Ethical Formalism in the Croatian Academic Community: An Empirical Study of Institutional Ethics

In a new paper recently published in the journal “Politička misao”, Marija Brajdić Vuković, Magda Profaca, and Pavel Gregorić examine how ethics functions within the Croatian academic community.

Drawing on two large-scale surveys involving a total of 2,011 scientists, the authors demonstrate a significant gap between formally established ethical mechanisms and their actual role in everyday academic life.

More than half of the respondents are not sufficiently familiar with the work of ethical bodies, and ethical issues are rarely discussed. Among the most frequently identified problems are not only major breaches of scientific integrity but also poor mentoring, problematic authorship practices, power dynamics, and biased evaluation of scientific work. The authors term this institutional pattern “ethical formalism”: ethics is formally present, yet insufficiently integrated into daily organizational practices and collective reflection.

The central argument of the paper is that professional ethics cannot rely solely on the personal integrity of individual scientists. It requires institutions that facilitate collective evaluation, learning, and the assumption of responsibility. While ethical committees and codes of conduct are necessary, they are not, in themselves, sufficient to create an ethical academic community.

The paper was produced as part of the Croatian Science Foundation (HRZZ) project RESETH and is available via open access: https://hrcak.srce.hr/352500.