Researcher A submitted a report of a suspected RCR violation to the rector of the university, stating that researchers B and C in the field of humanities were guilty of disregard for the responsible conduct of research. The alleged disregard manifested as the denigration of other researchers, as B and C had failed to name A as the third author of the article anthology and A’s contribution had not been mentioned in the introduction to the publication.
The conclusion of the investigation proper was that researchers B and C could not be considered to have denigrated the work input of researcher A to such an extent that it constituted an RCR violation. Researcher A was dissatisfied with the decision and requested a statement from TENK.
TENK found that both the RCR guidelines and TENK’s recommendation on agreeing on authorship should have been followed when producing the anthology. However, the failure to mention researcher A as an author did not constitute gross disregard. TENK also considered that researcher A’s input should have been mentioned in the introduction, but the failure to mention it also did not constitute the kind of gross negligence and carelessness that would meet the criteria of an RCR violation.