Scholarly integrity promotes the values of accountability, transparency, and fairness. It is an essential foundation for scientific research and is a requirement for building public support with a positive image of scholarship.

In their Guest Editorial in Angewandte Chemie, Joseph S. Francisco (pictured left), University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA, Ulrike Hahn (pictured center), Birkbeck College, London, UK, and Helmut Schwarz (pictured right), Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and Technische Universität Berlin, Germany, discuss how scholarly integrity can be fostered. First of all the term needs to be defined clearly for both individuals and institutions. Then codes of ethics need to be established, which address issues such as data sharing, deception, confidentiality, and discrimination.

Scientists need to receive appropriate training on what scholarly integrity involves early in their careers, either from their mentors or learned societies. Finally, institutions (not only universities but also funding agencies or journals) need to provide guidelines and to issue appropriate sanctions when unethical behavior takes place. Only when scholarly integrity is embraced by all can the fruits of research benefit society.

• Scholarly Integrity,
  Joseph S. Francisco, Ulrike Hahn, Helmut Schwarz,
  Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2017.
  DOI: 10.1002/anie.201700613