Research Ethics and Integrity trainings for doctoral students in France: a national overview

Abstract

In France, the ministerial decree on doctoral studies issued in 2016 stipulates that "doctoral schools must ensure that each doctoral student receives training in research ethics and research integrity". More than three years later, it has seemed relevant to draw up a sufficiently exhaustive map of research ethics and research integrity trainings and specific programs, in order to better identify and improve them. To this end, a working group involving members of the French network of research integrity officers and of the French doctoral schools network, together with the French office for research integrity has designed an online survey that was sent to all the French higher education and research institutions, research integrity officers, and doctoral schools in late 2019. 109 responses were collected at the end of January 2020. For this presentation to an international audience, we have chosen to limit the sample analysis to the 51 universities having completed the survey. As a main result, the survey shows that 94% of the 51 responding universities have implemented research ethics and research integrity training initiatives, which confirms that these educational programs are now widely deployed. There are various teaching approaches and modes of delivery including lectures (73%), small group seminars (52%), local online trainings / massive online open courses (50%) and practical workshops (42%). In addition, the survey highlights the contents addressed during these training sessions. Topics such as best and bad research practices, authorship and links / conflicts of interest are dealt with in more than 75% of the 48 universities providing trainings, while topics such as alert procedures, peer review practices and research responsibility issues are less frequently focused on.

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