Research integrity

Birkbeck staff and students are expected to exercise ethical
principles of honesty, rigour, transparency, openness, care and respect in the planning and conduct of research.

Our code of practice defines and promotes a culture of good practice in research, demonstrating the College’s commitment to high standards of personal and professional conduct.

We aim to embed a culture of ethical awareness, good practice, responsibility and sound judgement, providing policies, procedures and guidance for staff and students.

The College takes research misconduct seriously, but is committed to protecting its staff from malicious accusations. Plagiarism, deception or the fabrication or falsification of results are regarded as serious disciplinary offences.

Our research strategy articulates the way we wish to achieve our aims and is the result of a process of consultation across the College.

In line with its mission, the College seeks to promote research that makes a difference to society by seeking out opportunities for its public dissemination and for its applications.

The code of practice establishes clear mutual expectations between the College and its research students, and minimises the risks of personal difficulties, inadequate supervision, or unsatisfactory student performance.

These statements are summaries of actions and activities undertaken to support and strengthen understanding and the application of research integrity issues.

Birkbeck believes that education should be available to all sections of society, providing an inclusive working and learning environment for students and staff.

Find out about the membership and terms of reference of Birkbeck's College- and school-level ethics committees.

The Birkbeck Institutional Research Online (BIROn) repository provides open access to published work by researchers at Birkbeck - both students and staff.

BiRD offers secure, long-term storage for the data outputs supporting the research produced by Birkbeck's staff and postgraduate students.

The Dilemma Game confronts researchers with difficult dilemmas in the context of a critical dialogue, supporting them in further developing their own 'moral compass'.

Guidance note to help determine whether or not ethical review is required for a project or activity.

This guidance note highlights issues that relate to undertaking research within your own organisation, to help you identify the areas you need to additionally consider in your ethics approval forms.

The protocol supports access to genetic resources and the transfer of technologies, and recognises the need for appropriate funding, thereby contributing to the conservation of biological diversity and the sustainable use of its components.

In research, the anonymisation of qualitative data allows data to be shared (through publications and data sharing services) while preserving the privacy of research participants.

Read the full guidelines on when you need to undertake ethical review.

This checklist is an abbreviated form of the full ethical review guidelines and is intended to help you to rapidly navigate through the key points.

The concordat provides a national framework for good research conduct and its governance. It explains how researchers, employers and funders are expected to meet these commitments.

UKRIO publications provide useful support for researchers in the form of checklists, toolkits and good practice guidelines.

The framework establishes key principles and minimum requirements and confirms what we regard as good practice for all social science research. It also identifies requirements for ethics review for the research we are asked to support.

This summary document brings together all guidance on the open access policy in REF 2021, as set out in the Guidance on submissions (REF 2019/01) and the Audit guidance (REF 2019/04).

This policy sets out the obligations of staff and students in respect of protecting the rights and freedoms of all individuals in relation to their personal data.

The DORA declaration encourages researchers to use a wide range of metrics to evaluate their research output. Birkbeck is a signatory to the DORA declaration and is committed to this approach.

The open research policy describes Birkbeck's approach to open research and incorporates our open access and open data policies.

Birkbeck is committed to the provision of safe and healthy working conditions for all our staff and students and to the safeguarding of persons entering our premises.

Birkbeck's Financial Regulations include a section about our policy statement on intellectual property.

The purpose of this policy is to provide a means within the College to raise a concern in the right place if you suspect or witness any risk, malpractice or wrongdoing within the College

This policy statement sets out Birkbeck’s strategy for improving our environmental sustainability as we work towards becoming a net-zero organisation.