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Being a scientist is complicated. You must deal with responsibilities towards your colleagues, your profession, science in general and society. And on top of that, you must perform state of the art research providing thrilling results and new insights for the life sciences. Everyone knows that one should not cheat in science, but still it happens. Why?

This course will help you to remain a good citizen in science. The main aspects of responsible conduct of research will be discussed in short by examples taken from the life sciences. Tools will be provided to withstand the seductions and challenges put on you by supervisors, “the system” and your own ambitions. In this course, we will also discuss daily life experiences in research practice which will help you to responsibly manoeuvre through the grey areas of science. 

• Year 1: 3 hours in person meeting consisting of an introductory lecture, outbreak groups and a plenary feedback session. This meeting introduces you to the main aspects of RCR and provides you with several resources and tools to be a responsible researcher.

• Year 2: E-module "Integrity in academic publication: authorship and peer review" + 1 hour in person plenary feedback session.

• Year 3: E-module “Responsible research through supervision, mentoring and working together” + 1 hour in person plenary feedback session.

• Year 4: 3 hours in person meeting consisting of an introductory lecture, outbreak groups and a plenary feedback session. This meeting prepares you for your next steps in science, and will focus on responsible writing of grants, collaboration and mentoring.

E-modules

• "Integrity in academic publication: authorship and peer review"  
  This e-module will focus on how to be or become a good author and fair reviewer. Our aim is to stimulate you to become aware of relevant issues in your academic publishing practice and ways to approach them. The three learning units are as follows:  
  1) Authorship – who qualifies, order, publication strategy.  
  2) Academic publishing – FFP and retraction, predatory journals, dilemmas and grey areas. 
  3) Reviewing – peer review types, a constructive review. 

• “Responsible Research through supervision, mentoring and working together” This e-module will learn you how and why supervision, mentoring, and collaboration are key ingredients to support responsible conduct in research (RCR). The five learning units are as follows:  
  1) introduction to RCR – history, present and future of RCR.  
  2) Expectations and responsibilities in supervision and mentoring – styles of supervision and mentoring, power relations and RCR, mutual expectations.  
  3) Culture, colleagues and communication – communication on RCR in your research practice.  
  4) Collaboration outside the research team – conflicts of interest, competing responsibility, IP.  
  5) Learning to take responsibilities and its boundaries – conversation with your supervisor/mentor. 

• “Data in responsible conduct of research”  
  This e-module will present the following learning units:  
  1) RCR and data in research.  
  2) Data collections & handling.  
  3) Data analysis.  
  4) Data storage & management.
  5) Open science and intellectual property.

“Supervising MSc Students: Starter Kit” is a course for PhD candidates that have no or little experience with supervision. This basic course can be followed shortly before you start with supervision of students or during the first months of supervising your first student. A detailed course description can be found at the course descriptions page. 

“Supervising Research of MSc Students” is a course for PhD candidates that have at least a couple of months experience with supervising a student. It is a requirement that you are supervising a MSc student during the period of the course. A detailed course description can be found at the course descriptions page. 

Does the “Starter Kit” course fit you best at this moment, but would you like to go more in depth after finishing that course? You are more than welcome to follow “Supervising Research of MSc Students” as well. It is best to follow this course 6 months or more after you followed the “Starter Kit” course, but it is possible starting from at least 3 months after, and only if you supervise new students. There is no point in following both courses at the same time, because you could experience some overlap.

Please note that the follow-up course is not compulsory when you have followed the Starter Kit course. 

If you would like advice on which course to follow, please send an e-mail to pcc@uu.nl.