“Research integrity is sometimes difficult to define simply, but it is applying good practices to the creation, interpretation and sharing of one’s research,” said Stephanie Watts, chairwoman of MSU’s Research Integrity Council.

Michelle Stickler, associate director of the Office for Research Protections at Penn State, said research is often conducted in ways that don’t comply with ethical standards.

“We know that questionable research practices happen all the time and we know that our graduate students are being exposed to them,” Stickler said.

“We want to identify mechanisms or interventions that we can do to try to better influence graduate students … so when they go out into the world of professionals … they are really taking with them a mind-set to be able to promote research integrity.”

In April 2008, the three universities jointly applied for the $50,000 grant issued by the Council of Graduate Schools. After receiving the grant, MSU, Penn State and Wisconsin-Madison decided to assess academic integrity in two phases.

The first phase, which will occur this spring, is a graduate school-wide survey assessing the research and scholarly integrity at each institution. After that, each university will explore a different aspect of integrity and report its findings to the two other institutions.

“We can share those models — what worked well and what did not work well — with other graduate schools around the country,” said Karen Komplarens, dean of the MSU graduate school. “The MSU-PSU-Wisconsin partnership brings a set of deans together to expand our thinking and our model across three campuses.”

After the survey, Komplarens and other investigators will examine graduate handbooks, which each program is required to provide to its students. In each handbook, the program addresses integrity and safety in research and creative activities.

“Frankly, some do it better than others,” said Terry May, faculty conflict of interest information officer and co-investigator on the project.

Daniel Denecke, director of best practices for the Council of Graduate Schools, said the grant is the first time the group has targeted academic integrity in a systematic approach.

“What we’re trying to do is enable universities to have much more comprehensive and strategic approaches to integrating research ethics education and responsible conduct of research into grad education,” he said.