In a bid to tighten research standards, governments and funders in countries with emerging research systems are increasingly rolling out disciplinary measures for researchers who do the wrong thing. The policies include docking bonuses, restricting access to grants and lowering the rankings of institutions linked to misconduct.

The reforms come as instances of research misconduct are on the rise worldwide. In May, for example, an audit¹ of biomedical papers found that the rate of fabricated citations was 12 times greater in 2025 than in 2023. And later that month, an analysis² of 33,000 cancer studies linked roughly 12% of them to suspected paper-mill activity.

The responsibility for cleaning up research malpractice has, for a long time, been a bottom-up affair: journal editors withdraw papers; universities investigate their staff members; and independent sleuths and organizations, such as Retraction Watch, expose what they can. Sometimes researchers will come forwards and correct the record themselves once they realize that they’ve made an error.

Retractions caused by honest mistakes are extremely stressful, say researchers

But there is a growing movement, particularly in countries with emerging research communities, to take a top-down approach. Funders and governments in some nations are increasingly restricting grants and opportunities for scientists who have been accused of research-integrity malpractice. These changes seek to cover a wide range of integrity issues, from plagiarism and falsified data to image manipulation and peer-review fraud.

Elisabeth Bik, an independent research-integrity consultant based in the the San Francisco Bay area, California, welcomes the roll-out of schemes that penalize malpractice in this way. “In order to tackle misconduct, there needs to be some type of sanction,” she says. “If there wasn’t the chance of getting a ticket, we’d all be speeding. There is fierce competition in science, and if people who cheat get better papers, then why not cheat yourself? We need to see that car being pulled over to warn other people.”

The top-down approach is needed, she says, because universities can be reluctant to sanction their own researchers, fearing that it will negatively affect their reputation. “Universities don’t do a great job in holding people accountable,” explains Bik. “It needs to be done by institutions with teeth.”

But how likely are these systems to deter dodgy science? And do they risk disincentivizing honest researchers from coming forwards and admitting to their mistakes?

Redesigning research rules

India — a nation that is rapidly rising through the ranks in the Nature Index — has initiated several measures to catch research malpractice.

The Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF), one of India’s largest research funders, introduced rules in May that require applicants to disclose whether they have had a paper retracted in the past five years and explain why.

Applicants also need to testify that their grant proposals — or large parts of them — were not generated by artificial-intelligence tools. The ANRF has said that, in addition to these statements from researchers, it might use a combination of tools to screen for AI use in grant applications.

This follows an announcement last year that India’s National Institutional Ranking Framework, which publishes an official ranking of research organizations each year, will start to penalize institutions that have a large number of retracted papers, such as by giving them negative marks, affecting their total score.

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By making these changes, the Indian government is hoping to put pressure on universities to be proactive in preventing problematic research from being published in the first place, rather than responding once errors and wrongdoing are discovered, says Achal Agrawal, a data scientist based in Raipur, India. Agrawal founded India Research Watch, an online platform run by volunteers that tracks research-integrity issues.

“This feels significant because it’s the first step, and the first step is always the hardest,” says Agrawal, noting that more work is needed to ensure that there are long-term improvements in research conduct. The ANRF’s requirement that retractions be disclosed, for instance, is “just a voluntary disclosure, and it only lasts five years”, he says. Moreover, it’s not clear how the information provided by researchers will be verified. “But even just as a signal, even if they don’t implement it full-scale, I still think it’s quite significant,” he says.

Agrawal is optimistic that these measures are the beginning of a wider trend in India towards a top-down approach to research-integrity enforcement. “The ANRF is one of the biggest funding agencies in India, so this will probably have a ripple-on effect,” he says. “Institutes that want researchers to get grants will also probably be more careful when recruiting researchers.”

Ramping up

In Peru, another nation that has increased its efforts to combat research malpractice, researchers risk losing pay if they break the rules. The government announced in March that it will start docking the bonuses of researchers whose work is retracted in a bid to push back against those who engage in “acts that violate ethics and scientific integrity”.

Typically, Peruvian academics who participate in one or more research projects are eligible for monthly bonuses that range from 2,617 to 4,435 Peruvian soles (US$780 to $1,320), but those who have had one or more articles retracted in the past three years will no longer qualify.

The move follows a 2024 government investigation into alleged networks of paper mills in Peru. Percy Mayta-Tristán, vice-rector for research at the Scientific University of the South in Lima, says that the changes are needed. “We have good researchers, but we weren’t incentivizing research publication in a good way,” he says.

India to penalize universities with too many retractions

However, the system runs the risk of punishing researchers whose papers are retracted because of a genuine error or insufficient attention to methods transparency. For this reason, Bik says that she would like to see the reforms tweaked so that they differentiate between honest mistakes and wilful malpractice. “You want to encourage people who find a big error in their papers and retract it or republish it. That’s a good thing,” she says.

The Vietnamese government has also announced a framework on research integrity that will roll out a series of disciplinary actions for malpractice, including written warnings, mandatory public apologies and repayment of research funding. Violations will also be recorded on a national database.