# Research Integrity Risk Register — illustrative template

**Illustrative structure. No client information. Actual scope and evidence requirements vary by project.**

Published by Gurjas Evidence and Policy Analytics · gurjas.org
Template version 1.0 · 21 July 2026

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## What this document is for

A risk register names integrity risks before they become incidents,
assigns an owner to each one, and records what was actually done about it.
Most research-integrity failures that reach a retraction, correction or
institutional inquiry were foreseeable in hindsight — the risk existed,
was known to someone, and was never written down or assigned an owner.

This is a living document. Review it at fixed points (proposal stage,
before data collection, before analysis, before submission) rather than
writing it once and filing it away.

## Template

| Risk ID | Risk description | Area | Likelihood | Impact | Mitigation | Owner | Status | Last reviewed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 001 | | Data integrity | Low / Medium / High | Low / Medium / High | | | Open / Mitigated / Accepted / Closed | |
| 002 | | Authorship & contribution | | | | | | |
| 003 | | Methods & analysis | | | | | | |
| 004 | | Reporting & disclosure | | | | | | |
| 005 | | AI use | | | | | | |
| 006 | | Conflict of interest | | | | | | |

**Suggested area categories** (adapt to the project; do not force every
project into all six):

- **Data integrity** — collection, entry, cleaning, storage, provenance, chain of custody.
- **Authorship & contribution** — who qualifies as an author, contribution roles, order disputes, ghost or guest authorship risk.
- **Methods & analysis** — undisclosed researcher degrees of freedom, p-hacking risk, pre-registration deviations, code/version control.
- **Reporting & disclosure** — selective reporting, funding disclosure, conflicts, data availability statements.
- **AI use** — where AI tools materially contributed, and whether that use is disclosed per the venue's policy and the project's own AI-use statement.
- **Conflict of interest** — financial, institutional, personal or reviewer relationships that could reasonably be perceived to bias the work.

**On "Accepted" status** — a risk marked Accepted, not Mitigated, means a
conscious decision was made to proceed without fully addressing it. Record
who made that decision and why; an accepted risk with no named decision-maker
is really just an unmitigated one.

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*This is a structural template only. It contains no risks, project details
or information from any Gurjas engagement. Useful starting references: the
COPE (Committee on Publication Ethics) core practices and flowcharts, and
your institution's own research-integrity policy. Gurjas Evidence and
Policy Analytics · gurjas.org*