Research Integrity Risk Index
What is RI2? It is the world’s first empirically grounded, composite metric designed to identify and profile institutional-level risks to research integrity. Developed by Professor Lokman Meho at the American University of Beirut, RI2 was created in response to growing concerns about how global university rankings incentivize volume- and citation-based publishing at the expense of scholarly integrity.
What does RI2 do? It evaluates institutions based on two independent, verifiable indicators: (1) R Rate–the number of retracted articles per 1,000 publications, capturing evidence of serious methodological, ethical, or authorship violations, and (2) D Rate–the percentage of an institution’s publications appearing in journals that were recently removed from Scopus or Web of Science for failing to meet quality or publishing standards. These indicators are normalized and averaged to produce a 0-1 score, which places each institution into one of five risk tiers (from Red Flag to Low Risk) based on a fixed reference group of the 1,000 most publishing universities worldwide. Visitors can view the full methodology and explore the current institutional rankings and risk tier classifications.
Why RI2 matters? Traditional rankings emphasize productivity and citation volume, often overlooking questionable practices such as publishing in predatory or delisted journals, inflating output through multi-affiliations, gaming citations through self-citations and reciprocal networks, and delegating intellectual leadership to external authors. RI2 shifts the focus from quantity to integrity, offering a conservative, transparent, and globally benchmarked tool that highlights structural vulnerabilities often missed by mainstream metrics.
Who should use the RI2? It is intended for use by universities seeking to assess and strengthen research governance, ranking agencies aiming to incorporate integrity-based safeguards, funders and regulators evaluating institutional reliability and risk, and journalists, watchdogs, and academics committed to improving scholarly accountability.
Learn more: The RI2 platform is continuously updated based on user feedback and evolving best practices. Users can explore the interactive RI² world map, which displays average RI2 scores by country to visualize geographic trends in research integrity risk. The next semiannual update of the RI² database and rankings will be released in December 2025.
In the Media: The index has already garnered wide international attention. Some highlights so far include:
- University World News: Sawahel, Wagdy (June 30, 2025). New tool aims to deter gaming in world university rankings.
- Al-Ghad and Sada al-Shaab (Jordan). Al-Zoubi, Abdallah S. (June 21 and 22, 2025). أزمة النزاهة الأكاديمية في الجامعات.. معركة القيم بين التشريع والتطبيق.
- Science Chronicle (India): Ravindranath, Prasad (June 12, 2025). A research integrity index shining a light on how Indian universities have gamed the publishing metrics
- Substack / Indian Society of AI and Law: Rohra, Sanjay (June 10, 2025). Integrating Research Integrity into Academic Rankings – A Step Forward
- Nature: Naddaf, Miryam (June 6, 2025). Integrity index flags universities with high retraction rates
- Wikipedia (2025): Research Integrity Risk Index
RI2 Risk Tiers | RI2 Score Ranges (June 2025) | Interpretation |
Red Flag | RI2 ≥ 0.251 | Extreme anomalies; systemic integrity risk |
High Risk | RI2 ≥ 0.176 and < 0.251 | Significant deviation from global norms |
Watch List | RI2 ≥ 0.099 and < 0.176 | Moderately elevated risk; emerging concerns |
Normal Variation | RI2 ≥ 0.049 and < 0.099 | Within expected global variance |
Low Risk | RI2 < 0.049 | Strong adherence to publishing integrity norms |