The goal of this framework is to be transparent about how we make decisions about the organizations with which IGI does business, so that our faculty, staff, students, funders, and the broader scientific community can know how we approach this element of our business. Our policies and procedures include firewalls to ensure that funding sources do not have any influence over the findings of funded research, educational content, and innovation goals.

We regularly receive partnership, collaboration, and funding opportunities from organizations that have particular business models, conflicts of interests, or ideologies that might risk influencing scientific credibility, but who nonetheless are major stakeholders in the scientific community. Such organizations include a spectrum of stakeholders, including but not limited to gambling industry, government, and non-profit organizations. Avoiding collaboration with any stakeholder would undermine our goals of advancing science and education in gambling. A lack of standards for collaboration, however, would undermine our mission.

This framework addresses how we assess the risks attendant to any particular opportunity, and the ethical principles we use to inform decisions about whether to:

  • accept speaking invitations, interview inquiries, or guest posts on behalf of IGI
  • accept philanthropic donations
  • enter grant, contractual, or consulting agreements
  • actively develop or maintain formal partnerships
  • accept a group as a customer for one of IGI’s products or services

Framework Terms

Standards for Funding Organizations

When necessary, and to the best of its ability, IGI will perform background research in ensuring the organization promotes broadly accepted social and ethical responsibility and regulatory integrity.

This may be triggered by a new partnership or event that has come to our attention. If IGI finds that a funding organization failed to meet (or no longer adheres to) these standards, we may reject the funding opportunity.

IGI respects the privacy of its funders and will allow for anonymous donations in adherence with the policies of the UNLV Foundation.

Research, Innovation, and Education Grants and Contracts

  • IGI adheres to the rules and requirements set forth by the UNLV Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP) and defers to OSP for legal vetting of grant and contract agreements.
  • IGI adheres to a research and open science policy.
  • When IGI conducts research, we may share findings with funders of the research before public dissemination, but IGI will not enter into research agreements in which the funder can bar disclosure of findings.
  • While funding organizations may have specialized input on research questions and subjects, no funding organization has input on research planning, data analysis, interpretation, manuscript preparation, nor decisions relating to journal submissions.
  • Through the course of our work, IGI staff may encounter proprietary, confidential, or commercially licensed information. This might take the form of personally identifiable data, copyrighted content, or information related to another company's operation. This is inevitable in working with large research institutions, publishers, and funding agencies.

Inevitably, managing these risks is an evolving practice informed by experience. IGI acknowledges that the creation of this framework at a specific point in time may not accommodate the rapidly changing dynamics of the gambling and commercial gaming industry and the underlying technology that supports it. As such, we expect to iteratively improve this framework over time.

UNLV IGI thanks the Center for Open Science, whose partnership framework and policies have helped create and frame IGI’s approach described here.