Ambassadors of Good Science
The Entire consortium had a joint meeting with our partner project (Virtue) in Amsterdam to overview and discuss our activities as two years has passed and the project reached its halftime this summer.
This project has received funding from the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. The consortium consists of eleven partners from across the European Union, coordinated by the VUMC Amsterdam, and partners, such as DCU Dublin, KU Leuven, University of Oslo, University of Split, Manchester University, ENRIO, EUREC, Momkai, Gesinn and CEU.
The consortium consists of social scientists, philosophers, ethicists, designers and internet experts whose common vision is to create a dynamic online Wiki-platform, owned by the research community, that will make the normative framework governing Research Ethics and Research Integrity (RE+RI) accessible. According to our vision this platform will function like the Wikipedia that relies on a critical mass of active users who are uploading content and reviewing new data.
What is research misconduct? What is data fabrication in science? What are laws, guidelines, and authorities dealing with these issues? Where can I find relevant documents? How should I prsoceed if I experience misconduct in academia? How can I make students know about these issues? Are there available teaching tools?
University staff and people in academic centers and other institutions are facing these questions more and more prevalently. However, finding the proper answers or adequate guidance on these issues is becoming rather challenging in the rapidly changing research environments or in the mass of available information.
This platform will make practical information on how to comply with EU, national and discipline specific RE+RI standards and legislation easy to find and understand. It will also provide a one-stop destination for teaching resources, illustrative cases and scenarios specific for the European context.
Few months ago, we have successfully launched the first version of this platform at the World Conference of Research Integrity in Hong Kong: The Embassy of Good Science. We have developed via systematic reviews and searches a “data set” on trainings, educational materials, institutions, laws and guidelines, cases and scenarios, creating the “starter content” for the wiki platform that will be further developed and sustained by the research communities themselves in the long run.
CELAB’s work package is responsible for the collection of cases, case analyzes methods, and for the development of scenarios for educational settings. We have already conducted an extensive systematic review on research ethics and integrity cases that have been published in scientific journals. Currently we are developing a case analyzes method, a procedural tool that can be used in academic settings for exploring integrity dilemmas in research settings that support decision-making in academia. In the coming two-year period – beside research and content development - our main objective will be to increase the number of active users of our platform, developing our community, who became ambassadors of good science.
Péter Kakuk, 07.09.2019.
http://www.entireconsortium.eu/
