In February, the REWARD/EQUATOR 2020 conference took place in Berlin, bringing together several stakeholders from different countries to discuss strategies for improving research. The conference was exceptional, a wide range of stakeholders including representatives of institutions, committees, funding agencies, young and senior researchers were involved in discussions to identify their roles and responsibilities in fostering research integrity.

The role of early career researchers marked several discussions and it was in the center of most of the presentations. An eye catching presentation regarding the education in research integrity was about bottom-up initiatives that have been developed by young researchers in order to involve the local academic community in the discussion and change the research integrity climate.

An example of this initiative is the ReproducibiliTea journal club, created by graduate students at Oxford University in 2018. The journal club is being advertised around the departments and universities, raising awareness about reproducibility and Open Science in the process of education. The group is made up of students and staff who meet periodically to explore issues related to open research and participate in presentations and training sessions designed to help all members of a particular university to implement best practice research methods, promoting good science.

Initiatives like this were created in response to the changing international research climate. An open dialogue in a safe environment to discuss day-to-day integrity issues is necessary to address integrity challenges in this new context. Instead of adopting the traditional top-down way of applying guidelines and codes, these new initiatives seek to practice and internalize codes through the adoption of a context, which requires a culture of deliberation. The search for integrity occurs through the development of collective responsibility and focuses on context, responsiveness, dialogue and personal relationships.

Our project, the H2020 INTEGRITY also facilitates bottom-up approach by empowering students to become active participants in the learning process. By learning from the examples of other projects and initiatives our processes and tools might be optimized.