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Welcome to the ENERI Training Materials site!

 

ENERI Classroom is a training and capacity-building resource on research integrity and ethics. The following provides an overview of the aims and target groups of the training material, contents, and how to navigate the material.

The main target groups of the training material and curricula tool are both new and experienced members of 1) research integrity advisory boards, committees handling allegations or working with research integrity policy development, research integrity officers and advisors, research integrity ombudspersons (RIOs), and 2) research ethics committees including their members and their secretariats (RECs) and 3) experts and officers in EU-bodies.

The aim of the material is to provide training materials for these target groups, which mainly lack training resources tailored to their needs. The material can be used with the help of a facilitator to maximize interaction and feedback, but it can also be used independently for competence development.

The contents of the training material are structured according to four main lines of content, namely:

  • research integrity (RI)
  • research ethics (RE)
  • overlapping issues
  • developing infrastructures

Within each main theme, a number of sub-themes are included (vertical menu at the left-hand side).

The theme of research integrity includes:

  • Research integrity boards and codes of conducts
  • Research integrity principles
  • Violations of research integrity
  • Plagiarism
  • Authorship
  • Peer review
  • Dealing with violations and allegations of misconduct
  • Whistleblowing and whistleblower protection
  • Mentoring for stronger cultures of integrity.

The theme of research ethics includes:

  • Research ethics committees: main tasks and challenges
  • Core principles of research ethics
  • Research involving vulnerable groups
  • Research in emergency situations
  • Biobanks
  • Specific aspects of clinical drug trials
  • Ethics review in non-medical fields.

The theme of overlapping issues includes:

  • Conflict of interest
  • Data protection
  • Social responsibility
  • Open science
  • Mentoring for stronger cultures of integrity.

The theme of developing infrastructures collects components of an infrastructure and provides guidance in what to take into consideration when introducing elements into an emerging system in research integrity and ethics. It provides suggestions on how countries, regions or institutions that wish to develop their integrity and ethics infrastructures can approach the topic in question. For instance, what is required for setting up ethics review in non-medical fields, or how to create a system for ethics support /ombud persons.

Each sub-theme includes the following information (vertical menu at the top of the page):

  • Learning objectives and introduction
    • The section on learning objectives aims to pinpoint for the user what the intended learning is focused on thus providing an overview of what is important to understand with each topic. The topic is also briefly introduced to the reader within this section.
  • Key issues
  • Regulations and guidelines
    • The section on regulations and guidelines collects information on regulatory frameworks, codes of conduct and other documents that may be helpful in terms of stating what regulations may be necessary to follow, or which guidelines outline desired practices and behaviors. As regulations and guidelines may vary according to countries, institutions and fields, the intention has been to keep the content in this section at a sufficiently broad level that can be considered to be relevant for all experts irrespective of their particular institutional or field-specific context.
  • Cases & Questions
    • The section called “Cases & Questions” provides the user the opportunity to test or demonstrate his or her competence on the topic in question. This section can be used either as a portfolio for documenting competence and reflection, or for evaluation of competence. On an expert-level, core issues are complex, and therefore the choice has been to include open-ended rather than multiple choice questions. The user may wish to engage with all cases or simply choose those that are most relevant.
  • Resources
    • This section provides some additional references that may be of interest for target group users.

The table shows where relevant information regarding Horizon 2020 guidance/How to complete your ethics self-assessment-material guidance is found on the ENERI Training Materials site. In addition, there are navigating links to Horizon 2020 guidance from each Subtheme mentioned in the table on the ENERI training materials website.

 

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The training resources have been produced by the following contributors: Erika Löfström, Eugenijus Gefenas, Asta Čekanauskaitė, Vilma Lukaševičienė, Simo Kyllönen, Hannele Pitkänen and Solveig Cornér. The resource uses texts from the ENERI Manual written by Bart Penders, David Shaw, Peter Lutz, David Townend, Lloyd Akrong, and Olga Zvonareva.