Research integrity and research ethics at ONERA

ONERA has been pursuing a policy in favor of scientific integrity since 2018.

ONERA CEO Bruno Sainjon signed the French Charter of Ethics for Research Professions in July 2018. The Charter has been mentioned and annexed to ONERA internal regulations since May 2019.

ONERA appointed a research integrity and research ethics officer in 2018. She implements the provisions of French Code de la recherche, articles D211-2 à D211-4.

The research integrity and research ethics officer regularly organizes research integrity training sessions for all ONERA staff. The aim is to reiterate research best practices and to explain what constitutes questionable research practices (QRPs) and frauds. The circumstances that lead researchers to adopt QRPs are also studied and the ethical tensions between the different principles, goals and constraints are made explicit. Moreover, an emphasis is put on the publication process and it is worth mentioning that ONERA adopted an internal charter on scientific publication authorship in 2023.

Reports about alleged research integrity breaches are investigated by the research integrity and research ethics officer, possibly with the research integrity officers of other concerned institutions, according to the French national procedures. The officer also deals with cases involving research integrity issues and provides advice.

As far as research ethics is concerned, the officer gives advice for writing documents to be submitted to institutional ethics committees (IRBs) as well as for completing the ethics self-assessment for research proposals submitted to the European commission. Informal “ethics workshops” have been organized since 2023 to raise awareness of ethical thinking.

The research integrity and research ethics officer is a member of the French non-profit organization about research integrity that was set up in December 2022.

Contact: Catherine Tessier, referent-integrite-ethique @ onera.fr