Essential signals in publication trends and collaboration patterns in global Research Integrity and Research Ethics (RIRE)

Amid an increasingly demanding research environment, there has been a growing interest in studies concerning Research Integrity and Research Ethics (RIRE). Between 1990 and 2020, over 9700 publications were published to address problematic research conduct such as falsification, plagiarism, and related protocols and standards. In this work, country-level trends and collaborative structures are examined with respect to economic group. Our results showed that RIRE publications are predominantly led by the West, with North America and Western Europe contributing the most. While there is interest within growing economies such as China, the pace is not comparable to its overall publications. However, international collaborations on RIRE grew to account for nearly 30% of all publications on the subject in 2020. Although there is a stronger preference for high income countries to collaborate with other high income countries, we observe a rise in partnerships between high-/middle-income and middle-/lower-income co-authorship pairs in the last decade. These trends point to a maturing global community with distributed knowledge transfer, towards more unified international standards for research ethics and integrity.