Tools for good research practice

The interactive film titled The Lab, which was made by the U.S. Office of Research Integrity, presents an exciting drama in which you can choose to be one of the people involved and then try different ways of handling the situation that occurs in the lab. A great tool for teaching and self-reflection.

At Uppsala University Ouriginal (formerly Urkund) is used as plagiarism checker. For more information about plagiarism, see the URKUND Plagiarism Handbook (pdf).

For those who are considering reporting research misconduct, there is a classic step-by-step guide by C.K. Gunsalus, with the appropriate title How to Blow the Whistle and Still Have a Career Afterwards.

The basis for considerations of good research practice at Uppsala University is The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity, the foremost guideline for good practice in research, as well as the EU-supported Global Code of Conduct for Research in Resource-Poor Settings, which aims to counteract so-called “ethics dumping” – i.e. to lower ethical requirements when conducting research in other countries. These codes are mandatory for research receiving funding support within EU programs.

In Sweden, VR has compiled Good Research Practice, which discusses how the relevant laws and ethical requirements and recommendations apply to research work. The purpose is to orient, inspire reflection and contribute to discussion about responsibilities and challenges so that researchers and doctoral students can more easily make well-reasoned decisions on research ethics.

Many resources are collected on the European platform The embassy of good science.

What are the actual implications for research of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation? Here is some guidance to the most important aspects:

• The Swedish Data Protection Authority: The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (in Swedish)
• Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions: The General Data Protection Regulation, GDPR (in Swedish)
• Uppsala University: The General Data Protection Regulation – how it works
  

Keep in mind that the principle of public access to official documents applies to research conducted by society, municipalities, county councils and the central government. This means that the data collected in the research may be requested for public release (Freedom of the Press Act – 1949:105). Certainly privacy prevails in medical, behavioural and social sciences, but that does not prevent the public from having access to these data. For example, reviewers for journals or for a defence of a thesis, people assigned to investigate misconduct or other researchers who want to use the material for additional research may be authorised to do so.

In a precedent-setting decision, the Central Ethical Review Board stated that information to participants should include a statement like this: “Your responses and your results will be processed so that no unauthorised persons can access them.” Source: Central Ethical Review Board decision, registration number Ö 5-2004.)

Encoded personal data is not the same as data that is anonymised. References to encoded data as anonymous, anonymised or de-identified should not be used if you do not intend to say that the code is destroyed and that identification is no longer possible.

The Swedish Data Inspection Board states the following about personal data:
“All information that directly or indirectly can be attributed to an individual is personal data. This means encoded data is subject to the law as long as a code key is preserved that can be used to identify specific individuals. Where and with whom the key is stored is irrelevant.” (Source: Data Inspection Board’s decision 03/07/2015, reference number 580-2014 (pdf, in Swedish) and 559-2014 (pdf, in Swedish).

Patient data in health and medical care is especially sensitive and thereby subject to privacy. The Swedish Patient Data Act does not allow you direct access to patient data to search for suitable patients for your research. Before patient data may be disclosed to another individual, the health care provider needs to conduct a confidentiality assessment; electronic direct access to patient data can then be provided only to those who work with the health care provider or who are allowed to have such access to the data according to the Swedish Patient Data Act. Source: Data Inspection Board’s decision 24/05/2018, reference number 2495-2017 (pdf, in Swedish).

Some other aspects:

• Obtaining consent for research
  See guidelines of the World Health Organisation (WHO) for obtaining consent for research:
  The Process of Obtaining Informed Consent (pdf)
• Anonymisation
  Do you need to ensure that personal data is made anonymous or that tables do not disclose information? Here are two guides that describe what you might consider: 18 identifying data elements for de-identification (NIH) and Statistical Disclosure Control (pdf, in Swedish) (SCB)
• Using personal data in degree projects
  Halmstad University has developed a clear step-by-step guide for the collection of personal data for degree projects
• Register research – important.

Ethical Research Involving Children offers guidance and support to ensure that children's dignity is respected in all types of research.

Communicating knowledge that enables an increased understanding of the world we live in is a fundamental responsibility for the scientific community, so the research findings developed at Uppsala University is of course valuable to citizens and decision-makers. When researchers and teachers communicate their findings and knowledge, it is thus important to maintain societal trust and to promote a genuine understanding of sometimes difficult things.

The fundamental ethical principle of research communication - respect - is expressed in the European Code of Integrity for Research. The code mentions respect as fundamental; respect for research participants, but also for colleagues and society - which includes respectful research communication. Research should be communicated responsibly, correctly and transparently, in accordance with the Danish universities' national guidelines for good research communication, which well express good research communication practice.

Regarding questions of who rightfully should be credited as a scientific author, it is important to consider how different concepts of authorship are used in different fields. In many humanities fields, a classic concept of authorship is taken for granted, where the work mainly involves writing and where the researcher is the sole writer. In this case the monograph is the preferred form of publication.

In many social sciences and natural sciences subjects, co-authorship has become increasingly common. A combination of different skills are responsible for reporting the work that has taken place – for example, through observations or experiments. In this case the article is the most common way to disseminate the results.

Thousands of publications have adopted a recommendation for co-authorship from a group of medical journals, known as the Vancouver Group, which defines a co-author as someone who meets the following four criteria:

• Has made a substantial contribution to the research itself, and
• Has provided an important intellectual contribution to the writing of the report, and
• Has accepted the version to be published, and
• In this way has accepted responsibility for the report if questions regarding its accuracy or integrity should arise.

For Uppsala University, this recommendation serves as a starting point for assessing unjustified assertion of co-authorship combined with any instructions from the journal and current practices in the scientific field.

More insights about co-authorship in various disciplines can be had from:

the Project Wicced, National Research Committees of Norway and Taylor & Francis.

Researchers commonly use contributorship as a starting point, especially in large-scale scientific projects. It is common in this case to list all those involved as originators of a report or article, sometimes as a group rather than individuals. The forms such contributorships take normally are worked out through an agreement in the relevant project.

The European Association of Science Editors (EASE) has a checklist for ethics in authorship:
Publication ethics checklist for authors (pdf)

The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) has a guide for how to handle disputes concerning authorship:
How to handle authorship disputes: a guide for new researchers (pdf)

An important strategy for avoiding conflicts concerning authorship is to agree in advance who will participate in a work, what they are to do and how authorship will be handled. Many universities have templates for such agreements.
Uppsala University's template for co-authorship

Uppsala university has a routine for how to state one’s affiliation ( English version at the end of the document ) when publishing

Questions on intellectual property in research are addressed in Guidelines for intellectual assets created at Uppsala university (pdf). See also the University checklist for research agreements.

Clinical Studies Sweden is a collaboration between the Swedish Research Council and Sweden’s healthcare regions. The website presents current initiatives, rules and regulations, and step-by-step guides to conducting clinical studies.

Many different and very useful guidelines/templates for reporting research have been developed, including STROBE, PRISMA and STREGA. Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency Of health Research (EQUATOR) has several templates: reporting guidelines

It is important to avoid fraudulent publications or those of such low quality that publishing in them acts as a demerit. You will find more information about what to keep in mind on the Think Check Submit website. To check whether a journal after review is considered dubious in this way, you can search Cabell’s Journal Blacklist (only accessible via the university's network after login). But it is important to make your own assessment of every journal. A journal being blacklisted is an indication of low quality, but a journal which is not on the list may simply not have been reviewed yet. For an indication whether open access journals are up to scratch you can check if they are in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ).

Should you review the work through peer review?
Ethics of Peer Review has a good guide (pdf) to the issues that you may face.

Open Access is increasingly stressed in research. More information about open access is available on Uppsala University Library's webpage.

The collection and storage of data

• The Swedish National Data Service has guides for how you can best manage various types of data: Data management resources.
• Regarding Data Management Plans the Swedish Research Council has produced a guideline on the central parts that a data management plan should include, which provide support when you produce a data management plan.
  Central parts of a data management plan
• BioBank Sweden has information on research on BioBank samples.
• For questions regarding saving or discarding research materials, see the University’s retention and disposal schedule for research material (pdf, in Swedish).

Accessability and publication of research data

• In The Medarbetarportal there is a section on research data.
• Standards for metadata and databases are collected on Fairsharing.org, which builds on the so-called FAIR principles.
• Recommendations on handling research data is provided by the Research Data Alliance and training and support by the European Open Science Cloud.
• Open access to research data is coordinated by the Swedish Research Council, you can read more on their webpage about open access.
  

EPM writes the following about ethics review and student work at the advanced level:

“Research under the Ethics Review Act does not include such work or studies that are carried out only (our emphasis) within the framework of higher education at the undergraduate or advanced level (bachelor's or master's level).

In order for the exemption from the requirement for ethical review for student work to apply, it is required that it only concerns one part of the education. The work must therefore not "overlap" with a research project and there must be no thought that the work may lead further in a "regular" research project. If you see from the beginning in the planning that you will want to publish the outcome in a scientific journal, it is a clear indication that this is such research that needs to be ethically tested.”

For questions about researchers' reuse of students' work, see the following article in Curie: Important legal case about researchers' use of student work