SUMMER 2017

Summer time implies a wealth of, sun, flowering plants, holidays. It is like the wealth of science we have nowadays. Society profits a lot of science, but, unfortunately, we observe frequently as well misconduct in research. Fortunately, we see emerging a worldwide collaboration to guarantee the reproducibility of scientific studies, the research integrity. In addition, the European Commission is establishing more and more European research infrastructures to provide scientists the proper tools to conduct reproducible, high quality, research. You will read here the involvement of DRS in both international initiatives.

FIFTH WORLD CONFERENCE ON RESEARCH INTEGRITY, AMSTERDAM.

DRS attended the conference like the other 800 participants from all over the world. They represented all kinds of institutions and companies: universities, hospitals, publishers, funders, governments, consultants, industry.

I was impressed by both, the diversity of the participants and the variety of topics addressed. I noticed that the profit sector is well ahead of academia with respect to assuring the reproducibility of research. It is pivotal for their business. In contrast, academia tends to be more open to share (meta)data.

Sharing data may become an essential component in assuring research integrity if we look at the success of PubPeer. This online platform enables review of scientific publications by the worldwide scientific community identifying weaknesses in published research. Extending this concept to the pre-publishing stage, and especially the review of (meta)data, would be a promising approach to detecting research misconduct on time. If so, the worldwide community is used to review a study rather than the few reviewers in the current publishing process. It would not increase the number of reviewers looking critically at a study only, it also may accelerate the publishing process.

I felt the general approach of institutions to research integrity is the employment of a research integrity officer in combination with providing courses and training to researchers specifically designed for the topic. The moral dimension receives in this approach quite a lot of attention. Some philosophers, however, indicated the importance of other dimensions of research integrity. So, we cannot focus on the moral compass only as, for example, the Dutch Minister of Education and Science suggested. We need to take into account the complexity of nowadays science and innovation involving many stakeholders and interests.

Many studies of research on research integrity were presented at the conference. Results were reported with respect to, the abundance of research misconduct, detecting misconduct using statistics, and the effectiveness of interventions. DRS presented by way of a poster a case study of detecting misconduct. We are grateful to Lucas Frantzen designing the poster.

View the full poster by clicking on the image.

INTERNATIONAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATION EUPLANTCROPP

DRS took the lead in the foundation of the association EUPLANTCROPP. The objective of it is setting up and safeguarding a European research infrastructure to facilitate the development of sustainable crop protection on the basis of natural substances.

EUPLANTCROPP aims to achieve this objective by way of:

  1. developing certified research proposals;
  2. setting high-quality standards and protocols;
  3. accrediting research locations with excellent research facilities on the basis of these standards and protocols;
  4. initiating research projects on the basis of certified protocols at accredited research locations; and
  5. managing data which results from the aforementioned projects on the basis of the FAIR principle.

The founding of the Association was formalised at the notary in Leiden on the 25th of July.

View the video on Vimeo.

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EUPLANTCROPP research integrity