The World Conferences on Research Integrity and The Global Health Network: common goals

The World Conferences on Research Integrity (WCRI) and The Global Health Network have the common goals of fostering quality and ethical research in low-resource settings. WCRI (Foundation of World Conferences on Research Integrity, https://wcrif.org/) aim to promote the exchange of information, awareness and debate on the responsible conduct of research. They have been the source of a wealth of training opportunities and the basis for many institution research integrity codes in Latin America and in a large part of the world. The latest WCRI was held in South Africa in June 2022 and focused on promoting research Integrity in an unequal world. Lively discussions on mentoring, networking and embedding one’s own culture into the research integrity institutional setting will most likely lead to more involvement in future training activities.  There is an urgent need to reinforce governance and move the concept of research integrity beyond compliance into an ethos, with the support of training and mentoring.  

In spite of the fact that research integrity is not largely widespread in Latin America, a few Latin American professionals have attended the WCRI. The task at stake is to create awareness, develop strategies to bring training opportunities to academia, mechanisms to create research integrity offices and promote the management of research misconduct. Institutional regulations and national guidelines are lacking in most countries in the region, thus, the importance of the role of regional networks for research integrity as liaisons among like-institutions in different countries, to share experiences and bring together expertise, from the more developed sister networks.  

The WCRI events are a valuable opportunity for researchers to come together and strengthen good practices, such as open science, mentoring, social responsibility and others, and form a working group to conduct research on research integrity in the region, to try to influence new ways to evaluate researchers, based on their contribution to science and not on the number of papers or grants they receive. We want to bring the discussion of research integrity to the intense work conducted by The Global Health Network benefitting developing world regions, so that the scientific discourse involves research integrity.