diff --git a/inttests/README.md b/inttests/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..7169a998
--- /dev/null
+++ b/inttests/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
+This directory holds all integration tests. The tests are mainly to be run by
+CI, but can also be run manually.
+
+The main reason for having integration tests is to make sure that the package
+can be imported and used as intended, something that can't be verified with
+unit-tests alone.
diff --git a/inttests/test_import.sh b/inttests/test_import.sh
new file mode 100755
index 00000000..7f5a9fbe
--- /dev/null
+++ b/inttests/test_import.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,19 @@
+#!/bin/bash
+
+# XXX: must be run with lowest required python version (as specified in
+# pyproject.toml), to ensure compatibility
+
+set -ex
+
+[[ "$(python --version)" == "Python 3.8."* ]]
+
+repo=$(dirname $(realpath $0))/..
+url="git+file://$repo"
+dir=$(mktemp -d)
+
+cd $dir
+python -m venv .env
+source .env/bin/activate
+
+pip install $url
+python -c "from odm_validation.validation import validate_data"