Research Governance

Gustave Roussy brings together the skills required to develop integrated research on cancer, covering a large scale from exploratory research to clinical research, including expertise fields such as biology, imaging, epidemiology, biostatistics, data science, social and human sciences, and health economics.

Given the societal impact of cancer and the lack of understanding of its determinants, research is inherent to the practice of cancer care, and tightly associated to this practice in each hospital.

Within Gustave Roussy, the Research Directorate consists of 4 key divisions and one General Secretariat for Research:

• The clinical research division is structured into thirteen clinical research teams by organs or therapeutic approach (also named committees), five offices and a clinical investigation center (CIC).
• The exploratory and translational research division collaborates with Inserm, CNRS, and the Université Paris-Saclay to oversee 31 research teams operating within ten joint research units (including seven co-supervised with Inserm and three with CNRS). Science technology platforms are centralized within the Unité Mixte de Service AMMICa, jointly supervised by CNRS UAR 3655, Inserm US 23, and the Université Paris-Saclay. Additionally, four teams integrated into joint research units without co-supervision from Gustave Roussy are also housed at the institute.
• The teaching and university relations division, including the School of Cancer Science, the Doctoral school of oncology: Biology, Medicine, Health, and the Medical Library.
• The international academic network division, in charge of European and international partnerships, such as Cancer Core Europe and Gustave Roussy Alumni network.

Gustave Roussy has renewed its Scientific Board in 2021, as well as the terms of its operation.

The Scientific Council is an external advisory committee that gives opinions and makes recommendations in response to requests from Gustave Roussy's management. It also expresses its strategic vision of the discipline and advises the general management on the desirable scientific strategy for Gustave Roussy. At the request of management, and for teams that are not included in the HCERES evaluation process (new teams, clinical committees, etc.), it evaluates the performance of existing teams, the opportunity to recruit future teams or leaders, and the progress of major ongoing actions, including medical-scientific programs.

Its semi-annual meetings (summer, winter) and the appointment of its members for four-year terms give the Scientific Advisory Board an in-depth knowledge of the organization and a long-term vision of its evolution and that of its teams.

Composition of Gustave Roussy's Scientific Board in 2026 (17 members):

Chair

• Elisabete Weiderpass - International Agency for Research on Cancer, World Health Organization, Lyon, France

Members

• Patricia Blanc - Imagine for Margo (association), Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France
• Carlos Caldas - Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute, Cambridge, UK
• Toni Choueiri - Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, USA
• Stefan Fröhling - DKFZ-NCT, Heidelberg, Germany
• Thomas Helleday    - Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden
• Dan Landau - Weill Cornell Medicine / New York Genome Center, New York, USA
• Sibylle Loibl - Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt, Germany
• Nuria Lopez - Institute for Research in Biomedicine, Barcelona, Spain
• Ignacio Melero - Clínica Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain
• Yardena Samuels - Weizmann institute of science, Rehovot, Israel
• Samra Turajlic - Francis Crick Institute, London - Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute, Manchester, UK
• David Tuveson - Cold Sping Harbor Laboratories, Cold Sping Harbor, USA
• Emile Voest - Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
• Ian Walker - Cancer Research UK, London, UK
• Jennifer Wargo - MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, USA
• Antoine Yver - independant consultant, France

The General Secretariat for Research brings administrative and scientific support for research. The team supports the scientific community of Gustave Roussy by providing several services dedicated to research: human resources, contract and budget management, logistics, health and safety, IT, grant office, monitoring and evaluation. The General Secretariat for Research implements the decisions approved by the Strategic Research Committee and promotes connections between research teams, directions, administrative services, and institutional partners.

Organisation

• Human resources: Catherine Guy
• Contract and budget management: Laure Masson
• Research infrastructure: Nicolas Dorvault
• Health and safety: Asmae El Mazouzi
• IT: Jean-Philippe Lamarque
• Grant Office: Laura Lauden
• Monitoring & evaluation: Emma Pailler

Scientific integrity refers to the set of rules and values that must govern research activities to ensure that they are honest, impartial, objective and scientifically rigorous.

The Research Programming Act (LPR) of 2020 entrusted Hcéres (Haut Conseil à l'évaluation de la recherche et de l'enseignement supérieur) with new missions in the area of scientific integrity. Ofis (the French Office for Scientific Integrity) is responsible for implementing these missions.

Defined in the French Research Code (article L. 211-2), scientific integrity is essential to the proper functioning of research communities and the foundation of a relationship of trust between the research community and other parts of society.

The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity 2011 (revised in 2017 and 2023) sets out the common principles of good research practice

Reliability in design, methodology, analysis and use of resources.

Respect for colleagues, research participants, society, ecosystems, cultural heritage and the environment.

Honesty in developing, conducting, evaluating and disseminating research in a transparent, fair, complete and objective manner.

Responsibility for research activities, from idea to publication, their management and organization, for training, supervision and mentoring, and for the broader implications of research.

► Reference texts on scientific integrity: www.ofis-france.fr

Scientific integrity / ethics / research ethics

Scientific integrity, research ethics and deontology are three essential components of responsible research conduct.

Scientific integrity refers to good practice in the production and dissemination of scientific knowledge. It guarantees the honest and rigorous nature of research activities.

Ethics refer to a set of obligations specific to the practice of a profession. In France, when a researcher is a civil servant, his or her obligations are set out in the General Civil Service Code.

Research ethics concerns, on the one hand, the major questions raised by certain scientific developments and, on the other hand, more operational issues of compliance of research protocols with the rules of law and ethical recommendations in force.

► To find out more: Scientific integrity, professional ethics, research ethics: what are the differences?

What is a breach of scientific integrity?

Any practice that undermines the reliability of results and the proper functioning of research communities is likely to constitute a breach of scientific integrity. A breach may concern all aspects of research activities in all disciplines.

Here are some examples of breaches that may affect:

• Planning and implementation of the research project: failure to obtain the necessary authorisations (ethical approval, consent of participants); failure to comply with authorised protocols; misuse of research funds.
• Management and practices relating to data of any kind (including bodies of text, archives, images, etc.): falsification or fabrication; deliberately deficient management or archiving; retention without legal justification, omission or selection without scientific justification; problematic statistical processing; unmentioned embellishment.
• Publication, communication and authoring practices: plagiarism; improper signature or failure to acknowledge a contribution; self-plagiarism; non-compliance with AI usage requirements; improper or biased citations; lack of impartiality or transparency when speaking publicly.
• Interactions between peers: biased peer-reviewing, appropriation of research projects or ideas, lack of supervision, undue hindrance of the progress of a peer's work, unfounded accusations of misconduct.

Failure to declare links or conflicts of interest can also constitute misconduct, as can breaches of the laws governing research on humans or animals.

In their most serious forms - this may be the case in particular for fabrication, falsification of data and plagiarism - breaches are liable to disciplinary sanctions.

► To find out more: Ofis factsheets

Gustave Roussy's policy in favour of scientific integrity

• Training and awareness-raising initiatives
• Missions and resources of the scientific integrity referent or the collective structure responsible for dealing with scientific integrity issues
• Events organised throughout the institution

Scientific integrity at Gustave Roussy

Professor Eric Solary (RIS@gustaveroussy.fr) is the Scientific Integrity Officer (RIS) at Gustave Roussy (https://www.ofis-france.fr/annuaire/).

The missions of the RIS are defined by the decree of 27 December 2023 and included in the Research Code. In accordance with this decree, Gustave Roussy's RIS:

• participates in defining the institution's policy in terms of scientific integrity,
• coordinates awareness-raising and training initiatives, and organises measures to prevent and detect breaches of scientific integrity requirements
• receives questions and reports of ‘breaches of scientific integrity’ (defined in a previous chapter), which it investigates impartially and confidentially, including through hearings and investigations, where necessary in conjunction with the scientific integrity officers of the other institutions or foundations concerned;
• guarantees the confidentiality of the procedure for handling alerts, ensures that the adversarial principle is respected and that the procedure is transparent for the persons implicated and for the persons who have issued the alert;
• forwards a report to Gustave Roussy's Chief Executive Officer as soon as possible to enable him to decide on the action to be taken for each report investigated;
• ensures that the data and publications affected by the breach of scientific integrity requirements are reported to the parties concerned;
• informs Gustave Roussy's CEO of any internal systems or practices that do not offer sufficient guarantees in terms of scientific integrity.