Table 1.
Demographics of participants
| Actor group | Abbrev. | Sample description | N, setting, and gendera |
|---|---|---|---|
| Researchers | Researchers | Faculty researchers from the Faculty of Medicine and Life Sciences of the host institution. | [■ ■ ▲ ▲] |
| Post - doctoral researchers | PostDoc | Post-Doctoral researchers from the Faculty of Medicine and Life Sciences of the host institution. | [■ ■ ■ ▲ ▲] |
| PhD students | PhD | PhD students enrolled in the Faculty of Medicine and Life Sciences of the host institution. | [■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■] |
| Lab technicians | LT | Laboratory technicians from the Faculty of Medicine and Life Sciences of the host institution. | [■ ■ ■ ■ ■] |
| Past researchers who changed career | RCC | Although this group was not part of our pre-registration, one RCC asked us whether she could take part in our study after seeing the invitation email. After having a chat with her, we realized that hearing the narrative and perspectives of individuals who did research work but decided to leave academia would deeply enrich our results and inform us on problems which are big enough to drive researchers away from research. Therefore, we invited a few researchers who changed careers (i.e., researchers or research students who decided to leave academia) to participate in interviews. In this group, we selected individuals from each of the three universities included in our project, and ensured to have individuals who left academia during their PhD, after their PhD, after their PostDoc, and during a tenure track. Recruitment of those participants was helped by recommendations from colleagues who were aware of the profiles we were looking for. | ■ ■ ■ ■ ▲ |
| Research institution leaders | RIL | We included three Flemish universities in our study. In each institution, we involved several members from the board of directors. These included directors of research, deans, or directors of doctoral schools from the faculties of medicine and life sciences or equivalent. | ▲ ▲ ▲ ▲ ▲ ▲ ▲ |
| Research integrity office members | RIO | We included different members from offices in charge of investigating allegations of research integrity and misconduct in three Flemish research institutions and outside research institutions in Flanders (e.g., research integrity officer, policy officers, etc.) | ■ ■ ■ ▲ |
| Editors and publishers | EP | We invited both big and small editors and publishers, and were fortunate to be able to involve journals and publishers with a broad range of editorial practices (i.e., open access and subscription based; published in local language and published in English; focusing on reviews and focusing on ground breaking empirical findings). To select the interviewees, we first invited a selection of journals from the top twenty highest Impact Factor for 2017 under the category of ‘Medicine, general and internal’ in the Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate Analytics), purposively picking different publishing models. In addition, we invited select publishers to take part in our research. After conducting individual interviews with a few agreeing participants from this sub-selection, we organized a small focus group with editors of smaller or differing journals, allowing us to involve a great diversity of editors and publishers. | [■ ■ ▲ ▲] ■ ■ ■ ▲ |
| Funding agencies | FA | We selected national, as well as European funding agencies, making sure to target different funding styles. We made sure to include perspectives from regional public funders, regional private funders, international funders, as well as funders focusing on applied research and funders focusing on fundamental research. | [▲ ▲] ■ ▲ ▲ |
| Policy makers or influencers | PMI | In this group, we included both organisations responsible for setting science policy, and organizations which influenced such policies by serving as informers. Consequently, PMIs do not necessarily write nor decide science policies, but may also be asked to provide data which later influences policy decisions. | ■ ▲ ▲ ⬤ |
| Research integrity network members | RIN | We selected a few actors from the research integrity core experts. These included researchers involved with important European research projects on research integrity as well as one actor involved in writing the European Code of Conduct for Researchers. | ■ ▲ ▲ |
| TOTAL = 56 participants | |||
aSquare bullets (■) represent female participants; triangle bullets (▲) represent male participants, and round bullets (⬤) represent participants with undefined gender (‘prefer not to answer’). Bullets displayed in brackets represent participants with whom we conducted as focus groups or joint interviews