Theme:3c6a13ad-6861-4a5f-bf5b-491693ee6b6d

Themes

The INSPIRE project

What is this about?

The INSPIRE project, - Inventory in the Netherlands of Stakeholders’ Practices and Initiatives on Research integrity to set an Example - aims to collect, classify and share initiatives to foster research integrity, with a view to inspire and to enable others to implement similar initiatives. Such initiatives are for example trainings, policies, campaigns, consultation etc. A broad spectrum of initiatives will be made available on The Embassy of Good Science, using the tag 'INSPIRE'. A checklist to guide future development and implementation of initiatives, is developed together with actors in the field.

Why is this important?

In recent years, many initiatives to address research integrity and related problems in science have been developed. However, the success of these initiatives requires understanding of the code of conduct, the research culture and the context of the science system. Relevant knowledge on how to foster responsible research practices (RRP) in various contexts is fragmented, local initiatives are very diverse, and available evidence on best practices in and outside the Netherlands are only used to a limited extent.

The INSPIRE project aims to reduce this fragmented situation, by collecting current and planned initiatives for fostering responsible research practices, identifying good practices and unique initiatives by the use of a checklist, and by publicly sharing the relevant information to assist implementation in other institutions. A publicly available toolbox with initiatives to foster RRP, prevents ‘reinventing the wheel’.

The project goes beyond the scope of just sharing knowledge. It activates policy makers, administrators, teachers, researchers, supervisors, editors, and other stakeholders to make contributions and reflect on their own practices. Consequently, we  aim to inspire and enable all stakeholders in scientific research to facilitate measures locally that foster responsible research practices and take up the challenge and their duty.

For whom is this important?

Policy makersAdministratorsTeachersResearchersSupervisorsEditorsOtherScientists

What are the best practices?

The INSPIRE Checklist

Part of the INSPIRE project was to develop a checklist to assess and classify initiatives that foster responsible research practices. Following a Delphi method including two online surveys and a workshop, a checklist was drafted, piloted and revised until consensus among the INSPIRE team was achieved. The result is an extensive yet practical checklist that can be used by many stakeholders and for multiple purposes. It is used for the taxonomy of the spectrum of initiatives that soon will be made available at The Embassy of Good Science. The checklist can also be used by stakeholders to assess and improve their initiatives themselves, or by others who plan to implement an existing initiative, for example which they found in the spectrum on The Embassy!

The Webcrawler

To support and inspire stakeholders in research to implement initiatives to foster responsible research practices, one of the goals of the INSPIRE project was to make an inventory of such initiatives. A web crawler was one of the strategies used for the inventory. A list of keywords was compiled in both Dutch and English. These were used to search multiple search engines. The unique, healthy and scannable URL’s were scanned for specific words or combinations of words on the web pages to indicate the potential relevance of the URL. The words and word combinations were originally based on the primary key words and words found in the INSPIRE checklist, and further improved by ‘learning on the job’. Based on the found words and word combinations and the number of findings on a URL, a prioritisation was made. The results are currently being processed by manually checking the URL’s with the highest prioritisation.

In Detail

Project team:

Project lead: Dr. Fenneke Blom

Junior researcher: Dorien van der Schot

Supervision: Prof. dr. Lex Bouter

Webcrawler: Marc-Philippe Verschuren

Assistants: Simone Dunn, Simon Crox, Nadja den Haan (Intern)

Advisory group: Dr. Daan Andriessen, Prof. dr. Frans van Lunteren, Dr. Lotte Melenhorst, Prof. dr. Yvo Smulders, Dr. Els Swennen, Dr. Joeri Tijdink, Prof. dr. Guy Widdershoven,

The Embassy Editorial team, The Embassy editorial team, Iris Lechner, Natalie Evans, Fenneke Blom, Andrijana Perković Paloš contributed to this theme. Latest contribution was Oct 22, 2021

Other information

Who

• INSPIRE

When

• 2018-2020

Where

• The Netherlands

Research Area

• All