Scientific Integrity (Online)

Please note: This online course is only for those PhD candidates who are doing their PhDs outside of the Groningen area (e.g. living in another city or abroad). For the onsite course, see 'Scientific Integrity'.

Embark on a transformative journey into the heart of scientific integrity with our PhD training course and harness yourself against sloppy science, over-demanding (power)relations, and mismatches in expectations. This course illuminates the repercussions of FFP (fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism) as well as implications of the traditional quantitatively defined scientific reward system and research cultures.

Course description:

This course is designed to strengthen your own research with the highest quality standards for responsible-conduct-of-research (RCR). The course has two parts, which are both needed to successfully complete the course:

1. You will first navigate through a self-paced online self-study module containing realistic PhD scenarios coupled with short reflective assignments. The themes covered in the module are: (i) academic quality, (ii) authorship, (iii) social safety, (iv) property and data sharing.  
2. To reinforce your learning, you will participate in an interactive online tutorial. In small groups, you will critically discuss real-world case studies with your peers. Moreover, you will apply theoretical concepts and principles from professional codes-of-conduct and from the online learning module. The instructor introduces more background knowledge and offers you useful hands-on tips and tools relevant to (early-career) scientists.

Learning goals:

• You will be able to recognize issues, such as questionable practices and/or misconduct in well-known affairs from research practice
• You will gain the skills to suggest and explain a substantiated and weighed ethical course of action with reference to existing safeguards

Preparation:

• Please complete the online self-study module (see instructions below). Without this, you cannot attend a tutorial.
• Read the New York Times article (sent by the course instructor).

Online self-study

If you have already completed the "old" self-study module (Ethics, Technology, and Engineering) and uploaded the certificate on Hora Finita, you can ignore this part.

• You can find the online self-study module here: Responsible Conduct of Research (Utrecht University).
  • Please make sure you complete the paid course (not the free course), so you will receive a certificate in the end!
  • Select the button "Enrol for free". Sign up for Coursera with your email address and a password.
  • Select: ‘Purchase Course €45’ and pay by credit card. You can claim these expenses on your ITB. More information on how to claim expenses can be found on the GSSE website.
  • If you run into issues with payments, please directly contact the Coursera customer service.
• Upon completion, you will receive a certificate. You will have to upload this certificate in Hora Finita yourself:
  • Register this course as a new Training Activity; name your activity ‘Scientific Integrity’; upload your certificate and save the training activity.
  • Do not add any ECTs. We will do this for you upon completion of the whole course.
• The certificate has to be uploaded one week before the tutorial starts, otherwise you will be excluded from participation.

Format of the tutorial

The tutorial lasts for 3h (from 9:00 to 12:00) on Google Meet.

Workload

• Online self-study: 8-10h
• Online tutorial and preparation: 3-4 hours