What is this about? (Is About)
From The Embassy of Good Science
A short summary providing some details about the theme/resource (max. 75 words)
- ⧼SA Foundation Data Type⧽: Text
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The Code of Ethics for CAS researchers (Articles I - V) includes framework principles of good conduct in science, seeking to support desirable moral standards in academic research. +
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This resource is structured following the journey you will go through, from thinking of a research question to writing up and dealing with your dissertation after submission. Keep in mind that this resource has been designed to suit all students from the University, and so there may be sections that are more or less relevant to your specific discipline. Additionally, this is only a starting point to get you thinking about your dissertation +
Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) is a joint service of OAPEN, OpenEdition, CNRS and Aix-Marseille Université. It aims to help scholars and students discover academic books. The directory is open to all publishers of academic, peer reviewed books in Open Access. +
The Code aims to ensure credibility, integrity and thereby quality in Danish research through common principles and standards for responsible conduct of research. The Code is aimed at both public and private research institutions, including universities, the research council system, foundations and enterprises. It is a common framework meant to be implemented and developed across all research fields. +
In line with international and European efforts to expand the reach of Open Access, the Danish Ministry of Education and Research has also made Open Access a priority. While most Danish research institutions are already aware of and comply with this model, this strategy aims to streamline and co-ordinate the efforts of different stakeholders to maximize research impact and improve access. +
This is a hypothetical scenario of a junior researcher who discovers gaps between previously kept records of lab data and what has been published. The scenario poses the question of whether the student researcher should report these inconsistencies or not, and how should he proceed.
The American Society of Physics poses the following question and encourages critical discussion: 'Is this really a case of misconduct in handling data and record keeping? Or, is it the result of an honest mistake?' Several alternative scenarios of why such inconsistencies can occur are discussed. +
The revised European Code of Conduct on Research Integrity outlines a number of recommendations on "Data Practices and Management". These are:
" • Researchers, research institutions and organisations ensure appropriate stewardship and curation of all data and research materials, including unpublished ones, with secure preservation for a reasonable period.
• Researchers, research institutions and organisations ensure access to data is as open as possible, as closed as necessary, and where appropriate in line with the FAIR Principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable) for data management.
• Researchers, research institutions and organisations provide transparency about how to access or make use of their data and research materials.
• Researchers, research institutions and organisations acknowledge data as legitimate and citable products of research.
• Researchers, research institutions and organisations ensure that any contracts or agreements relating to research outputs include equitable and fair provision for the management of their use, ownership, and/or their protection under intellectual property rights."'"`UNIQ--ref-0000069C-QINU`"'
These recommendations emphasize the importance of good data management and stewardship, however they need to be further specified in individual country or disciplinary contexts. +
Data Practices, Data Management and FAIR Principles: An Educational Scenario by the EnTIRE project +
Members of The Embassy of Good Science have developed a set of eight scenarios for educational purposes and to stimulate strategic thinking about issues in research ethics and research integrity.
This scenario presents a hypothetical narrative concerning '''[https://zenodo.org/record/4063648#.X3cHCpNKjxQ data practices and data management and their links with research ethics and research integrity]'''.
It focuses on issues regarding:
*Data protection and consent;
*FAIR principles for data management and stewardship;
*Data copyright and data citation;
*Data for personal research use.
It is interspersed with questions and resource suggestions that help guide researchers, research ethics committees ('RECs'), research integrity offices ('RIOs') and research administrators in their deliberations concerning the research integrity issues raised by the narrative. +
This toolkit is a collection of resources for working across jurisdictions regarding data privacy and security in the global pandemic such as COVID-19. It contains the practice notes, checklists, guides, documents, articles, blogs, etc. related to public health emergency and disaster preparedness topics. +
Professor Esser conducted a long study of Ethiopian immigrant women. It took her a long time to earn the trust of her participants and some of her notes are in Amharic. After she publishes her results, another researcher requests access to her notes. The case study asks whether Professor Esser should share the notes and how her relationship to the research subjects and the language in which the notes were written should influence her decision. +
Jose Coronado conducts a study which requires him to archive data for future reuse and which assumes that subjects might be re-interviewed in the future. He is worried that this might make less likely that his subjects will agree to take part. The case study asks how Coronado should discuss with his research subjects about the future of their data. +
A team led by Angela Beringer leads a long term research projects and publish a paper before they finish collecting all data for the project. A grad student involved in the project also publishes a dissertation on the basis of the data. Afterwards, a different researcher asks for access to the data relating to the published work as he wants to check their results and criticise their assumptions about the missing data. The case study asks whether Angela's team can withhold the data until they present their further analyis, and whether they can protect the integrity of their research by withholding data +
Professor Stillwell is asked by another researcher to share his data from a project on family ties about the homeless. Stillwell is worried that this would violate consent of participants (as they were not informed that their data could be reused) and could lead to their identification. The case study asks about the appropriate safeguards regarding the participants' consent. +
A graduate student finds out there is a significant gap in the data that her research group has published on. The data are unaccounted for in the lab-book. +
A paper was submitted to our journal. The managing editor was concerned about patient information in the paper and queried the authors. The authors responded that the data were collected from routine samples and so consent was never obtained. The patients were lost to follow-up, and there was no ethics committee approval as it involved the study of existing data, but they did discuss with the institutional review board who said it was exempt.
The cohort was 2500 patients, all with one syndrome, in one hospital. The paper contains two tables that display data from 12 patients: sex, age, presenting symptom, as well as laboratory parameters and outcome. +
An author submitted two manuscripts to our journal and the data were clearly fabricated, which was confirmed when we examined the original patient data files. The lead author admitted that they had only recruited a few patients and fabricated all of the remaining data and said that the co-authors had done this without their knowledge.
We reported this to the institution, who conducted an investigation. However, this investigation exonerated the lead author from misconduct, who went on to publish one of these manuscripts elsewhere and is still publishing suspicious manuscripts in other journals. +
This online training is designed for young researchers and students and is intended for self-pace learning. It provides information on data management, selection, collection, handling, analysis, publication and reporting as well as ownership. The aim of this module is to promote RCR. It does not provide any advices or recommendations on ethical and moral dilemmas that researchers can face in their work. +
The aim of this short checklist is to help researchers in managing and sharing their data. With the list of questions, you can easily identify and apply the best practices in the process of data planning, documenting, formating, storing, sharing as well as in confidentiality, ethics, consent and copyright issues. +
A journal received an enquiry from a reader stating that they had found some discrepancies in the spectra published in the electronic supporting information for a published paper. They suggested that the discrepancies would be consistent with the spectra being manually ‘cleaned’. If this were true, the characterisation and purity of the compounds reported in the paper would be called into question.
The editor checked the spectra in close detail and verified that the discrepancies that the reader had identified were a reasonable cause for concern. The editor also checked the author’s related papers in the journal and identified a total of four papers that were affected by similar discrepancies in the spectra. When the editor contacted the lead author to discuss the concerns, they explained that ‘cleaning’ spectra to remove impurity peaks was not a practice that was carried out by their research group, and they did not believe that it had occurred in this instance. However, the researcher who had carried out the analysis had now left the group and the original data files where no longer available.
As a comparison with the original data files could not be made, the journal approached an independent expert to obtain a second opinion on the evidence available in the published spectra. The expert confirmed that there was clear evidence that the spectra had been altered and that this could be consistent with an attempt to overestimate the yields for the reported reactions.
Following this, the journal contacted the director of the institute to request their assistance in determining whether the spectra had in fact been altered. The director consulted with the lead author and the head of their facility. They confirmed that it was not possible to locate the original data due to a limitation of their archival system. They stated that their internal review had not found any ‘intentional altering of the spectra’. They stated that on that basis, the papers should not be suspected and should be allowed to stand.
This recommendation runs contrary to the evidence that we believe can be seen in the spectra, but in the absence of the original data files it is difficult to make a conclusive judgement.
This study explored the issues of data sharing and dual-use practices. The authors concluded that it is important to support the openness and freedom of research and also to be cautious with regard to dual-use and aware of the obligation to share the data. +
