Office of Research Integrity

Irresponsible authorship practices undermine the academic enterprise and violate public trust. All members of the USM community — faculty, students, and staff — are expected to be transparent, honest, and fair in their authorship practices and to take reasonable measures to ensure that authorship disputes do not arise. Reference the USM Authorship Policy for further guidance and USM Authorship Agreement Template as it applies. 

Open Access is a publishing model that makes scholarly research freely available online, shifting costs from readers to authors. It differs from traditional publishing in cost, accessibility, and prestige, and aims to broaden public access to academic knowledge. This section introduces key concepts and types of open access to help researchers make informed publishing decisions. 

Predatory journals and conferences misrepresent themselves as legitimate academic platforms but lack proper peer review, editorial standards, and transparency. This section helps researchers identify deceptive practices and understand their impact on scholarly work. 

USM’s Integrity Assurance Program includes required online course modules through the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) Program and optional training workshops and forums, as defined in USM policy.  

All USM faculty and graduate students must complete the CITI Common Course. 

• All IRB researchers must have active (NON-EXPIRED) CITI certificates for the Human Subjects Research Course,  the Common Course, and the Research Security Training (Combined) Course. 
• All IACUC researchers must have active (NON-EXPIRED) CITI certificates for the Animal Subjects Research Course, the Common Course, and the Research Security Training (Combined) Course. 

All USM faculty, staff, postdoctoral fellows, and students (undergraduate & graduate) who conduct research reviewed by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) or the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) are required to complete the Research Security Training (Combined) course annually. Cayuse integrates with CITI by means of the user's USM assigned email address. Since Cayuse uses Single Sign On technology and pulls from USM credentials, your CITI user account must also be tied to your USM email address. The integration between CITI and Cayuse will fail if your email address in CITI is not your current USM email address. (i.e. @gmail, @hotmail, @yahoo, etc.). Successful integration of the two systems relieves you of having to provide CITI training certificates during the IRB and proposal submission process. If you do not know your USM assigned email address, contact  iTech at 601.266.HELP (4357). 

• For instructions on how to login to CITI, please refer to this document. 
• To login to CITI, please click here.  
• For instructions on how to add courses in CITI, please refer to this document.  
• To change your email address in CITI, please refer to this document.  

Would you like your department, lab, or class to learn more about research integrity best practices? ORI offers customized presentations and interactive seminars designed to strengthen your team’s understanding of integrity in research and foster a culture of accountability. If you would like someone from ORI to provide a presentation or seminar, please submit an outreach request using the link below.

Please allow at least two weeks prior to the presentation date to ensure we can accommodate your request.

Request Outreach

Dr. Donald%20Sacco serves as the University’s Research Integrity Officer (RIO) and is the person to contact regarding scholarly misconduct issues.

The University of Southern Mississippi's Federalwide Assurance (FWA) number is FWA00002393, the IORG is IORG0001657, and the IRB Number is IRB00002123.