<p>There is a growing number of studies on research ethics in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education at universities while a comprehensive list of variables that may develop or nurture research ethics is lacking. The present study undertook a scoping review of studies on research ethics in STEM education at universities to determine the extent research ethics studies have been undertaken, the methodologies used, and if there will be any research gaps. Online databases were used to identify peer-reviewed journal articles in English that were published in 2018–2023, from which we selected relevant publications that used research ethics as a primary outcome variable in STEM education research focused on universities. There were five takeaways. First, the recent scholarship on research ethics at universities broadly tends to focus either on responsible conduct of research (RCR) or social ethics that is often referred to as “social responsibility” or “social relevance of science” whereas theoretically, they both are subsets of research ethics. Second, current academic research ethics education broadly tends to apply one of the following approaches: speculative training, knowledge-focused training, and skill-focused training. Third, there are considerable disciplinary variations in academic research ethics education across STEM subfields. Fourth, key variables (or themes) emerging from the literature include (a) informal research ethics training within laboratories (b) international differences (c) limitations of general research ethics training and (d) disciplinary characteristics (or “research paradigms”). Fifth, potential research gaps in the current literature include (a)institutional arrangements (b) evaluation and (c) alternative approaches.</p>