Research Atlas
research atlas noun
A map of connected questions, evidence, and ideas - some established, some under investigation, and others still unresolved.
01. questionable research practice determinants [unresolved]
Why do researchers cut corners? The evidence increasingly suggests it's not simply a story of a broken incentive system. Publication pressure remains one of the strongest and most consistent predictors of engagement in questionable research practices (QRPs) - but individual-level factors, including personality traits and commitment to scientific norms like universalism and organised scepticism, appear to matter just as much. Notably, engagement doesn't vary substantially across institutions or between European and anglo-sphere countries, suggesting the drivers of QRP engagement are less about local institutional culture and more about either field-wide pressures that researchers everywhere face in similar ways, or stable individual dispositions that shape how researchers respond to those pressures.
Relevant outputs:
Brooker, R. & Allum, N. (2024). ‘Investigating the links between questionable research practices, scientific norms and organisational culture’ in Research Integrity and Peer Review. Multi-level analysis of an international researcher survey, testing individual-level factors (field, gender, contract type, career stage, adherence to scientific norms) alongside institution-level factors (industry type, perceived research culture, awareness of integrity policies). We found that career stage, contract type, field, norm adherence, and gender all predict QRP engagement, alongside institutional culture and publication pressure. Results presented at the World Conference on Research Integrity, 2024. Presented as "Beyond Organisational Boundaries: Ecosystem and Researcher Influences on Integrity and Practice", 8th World Conference on Research Integrity, 5 June 2024.
Brooker, R. (2026). Why researchers cut corners: motivations, pressures, and personality in questionable research practicesin Research Integrity and Peer Review. Survey of over 3,000 researchers examining social and psychological drivers of QRP engagement — Mertonian norms, Big Five personality traits, and motivations. Found publication pressure and ego/esteem-related motivation positively associated with engagement, while norm commitment and traits like conscientiousness and emotional stability were protective.
02. academic freedom & constraints on knowledge [unresolved]
Investigating how self-censorship and constraints on inquiry limit the development of knowledge. Academic freedom is often treated as a settled institutional protection, but researchers routinely self-censor - avoiding topics, softening conclusions, or declining to pursue lines of inquiry - in response to pressures that go well beyond formal restrictions. This strand of the atlas examines who self-censors and why, how the gatekeepers of research communication (from PR professionals to university administrators) shape what gets supported or suppressed, and how academic freedom gets weighed against competing institutional priorities when the two come into tension.
In progress outputs:
Antecedents of self-censorship and attitudes toward academic freedom (in write-up). Primary survey data collected from researchers working across Europe and the Anglosphere, examining predictors of self-censorship and negative attitudes toward academic freedom, including political ideology and demographic factors.
How PR professionals decide what research to support and promote, with Dr David Schley (Academy of Mathematical Science). Funded by the Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR).
How administrators and faculty prioritise competing values against academic freedom, with Dr Thomas Prosser (Cardiff University). A conjoint experiment testing how academic freedom is traded off against other institutional priorities such as DEI and reputational concerns.
03. scientific misconduct, careers and institutional responses [unresolved]
Scientific misconduct doesn't end with detection - it has a lifecycle, from the pressures and dispositions that lead someone toward it, through how an institution investigates and responds, to the lasting effects on the person's career and life. This strand looks across that lifecycle rather than treating misconduct as a single, isolated event: how common are different forms of misconduct really; how fair do the accused and accusers perceive the investigative process to be; and what happens to people's careers and lives once a case has run its course.
Publications & pipeline
Allum, N. & Brooker, R. (2024). "How common is academic plagiarism?" LSE Impact Blog. Using data from the International Research Integrity Survey (IRIS, n≈35,000), finds self-reported idea theft - a proxy for plagiarism - at around 7%, higher than earlier estimates, with industry researchers, humanities/social science fields, and less collegial environments associated with higher rates, and adherence to Mertonian norms associated with lower rates. This piece concludes that engaging in questionable research practices looks more like an individual habit than something explained by country, institution, or observable researcher characteristics - written against the backdrop of the Claudine Gay plagiarism case.
The deviant lifecycle of scientific misconduct (funding application in preparation). A mixed-methods project examining the full arc of a misconduct case: antecedents of engagement, researchers' experiences of being investigated (including procedural justice and perceived fairness), and downstream life and career outcomes. Combines a survey — using a novel multi-frame recruitment strategy — with biographical in-depth interviews.
04. a criminology of science [ongoing]
Deviance in science has occasionally been described through a criminological lens - Ben-Yehuda's 1986 call to view scientific fraud through the sociology of deviance and Faria's 2018 treatment of research misconduct as white-collar crime - but these remain scattered interventions rather than a developed field. Criminology has spent a century building theories of why people offend, how social control operates, and how institutions respond to rule-breaking; very little of that theoretical machinery has been systematically applied to science itself. This strand of the atlas is an attempt to change that: treating questionable research practices and misconduct not just as an integrity problem to be measured, but as a form of deviant behaviour that criminological theory - strain, control, labelling, routine activity, and beyond - is well-placed to explain.
Pipeline
Conference presentation, 26th Annual Conference of the European Society of Criminology (EuroCrim 2026), Warsaw, Poland, 9–12 September 2026.
An agenda-setting piece on developing a criminology of science (in preparation).