Objectives: to understand the conceptions of postgraduate Nursing students regarding integrity in scientific research.
Methods: a qualitative, descriptive and exploratory study conducted in October 2020, with 40 students from a postgraduate program in Nursing from a public university in Southern Brazil. The interviews had an emphasis on scientific integrity and its importance for scientific research; they were conducted using synchronous communication tool and analyzed by textual discourse analysis.
Results: two categories emerged: "Scientific integrity: the ethical dimension of research" and "Implications of academic productivism for scientific integrity". Such integrity is intrinsically related to the supporting ethical elements, as well as to the nuances of productivism and its impacts on integrity.
Final considerations: the cross-sectionalism of ethical practices is necessary in the production spheres of science, so that knowledge is perpetuated in harmony with integrity and its representations to the community.