The Research Ethics Committee at UiO (REC) notes: Notified appealed the case to the National Commission for the Investigation of Research Misconduct (Granskingsutvalget - GRU), which concluded that there was no breach of research ethical norms. Thus, there was no scientific misconduct, no systemic errors, and no scientific publications were recommended to be corrected or retracted. GRU made an institutional recommendation concerning the relationship between HR and research ethics. Their case number is 2023/105.
The statements of REC are generally public, and REC will therefore nevertheless explain its assessment of the case:
A former PhD candidate at the Faculty of Medicine reported her former supervisor for possible violations of recognized research ethical norms. The former candidate is hereafter referred to as "Notifier", and the former supervisor as "Notified".
REC thoroughly reviewed the case and highlighted multiple aspects of research ethical integrity. The most central guidelines concerned collegiality, respect, responsibility, proper citation practices, determination of authorship, and the significance of power imbalance in research collaboration. REC stated that experienced researchers should act in a trustworthy manner when collaborating with newly recruited researchers, and that leaders of international research collaborations have an obligation to exercise professional courtesy.
The core of the dispute was a manuscript included in Notifier's PhD dissertation. This manuscript was a result of an international research collaboration with several co-authors, and Notifier was listed as the first author when she defended her dissertation.
Notified was Notifier's PhD supervisor, immediate administrative leader, leader of the research group, project leader, recipient of the project funding, and corresponding author of the manuscript. Notifier’s engagement in the research group and UiO ended after she defended her dissertation, but she wanted to continue at the university in the same group and applied for a postdoctoral position there. Notified had authority in the relevant job application process.
The manuscript was rejected by several scientific journals, and ambiguities arose regarding roles and responsibilities during the revisions. When the manuscript was finally published, the authorship order was changed so that Notifier was listed as the third author instead of the first. Notifier had approved this change shortly before the final manuscript was submitted.
Not long after publication, Notifier brought the case to the Research Ethics Committee at UiO (REC). Notifier claimed she had been excluded from the revision work and restricted from accessing her own research data. Therefore, she did not have a genuine opportunity to make the necessary changes to the manuscript and thus defend her position as first author. Notified’s view, on the other hand, was that Notifier had not made substantial contributions during the revision work, that the change in the authorship order correctly reflected the contributions at the time of publication, and that Notifier herself had approved the change.
REC’s assessment was based on two factual questions: Whether the process leading up to the change in the authorship order was conducted in accordance with relevant ethical norms and whether the change itself was ethically sound. The central evidences in the case was the parties' explanations to REC, copies of correspondence between them and the co-authors, and a total of six different versions of the manuscript.
The legal question REC had to address was whether the potential breaches of relevant research ethical norms constituted scientific misconduct according to Section 8 of the Norwegian Research Ethics Act. The assessment was based on the norms in several research ethical documents that apply to all researchers at UiO. REC identified several norm breac