Modules

RE4GREEN ANNEX TO THE ALLEA EUROPEAN CODE OF CONDUCT FOR RESEARCH INTEGRITY

Instructions for:ParticipantTrainer

Related Initiative

Goal

The main goal is to help researchers understand how research integrity principles: reliability, honesty, respect, and accountability and apply to environmental and climate considerations.

By the end of the module, learners should be able to:

Understand how research can create environmental and social footprints, both directly and through its applications.
Recognise environmental and climate responsibility as part of responsible research practice and research integrity.
Understand the relationship between the European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity (ECoC) and environmental/climate considerations.
Understand the role and limitations of the Do No Significant Harm (DNSH) principle.
Apply environmental and climate considerations across the research lifecycle from research questions and methods to practices and outputs.
Recognise what constitutes good research practice and potentially problematic or irresponsible practices from an environmental and climate perspective.
Understand that environmental responsibility should be integrated without compromising freedom of research or research independence.

Duration (hours)

1

For whom is this important?

ResearchersResearch Ethics Committee MemberResearch Funding OrganizationResearch Supervisor / Mentor

Steps

What is this about?

This module is about integrating environmental and climate responsibility into research integrity. It explains how researchers can apply established research integrity principles: reliability, honesty, respect, and accountability, while also considering the environmental and social impacts of research.

1

Preamble

Research plays a crucial role in shaping the pathways through which societies confront pressing global challenges, including climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, and other forms of environmental degradation. At the same time, research, like all human activities, can leave environmental and social footprints, both through its practices and through the applications it enables. These impacts are not inherent to research but can arise unintentionally or out of a lack of considerations for these impacts. Therefore, strengthening integrity in the context of environmental and climate concerns requires supporting practices that responsibly account for and minimise such impacts. Research that aims to serve the public good must uphold high standards of rigour, transparency, and responsibility while avoiding actions that may contribute to environmental or social harm.

The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity (ECoC) (ALLEA, 2023) sets out the foundational principles of reliability, honesty, respect, and accountability. These principles remain central to all research activities within the European Research Area and beyond. The ECoC recognises in its 2017 revision (ALLEA, 2017) that ecosystems, cultural heritage, and the environment are aspects that must be respected in research practice. However, as environmental and climate concerns become increasingly urgent, there is a need for additional guidance that translates these broad principles into operational responsibilities for the research community. In parallel, the European Union has established the principle of Do No Significant Harm (DNSH). within its regulatory framework under the EU Taxonomy

Regulation (EU, 2020). This ensures that publicly funded activities do not undermine key environmental objectives such as climate change mitigation and adaptation, biodiversity protection, or pollution prevention. While DNSH provides an important legal benchmark, it is narrowly defined and primarily tailored to investment and economic activities. Recognising this limitation, the European Commission will soon be issuing dedicated guidance for research, offering a broader and more flexible framework for identifying, assessing, and mitigating environmental harms throughout the research lifecycle. This guidance extends beyond DNSH by addressing a wider range of environmental ethics considerations, including research topics, methods, practices and new ethics requirements. Together, these developments emphasise the need to embed environmental and climate considerations at the heart of research integrity and practice.

This Annex is intended to complement the ECoC. It offers interpretive guidance on how the existing principles and practices of the ECoC should be understood and applied through an environmental and climate lens. These interpretations remain fully compatible with the freedom of research and do not restrict the independence with which researchers formulate questions and pursue knowledge. Following the structure of the ECoC, this Annex is organised into three sections: Principles, Good Research Practices, and Violations of Research Integrity. Each section provides insights on how environmental and climate considerations can be integrated into established research integrity standards

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Principles

The principles of the ECoC remain the foundation for responsible research. This Annex does not revise or add to these principles. Instead, it clarifies how their meaning extends to the environmental and climate dimensions of research, particularly where research activities or outcomes have the potential to affect ecosystems, natural resources, or the conditions that support human and non-human life. The aim is to support the research community in interpreting the four ECoC principles in ways that reflect contemporary environmental considerations.

Reliability

“Reliability in ensuring the quality of research, reflected in the design, methodology, analysis, and use of resources.” Reliability requires rigorous, well-designed, and methodologically sound research. From an environmental and climate perspective, it includes generating accurate, valid, and reproducible assessments of potential environmental implications of the research. This involves ensuring that environmental assumptions, uncertainties, and real world feasibility considerations are accounted for in research design and execution, so that findings remain dependable and applicable in practice.

Honesty

“Honesty in developing, undertaking, reviewing, reporting, and communicating research in a transparent, fair, full, and unbiased way.” Honesty requires transparency on the environmental dimensions of research, including potential benefits, harms, limitations and uncertainties. It includes avoiding misrepresentation, such as overstating environmental benefits or concealing or downplaying uncertainties and potential harms and ensuring that all claims related to environmental performance or sustainability are supported by evidence and presented without exaggeration.

Respect

“Respect for colleagues, research participants, research subjects, society, ecosystems, cultural heritage, and the environment.” Respect, as recognised in the ECoC, extends to ecosystems, cultural heritage, and the environment. Interpreted in an environmental and climate context, respect entails recognising the interdependence of human and natural systems, and the moral significance of non-human life. It includes attentiveness to how research activities or outcomes impact those most affected by environmental degradation, including Indigenous peoples, local communities, and future generations. It also involves acknowledging and engaging with relevant knowledge systems, including local, traditional, and indigenous knowledge, where appropriate.

Accountability

“Accountability for the research from idea to publication, for its management and organisation, for training, supervision, and mentoring, and for its wider societal impacts.” Accountability includes responsibility for the environmental implications of research processes and outcomes. This entails careful stewardship of resources, adherence to applicable environmental obligations, and transparency toward institutions, funders, and society about environmental considerations relevant to the research. Accountability also requires monitoring and reflecting on the broader consequences that research may have for environmental and climate objectives and establishing mitigation measures when these are assessed as being harmful.

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Good Research Practices

Research Environment

Research institutions should foster a culture that acknowledges and accounts for the environmental implications of research activities and outcomes and supports responsible resource use.
Policies on good research practice should include clear expectations for environmentally responsible conduct, consistent with applicable environmental obligations.
Institutions should ensure that environmental considerations are not undermined by unrealistic performance pressures or incentives.
Where research involves environmental or climate data, institutions should provide appropriate infrastructure to support its proper documentation, stewardship, and traceability

Training, Supervision, and Mentoring

Training in research design and methodology should, where relevant, include awareness of the environmental or climate implications of research choices.
Ethics and integrity training should familiarise researchers with applicable environmental obligations and emerging requirements.
Supervisors should model environmentally responsible research behaviour and support researchers in recognising when environmental considerations require specialist input. Research Procedures
When developing research ideas, researchers should consider whether their work may have environmental or climate impacts and seek appropriate expertise when uncertain.
Careful and well-considered research design should include reflection on the environmental footprint of methods such as energy use, material consumption, travel, fieldwork, or laboratory practices—and consider lower-impact equivalents where possible.
Transparent reporting should include, where applicable, environmental assumptions, uncertainties, or contextual factors that influence the interpretation of findings. Safeguards
Compliance with codes, guidelines, and regulations should include meeting relevant environmental requirements, such as those relating to pollution prevention, biodiversity protection, or responsible fieldwork.
Research involving environmental or biological subjects should seek to avoid unnecessary disturbance to ecosystems, habitats, and natural resources by following established protocols for minimising harm.
Assessing potential harms should include identifying foreseeable environmental risks associated with the research and taking proportionate steps to avoid, minimise, or mitigate them.
In projects involving public or community participation, environmental practices should be safe and responsible and communicated clearly.

Data Practices and Management

Stewardship of environmental or climate-related data should ensure clear documentation, secure storage, and preservation sufficient to support reproducibility and long-term value.
Open access to environmental data should follow FAIR principles while respecting restrictions on sensitive ecological information or community-held knowledge.
Researchers should respect applicable rights and expectations when using community-generated environmental data, including conditions on sharing, reuse, or disclosure.

Collaborative Working

Collaboration agreements environmental responsibilities, should clarify including how potential environmental impacts will be assessed, communicated, and addressed.
Where collaborations involve local communities or indigenous groups connected to the environments or resources affected by the research, expectations regarding community consent, indigenous data sovereignty, and the right to decline participation should be explicitly agreed upon.
Partners should consider the fair distribution of environmental benefits and burdens, particularly where research outcomes may disproportionately affect vulnerable or marginalised groups

Publication, Dissemination, and Authorship

Claims about environmental impacts, benefits, or sustainability should be accurate, evidence-based, and presented without exaggeration or misrepresentation.

Transparency in publication should include, where relevant, assumptions about environmental conditions or impacts underlying the research, limitations, uncertainties, or contextual factors that affect interpretation or policy relevance.
Acknowledgements should accurately reflect contributions from environmental data sources, field sites, or community-generated knowledge in line with prior agreements.
Corrections or retractions should be issued promptly when environmental claims or assessments are found to be inaccurate or misleading.

Reviewing and Assessment

Reviewers should ensure that environmental or climate-related claims are supported by appropriate evidence and that uncertainties are clearly acknowledged.
Assessment of research project submissions involving environmental dimensions should consider the robustness of environmental methodologies, data, and assumptions.
Editors should be alert to conflicts of interest where reviewers have ties to industries or activities with significant environmental stakes that may bias their assessment (e.g. fossil fuels, industrial agriculture, resource extraction), and should have appropriate policies in place to identify, disclose, and manage such conflicts, including measures such as transparency requirements, replacing reviewers where necessary, or declining to publish work where conflicts cannot be adequately addressed.
Confidentiality obligations should extend to sensitive environmental information, such as locations of endangered species or community-held environmental knowledge, where disclosure could cause harm.

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Violations of Research Integrity

Research Misconduct and other Unacceptable Practices

Fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism (FFP) are fundamental violations of research integrity. When research has environmental or climate relevance, these forms of misconduct may result in inappropriate environmental decisions or policies, or obscure potential harms. Beyond FFP, breaches of good research practice include activities that distort the research record or undermine the integrity of the research process, for example through misleading reporting, inappropriate influence, misuse of data, or harmful disclosure practices. In an environmental and climate context, these may include, but are not confined to

Misrepresenting or exaggerating environmental benefits, sustainability claims, or climate impacts (“greenwashing”), including withholding information regarding relevant uncertainties or limitations.

Selectively reporting environmental results in ways that mislead stakeholders, policymakers, or affected communities.

• Suppressing or failing to disclose environmental data, especially when such omission could hide potential risks, harms, or negative findings.

• Allowing funders or sponsors with environmental interests (e.g., industrial, political, or commercial stakeholders) to influence the independence or impartiality of the research or its reporting.

• Misusing environmental or community-generated data in ways that breach agreed conditions of use, ownership, or consent.

• Disclosing sensitive environmental information (such as the location of endangered species or fragile ecosystems) where such disclosure could cause harm.

• Accusing others of environmental misconduct or harm in a malicious or unsubstantiated way. Serious forms of such practices may be sanctionable. All require prevention and correction through training, supervision, and a supportive research environment.

Publication, Dissemination, and Authorship

• Claims about environmental impacts, benefits, or sustainability should be accurate, evidence-based, and presented without exaggeration or misrepresentation.

• Assessing potential harms should include identifying foreseeable environmental risks associated with the research and taking proportionate steps to avoid, minimise, or mitigate them.

• In projects involving public or community participation, environmental practices should be safe and responsible and communicated clearly.

• Transparency in publication should include, where relevant, assumptions about environmental conditions or impacts underlying the research, limitations, uncertainties, or contextual factors that affect interpretation or policy relevance.

• Acknowledgements should accurately reflect contributions from environmental data sources, field sites, or community-generated knowledge in line with prior agreements.

• Corrections or retractions should be issued promptly when environmental claims or assessments are found to be inaccurate or misleading

Steps

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