Academic Integrity 360°: From Principles to Practice in a Digital World

In March 2025, WREN held its first workshop of the year, in Brazil, about Academic Integrity 360° – From Principles to Practice in a Digital World. Chaired by the PhD student Thalita Lacerda (UNESP) with the support of Prof. Julia Mendes (UFJF), the workshop featured Prof. Lilian Rezende – a Civil Engineer, professor at Federal University of Goiás (UFG) since 2002 and chair of the UFG’s Academic Integrity Committee.

The workshop had 165 registrations, about 50 people watching online, and almost 200 views on YouTube (@thewrenglobal) after only 1 week.

The speaker presented very interesting topics for researchers, such as:
• the relevance of integrity in science as the fundamental principle to be considered, talking about the historical context from Singapore Statement in Research Integrity (2010) to the current broader understanding of the integrity in all academic environments;
• ethical values and principles that should be considered as honesty, respect, trust, fairness, responsibility and, especially, COURAGE to change what needs to be changed;
• definitions, issues, and references about some misconducts as plagiarism, data falsification and fabrication, authorship criteria, ethical use of ChatGPT, and who owns the research data in a conflict situation;
• lessons from well-known cases of misconduct in Brazil and around the world, such as payment for other people to write academic reports and retraction of papers because of unverifiable authors and reviewers.

The audience engaged with discussions in the chat, reflecting about some dilemmas, and presented some real cases. The speaker also highlighted the importance of reporting suspicious  misconducts to contribute for academic better practices.

Check the full video here! (In Portuguese)