Rescuing Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) Education

Abstract

Responsible conduct of research (RCR) education requirements, resources, and research have proliferated over the past twenty years, but evidence and experience highlight shortcomings in many domains: goals, audience, content, teaching tools, use of the Internet for instruction, instructors, allocation of responsibility for education, education requirements, and sources of funding. Revised approaches and suggested roles and responsibilities are proposed to meet these challenges. The unifying theme for these recommendations is to shift the focus from RCR education to RCR culture building.

Keywords:

• education
• effectiveness
• evaluation
• RCR
• research ethics
• research misconduct
• responsible conduct of research

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Philip Langlais (Old Dominion University) and Dena Plemmons (U.C. San Diego) are thanked for their thoughtful review of this manuscript and many helpful suggestions. This work was partially supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Grant 1135358, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Grant UL1TR000100. The content and opinions are solely the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the official views of the NSF or NIH.