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Meet the team

Research integrity at BMJ

You are in good hands

At BMJ, we take a positive and proactive approach to preventing and addressing errors and misconduct. Our highly skilled staff work to raise awareness of best practices and ethical conduct in research, investigate unethical practices, provide training and investigation resources, and act as an advisory service for staff and editors.

Contact Helen Hardy or Helen MacDonald by emailing publication.ethics@bmj.com


 

BMJ's Research Integrity Manager Helen Hardy works to resolve all BMJ's potential ethical or legal concerns that relate to editorial and production procedures.

Helen is the first port of call for queries and concerns and progresses such cases in accordance with BMJ’s established policies.

Whilst she predominantly focuses on maintaining BMJ’s high research integrity standards, Helen also promotes best practices within the wider publishing community. She does this by regularly attending relevant industry seminars and participating in cross-publisher discussions, including COPE’s author behavioural misconduct working group – feeding this knowledge back into policy and procedure at BMJ.

Helen brings extensive experience of all stages of the publishing process and research integrity issues to her role at BMJ. She previously worked as Research Integrity Advisor at Cambridge University Press & Assessment, and in journals production at SAGE Publishing.

 

 

Helen MacDonald is The BMJ’s Clinical Editor and Research Integrity Editor for The BMJ and BMJ Journals, and has worked as an editor at The BMJ since 2008 (initially as an editorial registrar). Today, she develops The BMJ's  Rapid Recommendations and Living Systematic series, champions aspects of our campaigns on Better Evidence and Too Much Medicine, and is heavily involved in strengthening medical ethics in publishing through the work of the research integrity team.

Helen is a medically qualified general practitioner. She also has a BA in Medical Journalism (first class honours, University of Westminster) and an MSc in Evidence-Based Healthcare (distinction, University of Oxford). It is the blending of all of these skills together, to communicate clear and helpful information for discussions about health and healthcare, which drives her work at BMJ.