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This month, ORP is highlighting available Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) education and mentoring tools. This week focuses on what is responsible conduct of research and why it is important to the research enterprise.

Research Integrity v. Responsible Conduct of Research

In January, ORP News did a series on Research Integrity and SIUE’s Research and Academic Misconduct Policy 1Q5. Responsible conduct of research (RCR) is defined as the practice of scientific investigation with integrity. One way to think about it is that responsible conduct of research is an educational program that helps foster research integrity.

 Responsible conduct of research educational and mentoring tools can:

• help promote good research practice
• help foster a scientific environment of research integrity
• help promote shared values across disciplines on a campus
• help increase knowledge on ethical issues in researchers’ disciplines
• empower researchers to hold themselves and others accountable to high ethical standards
• discourage and prevent unethical conduct
• and more

 To see a full list of all the ways RCR training can help and the goals of RCR education, check out the NIH’s website here.

 The NIH states, “responsible conduct of research (RCR) is essential to good science” and helps preserve integrity in research.

 Next week, ORP will highlight the mentoring tools available to faculty researchers who have graduate and undergraduate students working on a project. The tools used in RCR training vary and include videos, presentations, case studies, and interactive movies. These tools cover many different areas of research such as peer review, the importance of reproducibility, conflicts of interest, data management, laboratory interactions and more.