senior management on changes that may affect research integrity policies or procedures, and putting forward recommendations.
• Championing key initiatives, engaging with stakeholders across the organisation, to build a culture of responsible research practice responding to national agendas concerning:
  • Trusted research & innovation
  • Research culture
  • Reproducibility crisis
  • Security-sensitive research
  • Export control
  • Data management
• Providing administrative support to manage enquiries alleging research misconduct and research misconduct investigations in line with Crick procedure and in compliance with the Concordat to Support Research Integrity, including:
  • Developing, implementing, and managing a system to track and manage complaints and allegations of research misconduct.
  • Working closely with HR and Faculty to ensure the status and outcomes of any investigations are appropriately recorded
  • Reporting as necessary to funders and external bodies, and in line with the Concordat to Support Research Integrity.
• Providing input to institutional and external audits, including drafting the annual statement on research integrity
• Conducting compliance monitoring audits

Key experience and competencies

The post holder should embody and demonstrate our core Crick values: bold, imaginative, open, dynamic and collegial, in addition to the following:

Essential

Background and Experience

• Educated to at least degree level in a relevant scientific discipline
• Extensive knowledge and experience of the HEI sector and the organisational culture of research institutes/HEI institutions
• Excellent domain knowledge of research integrity, research publication and policies relating to open science

Skills and Competencies

• Excellent written and oral communication skills, with the ability to build strong relationships with internal and external stakeholders
• Excellent time management skills; proven ability to prioritise busy and diverse workloads with competing deadlines.
• Excellent analytical skills with the ability to interpret and present complex information.

Personal Qualities

• Energetic and proactive with proven organisation and problem-solving skills
• Collaborative and inclusive working style and attitude
• Resilient with an aptitude for, and enjoyment of, a dynamic high workload
• Pragmatic and solution focussed
• Ability to use discretion and judgment in dealing with highly confidential and sensitive information.

Desirable Qualifications

• PhD in a relevant scientific discipline
• Experience of managing the development and provision of training
• Experience of working with a variety of data management systems