DEALING WITH RESEARCH MISCONDUCT IN EGYPTIAN PUBLIC ACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS A Dynamic Performance Governance Approach to Enhance Collaboration

Scientific research improves citizens' quality of life and is increasingly seen as a major catalyst and key indicator of national growth. To maintain research integrity, studies must be conducted in a manner that inspires confidence in both the employed methods and the produced results. Research misconduct is regarded as an exceptionally challenging issue due to its extensive invasion into the research culture and its potential to undermine the trustworthiness of scientific results. Despite the increasing occurrences of unethical research in Egypt, there is a lack of stringent regulations to penalize individuals who breach established research integrity standards. Furthermore, collaborative governance is undervalued in the higher education system in Egypt. In that sense, this instrumental research study has two objectives. First, explore the numerous causes of data fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism at Egypt's public academic and research institutes. Second, to demonstrate how collaborative governance could help Egypt develop practical research fraud prevention mechanisms. To achieve the above-mentioned objectives, semi-structured interviews were conducted with graduate researchers and faculty from diverse backgrounds and career stages in Egypt's public universities across various regions. Moreover, data were gathered by developing and disseminating a web-based questionnaire among a deliberate selection of Egyptian researchers from various governorates in Egypt. Subsequently, the dynamic performance governance framework was employed to evaluate how Egyptian universities and research institutes utilize shared strategic resources to reinforce research integrity. Following the depiction of the dynamic performance governance chart, causal loop diagrams were generated to visually represent the feedback system's structure. It demonstrated how these variables and contextual factors were used to construct a dynamic performance perspective of universities and research institutes in Egypt. The findings of this investigation demonstrated that Egypt's universities and research centers are currently struggling against a wicked issue known as research misconduct. The researcher noticed that research fraud is triggered by several intertwined factors that are roughly divided into five categories: individual, structural, organizational, cultural, and situational factors. Furthermore, this study showed that artificial intelligence has created new hurdles in maintaining research integrity. As a result, this research suggests that collaborative governance and dynamic performance management and governance be used together, both in theory and practice, to combat research fraud in Egypt. It also creates a platform for policymakers to establish effective strategies and long-term remedies to prevent research misconduct in Egypt.