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On 22–24 September 2025, the ENRIO Congress on Research Integrity Practice took place in Ljubljana, Slovenia. This year’s topic was “Research Integrity, Power Dynamics and Safe Institutional Culture.” The event brought together a wide range of experts from different fields and offered an extensive programme that addressed current and pressing challenges for the field of research integrity.

The opening keynotes set the tone: Marcela Linková highlighted the responsibility of research leadership in “Addressing Gender-Based Violence as a Matter of Research Integrity,” while Roman Kuhar discussed “Science under siege: Anti-gender mobilizations and the struggle over epistemic power.” These talks underscored how questions of integrity are deeply intertwined with social and institutional dynamics. Other keynotes highlighted the importance of training and education as well as trust in science.

Throughout the congress, presentations clustered around power dynamics, training and education, and trust in science. Members of the irecs consortium presented a poster on dissemination activities carried out by the project and gave a talk on AI in health, one of the irecs focus technologies. In this presentation, Sandra Scholl and Daniela Proske examined the ethical implications of using AI in healthcare research from the perspective of the irecs project and gave the audience insight into the training materials developed on the topic.

Key ethical issues mentioned included data privacy and security, bias and discrimination, transparency, responsibility, informed consent, trust, justice, liability, and sustainability. Our analysis also revealed structural challenges: research involving AI is often reviewed by medical RECs with a narrow focus on consent and privacy, while a lack of expertise, guidelines, and adequate review procedures remains a significant gap. As a conclusion, training for REC members is urgently needed — a finding that directly shaped the development of the irecs training materials.

The ENRIO Congress was a great success: important issues were debated, inspiring conversations took place, and valuable insights were generated for the future. We are glad that irecs was able to contribute to these discussions and to share insights that will support responsible research cultures across Europe.

Authors: Sandra Scholl and Daniela Proske, University of Bonn