Responsible conduct of research: How to do it right? (Online)

Why is a lack of replication of research problematic? Should I agree to a colleague being co-author of a paper to which (s)he has made no significant contribution? Can I use a data set to write multiple papers? My supervisor asks me to work extra hours and provide data for his paper, what do I do?

The pressure to publish is high, project timelines are dependent on funding and your free time is sparse. Scientists are frequently faced with questions that belong to the domain of research integrity: these include questions about how to do science right and how things can go wrong, but also all the grey area questions in between.

In this online course, we will introduce you to core ideas on responsible conduct of research: you will learn about the basic values that underly responsible research and how they apply to decisions and actions in your own research. In four weeks, you will learn more about how to discuss and deal with issues and dilemmas that occur in three main aspects of research: Supervision and mentoring, Data management, and Publication, reviewing and evaluating. You will work both individually and in an international group of PhDs with whom you discuss how to recognize problematic situations and how to devise strategies for dealing with them.

Learning objectives

Participants will have increased awareness of what kind of integrity issues and dilemmas occur in research practices; they will be able to deal with these issues from a Responsible Conduct of Research perspective; and they will be stimulated to communicate about these issues with relevant persons.

Instructional method

Participants will be enrolled in an online course via the virtual learning environment of Elevate Health. The course offers both individual and collaborative assignments on research integrity to an interdisciplinary group of PhDs. It features many examples and dilemmas faced in issues of Supervision and mentoring, Data management and Publication and reviewing.

We will enroll students from various Graduate Schools of Utrecht University, you can both be a starting PhD candidate as well as an advanced PHD candidate.

Start:  September 14, 2020, a week before instructions will be sent via email.

Duration: four weeks (till October 10, 2020)

Course load:  appr. 3 hours per week.

Certificate: On finishing the course, participants receive a certificate.

This course is a pilot within the Erasmus+ projectINTEGRITY. To further improve the course, participants will be asked to volunteer in a pre-post survey and/or interview.

Subscribe to this course via this link.