The Australian Research Council has updated its research integrity policy

The ARC has made adhering to last year’s responsible conduct of research code mandatory.

The code was a major achievement for the big three, the ARC, National Health and Medical Research Council and Universities Australia, setting out eight principles of “responsible research conduct. This was a big improvement on an ARC-NHMRC working party in 2017, which declined to define research misconduct, because there was no internationally agreed definition, (CMM  June 15 2018).

Apart from financial fraud of grant money the ARC does not investigate code breaches leaving it to institutions to report them, at least they have a better idea of what they are looking at.