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International - Activity
Commission Makes Recommendations to Safeguard Good Scientific Practice
Volume 6, No. 3, June 1998
An international commission established by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
(DFG), the major research funding agency in Germany, has made 16
recommendations aimed at safeguarding good scientific practice in
Germany.
Besides universities and independent research institutes, the 16
recommendations also address learned societies, authors, scientific
journals, proposal reviewers, and research funding agencies. The
commission recommended that universities and institutes be required
to implement the following recommendations to be eligible for funding:
- Formulate
rules of good scientific practice that will be binding on all
their members and be incorporated into the education of young
scientists. The rules of good scientific practice covers the fundamentals
of scientific work--observing professional standards, documenting
results, questioning one's findings, strict honesty in acknowledging
the contributions of others, cooperation and leadership in working
groups, mentoring, data management, and authorship.
- Provide
an adequate organizational structure for conducting research that
considers the size of each scientific unit and clearly allocates
responsibilities for direction, supervision, conflict resolution,
and quality assurance. The effectiveness of the organizational
structure must be verifiable.
- Develop
standards for mentorship that must be followed by heads of scientific
units.
- Appoint
an independent mediator to whom their members may turn in conflict
situations, including cases of suspected scientific misconduct.
- Base
performance evaluation primarily on originality and quality, secondarily
on quantity.
- Require
primary data reported in publications to be securely stored for
10 years in a durable form in the institution of their origin.
The disappearance of primary data justifies a prima facie assumption
of dishonesty or gross negligence.
- Establish
procedures for dealing with allegations of scientific misconduct.
The commission further recommended that learned societies publish
principles of good scientific practice for their disciplines that
are binding on their members. The commission declared that authors
of scientific publication are always jointly responsible for their
content, scientific journals should enunciate authorship guidelines,
reviewers of proposals should be required to respect confidentiality
and to disclose conflicts of interest, and research funding agencies
should issue clear guidelines on their requirements for information
to be provided in research proposals on the proposers' previous
work and other work and information relevant to the proposal.
The DFG Senate has instructed the DFG staff to formulate a plan
to implement the recommendations. However, the fate of the recommendations
may be more discernible following the General Assembly meeting in
mid-June.
Meanwhile, a university and a medical school have already issued
codes of practice that include rules for handling allegations of
scientific misconduct. Another university has appointed an ombudsman.
The German Rectors Conference, an organization similar to the Association
of American Universities, is developing a standard set of procedures
for responding to misconduct allegations. The full text of the commission
report is available in English on the DFG home page at http://www.dfg.de/aktuell/download/self_regulation.htm.
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