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Integrity in research is essential so that research can do what it is supposed to do: help us discover - or get closer to - the truth about the world and how it works. Research integrity means conducting oneself in ways that are worthy of the trust that the public invests in science. Efforts over the past five decades to ensure that researchers conduct themselves with integrity have focused on regulating researcher behavior. The suite of regulatory requirements - over 100 of them - is typically managed by an office of research compliance at universities and research institutions. The regulations, and the accompanying rules and policies, have created a regulatory-industrial complex that, while necessary, should give us pause. With the proliferation of regulations, professional organizations and certifications blossom, providing much-needed training and vouching for expertise in particular regulations. This credibility is crucial, but it also gives a false impression that we can regulate our way to ethical science. Creating a regulatory-industrial complex will not achieve our goal of an ethical research enterprise. We need to build ethical institutional cultures, engage the commitment of the entire research enterprise, and do the hard work of holding accountable the entire research ecosystem.

Research integrity (RI) is crucial for trustworthy research. Rules are important in setting RI standards and improving research practice, but they can lead to increased bureaucracy; without commensurate commitment amongst researchers toward RI, they are unlikely to improve research practices. In this paper, we explore how to combine rules and commitment in fostering RI. Research institutions can govern RI using markets (using incentives), bureaucracies (using rules), and network processes (through commitment and agreements). Based on Habermas' Theory of Communicative Action, we argue that network processes, as part of the lifeworld, can legitimize systems - that is, market or bureaucratic governance modes. This can regulate and support RI practices in an efficient way. Systems can also become dominant and repress consensus processes. Fostering RI requires a balance between network, market and bureaucratic governance modes. We analyze the institutional response to a serious RI case to illustrate how network processes can be combined with bureaucratic rules. Specifically, we analyze how the Science Committee established at Tilburg University in 2012 has navigated different governance modes, resulting in a normatively grounded and efficient approach to fostering RI. Based on this case, we formulate recommendations to research institutions on how to combine rules and commitment.

This study aims to provide a bibliometric overview of quality assurance (QA) research in higher education institutions (HEIs) from 1993 to 2022 and to identify significant trends. Scopus was utilised to retrieve data from 321 selected articles from 191 different sources. The methodology included science mapping with bibliometric indicators such as citations, co-citation analysis, and bibliometric coupling. Analysis of the data was done using VOSviewer and R-package using Biblioshiny. The findings indicate an increase in the number of articles and authors per paper that highlight QA key issues, the most promising QA practices, and the topics for future research. This study has significant importance to orient HEI's QA process towards the assessment of the university's societal impact., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

At a time when vocational education is seen as critical for national development, concern grows regarding how weak organizational culture and occupational commitment may threaten the production of quality graduates and teachers within the field. The failure of vocational institutions to effectively create human capital likely threatens the connections between Chinese industry and its educational institutions. This study thus explores how these connections are influenced by organizational and occupational factors. A multi-layer linear model is employed on data collected from 406 teachers from 69 Chinese vocational colleges and universities. Results suggest that organizational cultural positively influences industry-university cooperative behavior through the construction of strong occupational commitment and job involvement. This study not only enriches and expands new knowledge and academic perspectives, but also provides feasible policy suggestions to help guide educational administrators toward the improvement of vocational education., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Despite several attempts to provide a definite pattern regarding the effects of personality traits on performance in higher education, the debate over the nature of the relationship is far from being conclusive. The use of different subject pools and sample sizes, as well as the use of identification strategies that either do not adequately account for selection bias or are unable to establish causality between measures of academic performance and noncognitive skills, are possible sources of heterogeneity. This paper investigates the impact of the Big Five traits, as measured before the beginning of the academic year, on the grade point average achieved in the first year after the enrolment, taking advantage of a unique and large dataset from a cohort of Italian students in all undergraduate programs containing detailed information on student and parental characteristics. Relying on a robust strategy to credibly satisfy the conditional independence assumption, we find that higher levels of conscientiousness and openness to experience positively affect student score., Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Background: Nursing students are experiencing life changing events in their personal, academic, and work environments since the onset of the pandemic., Purpose: The purpose of this study was to describe and explore the effects of COVID-19 on personal, workforce, and academic experiences of nursing students (N = 620)., Method: A 68-item survey with three areas of focus surrounding academic, workforce and personal experiences was distributed to multiple schools across the United States. The analysis compares student responses from the five regions of the US., Findings: Significant differences were found in the pairwise comparisons. The analysis revealed the academic changes were generally viewed as negative. Fear/anxiety and political influences impacted the outcomes of the pandemic., Discussion: Understanding the effects of the pandemic on the personal, work and academic experiences of nursing students will assist academia and healthcare in adapting existing policies to meet student needs in the various regions of the United States., (Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)