COPE, on its 'Publication ethics and misconduct' page, spotlights The US Office of Research Integrity's definition of misconduct, '...fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism in proposing, performing or reviewing research, or in reporting research results'.
(COPE cited source: http://ori.hhs.gov/misconduct/definition_misconduct.shtml)

 

However, as JIM is an international journal, with authors and editors across the globe, it also looks to the European Commission's 'Mutual Learning Exercise (MLE) on Research Integrity: Process and structures. Thematic Report No. 1', (March, 2019), which highlights the existence of various different definitions of research misconduct, based on its 'Survey of the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation (2013). This survey explored the national systems for handling cases of research misconduct in 15 European countries.9 The European countries covered by the survey were: Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Ireland, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Switzerland, Sweden, The Netherlands, and United Kingdom. Three other surveyed countries were Australia, Canada and the USA. Its results found that there were different definitions of research misconduct. For some countries only falsification, fabrication and plagiarism (FFP) constitute misconduct, but in others the list is longer and includes what is usually called “questionable research practices”. In some countries’ definitions, misconduct needs to include intention, and honest errors and scientific discussions are differentiated from misconduct behaviour. The policies in different countries also take different forms: some are defined by law and are legally binding (such as in Denmark, Norway, and Poland) whereas in others the guidelines/codes are not legally binding documents.' (p.8).