![[2026 Edition] What Are Research Integrity and Research Security? A Plain-Language Guide to Why Universities and Research Institutions Should Prepare Now](/images/columns/research-integrity-security-basics/cover.png)
[2026 Edition] What Are Research Integrity and Research Security? A Plain-Language Guide to Why Universities and Research Institutions Should Prepare Now
Hello, this is Hamamoto from TIMEWELL.
Have you ever come across the terms "research integrity" and "research security" in a notice from your university or in the news, and found yourself thinking they sound rather complicated? They are written with imposing kanji and carry a distinctly bureaucratic ring. The substance of these ideas, though, becomes easy to grasp the moment you translate them into everyday terms.
Put simply, research integrity means "carrying out research honestly, with nothing hidden," and research security means "protecting the important contents of your research so that they are not quietly carried off to another country." The two are often discussed together, and between 2025 and 2026 the Japanese government began to put real effort into building out the rules around them.
I tend to think of this topic less as a matter of complex policy and more as "preparation that lets researchers keep doing their work with peace of mind." So rather than dwelling on the fine print of the regulations, I want to explain, gently and with familiar analogies, what these mechanisms are actually for.
If you read only one thing here, let it be this: neither of these ideas is meant to stop research or to treat researchers as suspects. Both exist so that good research can keep being done, openly and with trust, for a long time to come. Hold on to that, and the rest of this article should feel a lot less intimidating.
What Research Integrity Really Means
The "integrity" in research integrity is close in meaning to "honesty" or "soundness." It refers to honesty within the world of research, that is, the attitude of conducting research without lies or deception and without hiding your conflicting interests.[^3]
Think about a supermarket. Because the food on the shelves is properly labeled with its place of origin and ingredients, we can buy it with confidence. If the labeling were bogus, we could no longer trust anything that store sold. Research is the same. If someone fabricates data or quietly passes off another person's results as their own, that research loses its credibility. Not engaging in fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism is the most easily understood part of research integrity. Fabrication, to put it plainly, means making something appear to exist when it does not.
Another important element is the disclosure of conflicts of interest. A conflict of interest is a situation in which a person's official role collides with other interests arising from money or personal relationships. If a baseball umpire turned out to also be the coach of one of the teams on the field, you could not trust their calls. The same problem arises if a researcher receives money from the government or a company of a particular country, hides that fact, and at the same time accepts public research funding from Japan. That is why it matters to properly declare, and make visible, who you are receiving money or support from and who you are conducting research with. This is the heart of research integrity.[^1]
This kind of honesty is not meant to constrain individual researchers. I see it as something closer to an admission ticket: a way of protecting trust in research as a whole, so that you can stay within the circle of international collaborative research rather than being shut out of it. When a partner overseas weighs whether to share data or co-author a paper with you, what they are really asking is whether your institution can be trusted. Disclosure is how you answer that question before it is even asked.
Picturing the Difference Through the Idea of a House
This is where many people get stuck, namely the difference between research integrity and research security. The words resemble each other and are easy to confuse, but the picture clears up if you think in terms of a house.
If research integrity is "keeping your household accounts honestly," then research security is "properly locking your front door." The former is about correctness on the inside; the latter is about preparing for threats from the outside. Their roles are clearly distinct. Both are about protecting the same house, yet they face in different directions.
Research security is the work of preventing your research results and technology from flowing out unintentionally. What deserves special attention here is so-called "sensitive technology." Sensitive technology refers to technology that was born for peaceful purposes but that, depending on how it is used, can be diverted to weapons or military applications. The control technology that keeps a drone flying stably, or a newly developed material, can each turn out to be useful for military ends when viewed from a different angle.
Such technology can slip out without anyone noticing, precisely through the everyday exchanges that are routine in the research world: publishing papers, conducting joint research, accepting international students. The difficult part of research security is that leaks can happen even without any ill intent. A casual reply to a question at a conference, a dataset shared to speed up a collaboration, a visiting researcher given broad access to a lab so they can work freely. None of these feel like a security event in the moment, yet each can be a route by which sensitive content leaves the building. This is exactly why we manage who can access which information, and why we verify the backgrounds of the partners we research with and the people we accept. Protecting the important contents in this way is the basic thinking behind research security.
Replace siloed classification work with AI.
METI's FY2024 data shows 52% of foreign exchange law violations stem from classification errors. TRAFEED cuts determination time by ~70% and stores structured rationale for every decision.
Why Is This Getting So Much Attention Now
Behind all this lies a major trend: we have entered an era in which technology translates directly into national competitiveness and security. As with AI and semiconductors, which country holds the leading-edge technology now bears directly on both the economy and defense, and countries have begun trying to protect their own technology. A generation ago, basic research was largely treated as a shared global good; today the same research can be read as a strategic asset, and that shift in framing is what has pulled universities into a conversation they were rarely part of before. In Japan, too, the term "economic security" has become firmly established.
And above all, incidents in which technology actually leaked out have occurred. A clear example is the case at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST). A former senior researcher was charged with violating the Unfair Competition Prevention Act, specifically the disclosure of trade secrets, for sending research data related to synthesis technology for an insulating gas with low warming impact to a Chinese company by email in 2018. The Tokyo District Court handed down a guilty verdict on February 25, 2025, reportedly sentencing him to two years and six months in prison, suspended for four years, with a fine of two million yen.[^9] The reality that such a thing can happen even at a national research institution gave everyone involved a strong sense of crisis.
There are reasons why universities and research institutions are easy targets. They are where the most advanced basic research gathers, yet they also have an open culture that seeks to share information widely, and they often cannot devote as much money or staffing to security as private companies can. According to reporting, there are also cases in which international students and researchers are drawn in as collaborators without realizing it themselves. People who harbored no malicious intent at the outset end up entangled before they know it. That is precisely why we need to prepare as organizations, rather than relying on individual goodwill alone. Asking each researcher to personally judge where the line falls, on top of their actual research, is neither fair to them nor reliable for the institution.
How Far Has the Government Moved (As of June 2026)
Over the past few years, Japan's efforts have advanced rapidly. Start with MEXT. It has built out a system that asks applicants for research funding to declare funding from foreign governments, concurrent positions, joint research partners, and the like.[^1] Each institution's progress is checked through an annual follow-up survey.[^2] In December 2024 (Reiwa 6), MEXT compiled the "Directions for Concrete Initiatives Within MEXT-Related Measures Toward Ensuring Research Security at Universities and Similar Institutions,"[^10] and on April 10, 2025 (Reiwa 7) it issued a notice that it had established a "Research Security Consultation Desk" where institutions can turn for advice when they run into difficulties.[^1] Starting in FY2025, it also began "pilot initiatives" under some of the research and development programs of the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST). Rather than covering everything at once, this is a deliberately cautious approach: evaluate risk on a project-by-project basis, narrow the scope first, and then gradually expand it.[^1]
The Cabinet Office has been active as well. From April 18, 2025, it convened the "Expert Panel on Ensuring Research Security and Research Integrity,"[^4] and at its meeting on July 18 of the same year it presented the "Procedures Manual for Efforts to Ensure Research Security (Draft)."[^5] This corresponds to guidelines for preventing the leakage of critical technology and serves as a handbook for how each institution should proceed. The panel met a total of seven times through December 1 of that year, and after repeated deliberation the official version, the "Procedures Manual for Efforts to Ensure Research Security," was published in December 2025 (Reiwa 7), having passed through the draft stage.[^11] With this, the national handbook that institutions can rely on is now in place.
Preparations are progressing in the private sector too. CISTEC, the Center for Information on Security Trade Control and a specialist organization for export control, published the fifth edition of its "Guidance on the Management of Sensitive Technology (for Universities and Research Institutions)" in September 2025, assembling materials that can be used on the ground, such as Q&As and a collection of near-miss cases.[^8] Beyond the national framework, these more practical handbooks are a valuable resource as well.
Within these rules, the one most closely connected to the research front line is "deemed export." This is the idea that, even within Japan, when you provide controlled technology to a foreign national or similar party, you need a license just as you would for an actual export overseas. In the May 2022 (Reiwa 4) review of how the rules are applied, it was clarified that providing technology to a person who is under strong influence from a foreign government, referred to as the "specified category," is plainly subject to regulation as well.[^6][^7] For who falls under this and what situations to watch out for, I have laid out the specifics in The Risks of Deemed Export, so please read that alongside this article.
Honestly, carrying out this kind of verification work by hand alone is quite demanding. The control lists are revised frequently, and the work calls for specialized knowledge. This is why using a mechanism like TRAFEED (formerly ZEROCK ExCHECK), an AI agent specialized in export control, to support the screening of joint research partners and candidate recipients, and the determination of whether technology under development falls under the regulations, has become a realistic option.
Where Universities and Research Labs Should Start
There is no need to overthink this. As with home security, the realistic approach is to shore things up in order, starting with what you can do.
The first step is for the organization to decide who is responsible. Clarify the department or person in charge of research security, and put your internal rules into writing, even simple ones. This alone keeps your judgment from wavering when something happens, because a researcher facing a tricky case will know exactly whom to ask instead of guessing on their own or quietly letting it slide. Knowing where you can turn for outside help, such as MEXT's consultation desk, is reassuring as well.[^1]
Next comes verification when you accept people. When you welcome an international student or a foreign researcher, you check, against a consistent standard, points such as which institution the person comes from, where they receive their funding, and whether they have an employment relationship with a foreign government. For things like joint research with graduates of the so-called Defense Seven Universities, a group of universities flagged for their ties to the military, especially careful verification is considered desirable. This is not about approaching a particular country or person with suspicion; it is a procedure undertaken for both parties' sake, so that no one gets caught up in trouble later.
The third area is managing technology and information. Understand which of your own research could become subject to regulation, and create a state in which only those who need to know can access highly confidential information. And when you are in a situation of handing technology to a foreign national, remember the rules on deemed export. The trap here is the assumption that "it stays inside Japan, so it is fine." That is exactly the assumption deemed export was designed to close off. Because providing controlled technology without a license can become subject to penalties under FEFTA, it is safer to consult a specialist department or an outside expert whenever you are in doubt.
Rather than aiming for perfection all at once, decide who is responsible, make verification on acceptance a habit, and consult when in doubt. Starting to turn these three is, in the end, the surest shortcut. That is what I have come to believe.
Summary
Research integrity means carrying out research honestly; research security means not letting important technology leak out unintentionally. The words are similar, but their roles differ: one is about correctness on the inside, the other about preparing for the outside. It is enough to remember the two analogies of keeping your household accounts honestly and locking your front door.
Between 2025 and 2026, the national framework advanced significantly, with MEXT's pilot initiatives and the establishment of its consultation desk, and the Cabinet Office's expert panel publishing the research security procedures manual. CISTEC's updated guidance has rounded out the practical side as well. Taken together, the pieces an institution needs to point to, both the official handbook and the hands-on materials, are finally on the table. The guilty verdict in the AIST case has also spread the awareness, across the research front line, that this concerns me too.
That said, for researchers on the ground it is not easy to balance the two demands of preserving research freedom while also protecting security. How do you reduce the burden of verification work, and how do you prevent oversights? If you are at a university or research institution wrestling with these questions, please feel free to reach out through an individual consultation, including about putting the export control AI agent TRAFEED to work. We will think through a manageable way to begin, tailored to your institution's situation, together.
Related Articles
- 2024 Edition: What Is Export Classification? A Complete Guide from the Basics to Practical Application
- Understanding the "Specified Category" of Deemed Export in Five Minutes
- Next-Generation Mining Opened Up by Vertical Integration and Technological Innovation
References
[^1]: Research Integrity and Research Security — MEXT — As of June 2026 — https://www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/kagaku/integrity/index.html [^2]: Follow-up Survey on the Status of Efforts to Ensure Research Integrity — MEXT — FY2022 to FY2025 — https://www.mext.go.jp/a_menu/kagaku/integrity/followup.html [^3]: Research Integrity — Cabinet Office, Office for Promotion of Science, Technology and Innovation — As of June 2026 — https://www8.cao.go.jp/cstp/kokusaiteki/integrity.html [^4]: Expert Panel on Ensuring Research Security and Research Integrity — Cabinet Office — First convened April 18, 2025 (Reiwa 7) — https://www8.cao.go.jp/cstp/kokusaiteki/integrity/yushikisha.html [^5]: Procedures Manual for Efforts to Ensure Research Security (Draft): Guidelines for Preventing the Leakage of Critical Technology (5th Expert Panel, Document 1) — Cabinet Office — July 18, 2025 — https://www8.cao.go.jp/cstp/kokusaiteki/integrity/yushikisha/5kai/shiryo1.pdf [^6]: Deemed Export Control (Security Trade Control) — METI — As of June 2026 — https://www.meti.go.jp/policy/anpo/anpo07.html [^7]: On Clarifying the Application of Deemed Export Control (Specified Category) — METI — Effective May 1, 2022 (Reiwa 4) — https://www.meti.go.jp/policy/anpo/law_document/minashi/meikakukanitsuite2.pdf [^8]: Guidance on the Management of Sensitive Technology Related to Security Trade (for Universities and Research Institutions), Fifth Edition — CISTEC (Center for Information on Security Trade Control) — Published September 25, 2025 — https://www.cistec.or.jp/service/daigaku_annai.html [^9]: AIST Data Leak: Guilty Verdict for Former Researcher of Chinese Nationality, Tokyo District Court — The Nihon Keizai Shimbun — February 25, 2025 — https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQOUE241U30U5A220C2000000/ [^10]: Directions for Concrete Initiatives Within MEXT-Related Measures Toward Ensuring Research Security at Universities and Similar Institutions (Overview) — MEXT, Science and Technology Policy Bureau — December 18, 2024 (Reiwa 6) — https://www.mext.go.jp/content/20241218-mxt_kagkoku-000039402_1-1rrr.pdf [^11]: Procedures Manual for Efforts to Ensure Research Security — Expert Panel on Ensuring Research Security and Research Integrity (Cabinet Office) — December 2025 (Reiwa 7) — https://www8.cao.go.jp/cstp/kokusaiteki/integrity/yushikisha/guidelines_v1.pdf