During the focus groups, eight training-related topics were discussed: goals, timing and frequency, customisation, format and teaching approach, mentoring, compulsoriness, certification and evaluation, and RI-related responsibilities.
Goal
Participants shared equal perspectives about what should be the overall purpose of organising RI education. The whole reason is to prevent—as much as possible—questionable practices and research misconduct within the research environment. However, different viewpoints were expressed about specific sub-goals. On the one hand, some sub-goals focus on increasing awareness on the topic, moral character, and professional virtues. On the other hand, different sub-goals focus more on providing knowledge-related information about rules and norms. However, participants involved in RI-related researches made clear that pursuing both sub-goals is equally important, although they recognised differences regarding the diverse sub-goals. The two different typologies of sub-goals should complement each other in the organisation of a single training program.
I think that teaching virtues should not exclude contents. (researchers on RI/P10)
Ethical behavior-building sub-goals
In some participants' perspectives, RI training should leverage on researchers' reflective and ethical spheres. RI education's primary purpose should be promoting awareness on the topic, reflection, and critical thinking. Different participants indicated different issues-related awareness, starting from creating "awareness in all phases of the research process" (research administrators/P7), until raising awareness about scientists' social responsibility. Social responsibility is not merely helping society in terms of scientific progress, it also ensures good role models for future generations and researchers.
awareness that science is there to help the society…..ensuring good role models for the future of science. (research administrators/P4)
Raising awareness on the topic goes alongside developing some level of self-reflection and self-criticism within researchers' daily practices.
Making scientists more aware is the starting point to what some participants called "cultural change in the scientific community" (research administrators/P3). Therefore, scientists are good researchers not because they are scared to be caught but because they are willing to do good science responsibly.
you are not a good researcher because you are afraid of the negative consequences of cheating. You are a good researcher because you want to do good research. (researchers on RI/P3)
Raising awareness within the scientific community is also connected to focusing on researchers' moral character and professional virtues. For some participants, teaching virtues and how to be morally responsible is considered very difficult. However, in their opinion, acting on one’s moral character should be one of academia's primary purposes—making professional virtues explicit in students' and researchers' everyday working life.
… there should be this reflection process where students can understand the ethical implication of their work. If they learn to understand that, there is a greater chance …..that are underlying everyone's research work in everyone's everyday working life. becoming explicit. (RI trainers/P6)
Some participants also expressed the conviction that teaching rules is pointless if researchers do not follow them. The pressure to publish and the highly competitive environment were underlined as primary reasons to take shortcuts.
…for those (researchers) that transgress the rules, you can think to other ways to train them…..because they maybe already know the rules, but simply they do not care. (RI trainers/P6)
Some participants reflected on the relationship between virtues and vices. Teaching virtues is "very valuable and fruitful," but also bringing up vices can be didactically important. Reflecting on vices is essential to understand what are the main reasons that lead to misconduct or questionable practices. "…probably bad role models, showing what can be the consequences have a bigger impact, and it is very useful" (PhDs and postdoctoral researchers/P5).
Content-building sub-goals
Especially within publishers and trainers, RI education should deliver relevant information about the existing rules, codes, and norms. RI training should provide all relevant knowledge-related information to improve data reliability and quality assurance. RI training has to focus on delivering simple tools just not to make mistakes.
giving tools for dealing with it (misconduct) and not to repeat at least the same error (publishers and peer reviewers /P7)
first of all, you must provide all relevant information, the rules that are currently existing (RI trainers/P4)
Participants expressed the conviction that providing RI training that focuses on virtues and researchers' moral character is unfeasible and unrealistic. In their opinion, it is impossible to "teach these things to people older than 15 years old" (publishers and peer reviewers /P1).
They (researchers) will not become honest people just after a seminar about honesty in research, especially is such a competitive environment. (publishers and peer reviewers /P1)
Timing and frequency
Participants shared the opinion that the moment in which RI education should start is crucial. RI education should commence as soon as possible within academic curricula. Giving first RI-related information at the PhD level is far too late to be relevant. At this stage, RI-related knowledge should already be part of the researchers' background.
depend on when you start putting these courses…….give this (training) to PhD students is rather late (research administrators/P1)
The right moment to give first RI-related information might already be at the bachelor level. For others, at the master level, when students start to have more research-related responsibilities.
you start to work more independently, then you can see that you have to take the step to become more responsible, I mean less a student and more a researcher, there is a kind of transition phase from being very dependent (research administrators/P5)
Especially in training aiming to act on researchers' moral character, having RI education at an early stage is crucial.
We (academia) should teach how to be a virtuous person,…..from 18 to 22 years of age, where the personality is being shaped. (research administrators/P2)
Regarding the frequency of RI training, when they exist, informative sessions of half a day, once in the researchers' career, is considered far away from being enough to promote the right RI environment.
you will not well trained in RI if you do 2-hour training. You can do it like an appetiser (RI trainers/P2)
I think that the application of the training should be continuous (publishers and peer reviewers/P6)
Participants were aware that having RI refreshing sessions is vital to update rules and guidelines and keep high the researchers' level of attention on the topic.
…to remind people that those issues (RI-related issues) exist. (PhDs and postdocs researchers/P1)
Customisation
Participants discussed the customisation issue, looking at it from three different perspectives: scientific discipline, career level, and educational resources.
Scientific disciplines customisation
Participants agreed that RI training should be organised in two different stages. At first, addressing general RI-related issues would benefit most researchers and contextualise the themes depending on specific needs related to specific scientific disciplines in the following sessions.
I can imagine you could do a general introduction to....these are the issues, but you have to quickly get into depth (publishers and peer reviewers/P4)
A general training session is important to give a common RI background to everyone on issues that are equally relevant for all kinds of disciplines. Moreover, it would be important to provide researchers with the possibility to "talk about things (RI-related topics) across disciplines" (administrators/P6) "learn from each other" (researchers on RI/P10). Moreover, participants commented that institutions should rethink how they organise RI education to have more tailored training from the beginning.
How you can contextualise the contents when you have 300 people in a room with different backgrounds. (publishers peer reviewers/P5)
More tailored sessions would be beneficial to give specific discipline-related information. Moreover, the sessions would be essential for linking the RI-related information researchers received during this training to their working life.
I think for us, with a background in law, the training should be slightly different if the topic is, for instance, intellectual property. (PhDs and postdoctoral researchers/P4)
adapting parts and contextualising part of the training to certain disciplines (RI researchers/P5)
Administrators presented the idea to customise RI sessions directly at the research team level. In their opinion, this customisation from the bottom is significant because each team can self-tailor and self-organise their own RI sessions, depending on their current needs.
I think that ideally, you would have this down in the system as much as possible, at the department level, even in a specific research team, to organise their research training, it could be more relevant immediately because they could tailor their own needs (research administrators/P5)
Career level customisation
Participants expressed the idea that RI training should be organised at all career levels regarding the career level customisation. Standard training sessions about RI core topics for all, followed by RI-tailored sessions depending on different career levels and professional roles.
For some participants, having the same set of information across levels will help fill the gap between early-stage researchers' expectations after the training and what they are told from senior colleagues and mentors/supervisors, who might not have proper RI-related knowledge.
I am convinced that our undergraduates are possibly more aware than many of the PIs. (RI trainers/P3)
it may be beneficial to everyone to perceive the same training so that supervisors and senior members of the staff know what the early-stage researchers have been told…..in preventing the changes to have conflicting information (publishers and peer reviewers/P7)
Senior researchers and professors have different responsibilities and needs, and topics such as conflict of interest or mentors' responsibilities might be more enjoyable and appropriate.
Moreover, participants expressed a need to customise specific RI sessions for the academic administrative staff since they might be closely involved in managing research projects from the financial perspective.
I think it is not for researchers, people who manage the research money, most of the time are administrators, and in industries as well, we should teach them ethics. I think it is broader than just the research environment (PhDs and postdoctoral researchers/P5)
Educational resources customisation
Another point of discussion was about the need to have more educational materials tailored for scientific fields other than life sciences. For instance, one participant expressed the wish "to have more resources for theoretical science and more resources like case studies about statistics" (research administrators/P6). Participants highlighted how it is easy to find resources that cover life sciences issues. The reason why other resources are lagging behind life sciences might be because "they (resource developers or researchers) do not see them (disciplines other than life sciences) as impacting humans" (research administrators/P4).
Format and teaching approach
Regarding the training format, the general idea was that the online and the face-to-face formats should complement each other in a blended learning format. Taking advantage of the strengths of both methods means making the training as much effective as possible.
I think online training is effective to reach the largest number of people…., but in-person training can break down people's preconceptions and clarify all those misunderstandings in a better way. (publishers and peer reviewers/P3)
The online format would always have available RI-related information concerning different topics and always have accessible educational resources related to the research process.
I have to collect my data or something else, you could click on the correspondent tool and extract the information you need for that specific stage. (research administrators/P5).
Regarding the face-to-face format, all participants agreed that it should imply an active teaching approach, made by a dynamic interaction between the trainer or lecturer and the audience (e.g. workshops, seminar, small classes or group discussions), rather than passive lectures where lecturers are providing content to a big audience without the possibility to have a real interaction. The face-to-face format would allow trainees to discuss and reflect on specific topics. Moreover, as it was made explicit from one participant, having part of the RI training as an active face-to-face session gives "the feeling that this issue is worth a seminar" (publishers and peer reviewers/P2).
Mentoring
During our focus groups, all participants considered mentors/supervisors' role crucial in training students and young researchers. Mentors/supervisors act as role models. Besides shaping the scientific skills of young researchers, mentors play an essential role in influencing mentees' behaviour and attitude in terms of responsible conduct of research. Mentorship can be considered real training for most participants because it influences researchers' everyday working behaviour.
Junior researchers are easily affected by the way their peers, senior colleagues and supervisors are behaving…..my supervisor does this, why I should not do this also. (researchers on RI/P3)
Moreover, participants expressed that RI training should also target mentors, supervisors, and senior colleagues if institutions want to be efficacious in young researchers' attitudes towards RI.
they (mentors and supervisors) should definitively know what the rules are and help you to deal with those (PhDs and postdoctoral researchers/P2)
Compulsoriness
The majority of the participants agreed that RI education should be proposed as mandatory for all people involved in the research. However, different emphasis on topics has to be given depending on specific needs and trainees' career level. Especially in the early stages, RI education "should be integrated into all levels of education, starting from the bachelor level" (trainers/P6).
Participants within the administrators’ group expressed the idea to make mandatory RI training for all senior staff as a contractual obligation to continue to stay within the academic sector. This contractual obligation will make academia closer to the private sector, where refresher training is proposed as mandatory. From the participants’ perspectives, this contractual obligation would imply basic respect for the profession and the colleagues.
it is not necessarily bad to make a contractual obligation which is the normality for any other job. It is a way of reminding researchers of their responsibilities. (research administrators/P5)
Certification and evaluation
Another suggested idea during the focus groups was to make a certificate available after following a RI training. Having a certification process in place can make RI education more attractive to researchers. Moreover, this "driving license" can contribute to spreading the same basic knowledge on the topic. However, this idea would only be applicable after having worked on harmonising RI education within academia.
before we have this sort of certification in place, maybe it will be very good that all our universities would be equipped with some program (RI trainers/P6)
On the contrary, for some participants, having a RI certificate would not make much sense. Similarly to a driving license, possessing a RI certificate would not have a real effect on people's responsible conduct.
having certificates, sometimes, tend to be a piece of paper on your wall, but it does not say anything about how you do your work (RI trainers/P4)
Another concern was about the evaluation process that should precede the certification. Evaluating the knowledge provided during the training is feasible. A difficult task is to assess if the researchers' behaviour after the training has changed or improved.
a certificate can prove that you have the basics, but it does not guarantee that you are going to be a good scientist (research administrators/P3)
Moreover, using attitude and behaviour as learning outcomes led to criticisms. For some participants, this evaluation system can presuppose that the researchers' behaviour was inappropriate before the training session.
Responsibilities
During our focus group, participants highlighted how the successful organisation of RI education also depends on the university's willingness to provide accessible RI sessions. Without any form of commitment from the top management, it would be impossible to implement RI education.
you need some commitment from the top that means from the top management in your university. You have to have the rector behind you, the vice-rector, if you do not have them behind you in this endeavour then you will not be able to implement much, inside your institution (RI trainers/P6)
Especially from the administrators, it was made clear that institutions are not solely responsible for the RI effort. On the one hand, institutions have the responsibility for providing adequate RI education. On the other hand, single researchers are responsible for following the training and for acting responsibly.