It's Love Data Week! At UVA Library’s Research Data Services we help researchers understand how to keep their data organized and well-managed. For Love Data Week 2025, we talked to Kristen Schwendinger, Director of Research Integrity and Ethics at UVA’s Office of the Vice President for Research, to help us understand the intersection of data management and research integrity.
In this blog post and the podcast linked below, she provides research ethics advice that benefits all data stakeholders. Kristen writes:
One of the themes of Love Data Week is data management plans and their role in preventing mistakes and misconduct. Experts in research misconduct and retractions have pointed out that data management plans protect both the research and the researcher when allegations of misconduct arise.
UVA’s research misconduct policy covers fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism. Retractions occur for different reasons and are not governed the same as misconduct allegations. Because of federal regulations, the process for assessing a research misconduct allegation is prescriptive and standardized.
When misconduct is raised by a publisher or research institution, a review of the data management plan can be a key part of an assessment. A data management plan can show where and how data was stored, who has access to the data, and who can serve as a guide to confirm the provenance of the data in question.
Researchers can hear more about the best practices to prevent misconduct in the podcast, “Preventing Research Misconduct & Data Management.”
Whenever concerns about data falsification, fabrication, or plagiarism arise, researchers are encouraged to contact the office of Research Integrity and Ethics. Alternatively, researchers may submit concerns via the UVA Compliance Helpline.
Additional resources
- UVA Policy on Research Misconduct
- Data Provenance | NNLM
- Opening the black box of article retractions: exploring the causes and consequences of data management errors | Royal Society Open Science
- Retractions caused by honest mistakes are extremely stressful, say researchers
- Ten simple rules for maximizing the recommendations of the NIH data management and sharing plan | PLOS Computational Biology
- Coates | What if It Didn’t Happen: Data Management and Avoiding Research Misconduct | Journal of eScience Librarianship
- A scientific fraud. An investigation. A lab in recovery. | The Transmitter: Neuroscience News and Perspectives
- How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research?
- "What Could Possibly Go Wrong? The Impact of Poor Data Management" by Chris Eaker
- It's 10 pm; Do You Know Where Your Data Are? Data Provenance, Curation, and Storage - PubMed
Kristen Schwendinger welcomes questions about any aspect of research integrity and ethics. She can be reached at amd8hc@virginia.edu.
UVA Library’s Research Data Services can also provide guidance around best practices with research data. Find out more about how we can help.
Many thanks to Laura Hjerpe, Senior Research Data Management Librarian, and Jenn Huck, Associate Director of Research Data Services & Social, Natural, and Engineering Sciences, for arranging this contribution in celebration of Love Data Week; and to Mara Shapiro, MPH Candidate and Research Integrity and Communications Intern (UVA OVPR), for producing the podcast!