The INSPIRE project
ThemesThe INSPIRE project
What is this about?
The INSPIRE project, which stands for '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. The project's ultimate goal is to inspire and enable others to implement similar initiatives. Such initiatives include training courses, policies, campaigns, consultations etc. A broad spectrum of initiatives are made available on The Embassy of Good Science, using the tag 'INSPIRE' (see below for instructions). 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 system of science. 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 with the implementation of initiatives in other institutions. A publicly available toolbox of 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. The project hopes 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?
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 on 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, safe 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 search words, their combinations, and the number of results on a URL, a prioritisation was made. The results were processed by manually checking the URL’s with the highest prioritisation.
Highlighted initiatives
So far we highlighted the following initiatives:
- "Met de billen bloot" (airing your dirty laundry) ("Met de billen bloot" (airing your dirty laundry))
- Data stewardship at TU Delft (Data stewardship at TU Delft)
- Superb Supervision: integrity training for supervisors (Superb Supervision: integrity training for supervisors)
- A couple of initiatives on 'Computational reproducibility: safeguarding the backbone of science' (Computational reproducibility: safeguarding the backbone of science) including FAIR-software, TOP guidelines and the Software Preservation Network.
- A couple of initiatives contributing to 'Image Integrity' (Image Integrity) including guidelines, educational materials, InspectJ and an action set in Photoshop.
In Detail
To search for initiatives in the spectrum of initiatives:
There are multiple ways in which you can find the initiatives:
- Find the initiatives in the right sidesbare on this page.
- Use the search function of The Embassy of Good Science, and type in the word 'INSPIRE'. Please note that you will also find other search results that use the same word in their text.
- When you know what kind of information you are looking for, you can use the tag 'INSPIRE' in your search. For example, if you would like to find a theme page about an initiative,
- You can go to Themes,
- Then go to Good practices,
- And then you get a filter functionality in which you can select (or type) INSPIRE in the box 'Who", and click the search button (magnifying glass icon).
- You can follow a similar strategy to other searches. For example to find links to guidelines: go to resources, then guidelines, and select INSPIRE in 'who').
- Have a look at the highlighted initiatives listed in this page (under 'What are the best practices').
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
