Discussion
fatigue
RECRUITMENT
This study provides insights into the research practices of biomedical doctoral students in Europe, performance pressures (i.e. the necessity to publish). Our results showed that students frequently chose DRP, and the DRP depended considerably on the dilemma they faced. The most frequently chosen DRPs were exaggerating the importance of the finding (i.e. adding spin), salami slicing, and fishing results, indicating potential situations that may need more attention. Our study also indicated that nearly half of PhD students were under considerable pressure to publish. This pressure might impact the research practices of PhD students, leading them to commit questionable practices to fulfill quantitative requirements from research institutionsTo our knowledge, this is the first study to explore the impact of environmental factors (i.e. the roles of post-doctoral researchers and supervisors) on research practices when facing a dilemma that could lead to DRPs with a large cohort of European PhD students in the biomedical sciences. On an average, we did not find evidence of an impact of postdoctoral researchers and supervisors on student practices. However, the results vary considerably across vignettes and this study lacks enough power to perform an analysis at the vignette level. Further studies are needed to explore the impact of the environment on the dilemma most frequently responsible for DRPs. Situations in which PhD students need more decision-making support and potential interventions to prevent DRPs need to be identified.Our study had some limitations. First, our response rate from university administrators was not ideal, and several declining participation remarked that their students had “survey fatigue” from COVID-19 related online surveys circulating during our recruitment period. We initially delayed our recruitment period in consideration of this; however, this general fatigue may have affected our survey engagement and completion rates. Second, we focused on biomedical doctoral students in Europe and geared recruitment efforts geared towards these participants. Therefore, the generalizability of our findings is skewed towards a European context, where there may have been more initiatives to raise awareness of research integrity issuesOur results clearly probe into the evaluation of academic performance at research institutions. Changes in the methods of evaluating PhD students’ academic performance are urgently needed to incentivize good research practices. Some institutions have employed new methods to assess researchers, focusing on research quality and contribution to other colleagues’ work and career, rather than on quantitative metrics