The following four objectives were reached during the project duration:
Sharing experiences through communication and exchange (OBJECTIVE 1)
ENERI brought research ethics and research integrity experts and stakeholders at various workshops together and gave them the opportunity for communication, exchange, and sharing of experiences. A milestone was the joint RE and RI policy group meeting in Prague (March 2019). Furthermore, ENERI connected not only RE/RI experts and stakeholders, but also the different RE and RI SwafS projects. This was an important step within ENERI's work since there are many different SwafS projects in both fields that follow similar objectives and could very much profit from an exchange of plans, experiences, and results. The third path ENERI followed to foster communication and exchange was the participation of members of the ENERI consortium at RE and RI events throughout Europe.
Improving competence: training and capacity building (OBJECTIVE 2)
Research on existing training material for REC and RIO members was already conducted in the first reporting period. In the second reporting period, training materials were tested in two bootcamps. Finally, training materials and tools for capacity building were published as the “ENERI classroom” – a training material website (
https://eneri.it.helsinki.fi/(si apre in una nuova finestra)).
In addition, ENERI continued its work on the RE and RI Manual (
http://eneri.eu/reri-manual/(si apre in una nuova finestra)) a living document that helps the RE and RI community to find the most important conceptual, practical and procedural issues in RE and RI and ways to handle them. For researchers or persons who need to review research projects and want to find ethical questions and answers quickly the ENERI partners developed a further tool, the ENERI decision tree (
http://eneri.eu/decision-tree/(si apre in una nuova finestra)).
Ensuring awareness: indicators of effectiveness and certification (OBJECTIVE 3)
Research on expertise in research ethics and research integrity was conducted by work package 6 through a comprehensive empirical programme. The first step of the programme was directed at the completion of 1) a literature review and desktop research followed by 2) a qualitative interview study with a number of various RE/RI experts. The next phase of the programme constituted 3) a quantitative survey that targets a variety of actors, stakeholders, and organisations. 4) The last part of the empirical programme comprised a series of consensus conferences across four European cities with the aim to include potential database users and laypeople to discuss and validate existing findings on required expert qualifications and certifications for the EU level RE/RI expert database and e-Community. The results are available here:
http://eneri.eu/criteria-for-expertise-in-reri/(si apre in una nuova finestra)Enhancing interaction: harmonisation and synergies (OBJECTIVE 4)
ENERI followed different paths to enhance interaction between RE and RI experts. Most important was the launch of the ENERI e-Community (February 2019). This database has been set up in SINAPSE (a free public service of the European Commission) and offers registered RE and RI experts a useful toolbox. The e-Community simplifies building strong network ties among its members and is a space for discussion and exchange, sharing of information, documents, and links, exchange of training material and cases.
Besides the work on the e-Community, the ENERI partners met OBJECTIVE 4 also by developing the RI handbook, the RE and RI Manual and the decision tree. The RI handbook (
http://eneri.eu/ri-handbook/(si apre in una nuova finestra)) is a kind of consensus document although representing different views on different topics reflecting a diversified European picture when it comes to experiences and lessons learned. It is the presumption that such recommendations will be especially important for countries who, for different reasons, are struggling with setting up a uniform and robust system for dealing with research misconduct or integrity but hopefully it will also serve as a basis for discussions and considerations in countries with established RI structures be it on a local and/or national level. The RE and RI Manual and the decision tree are tools for researchers, REC and RIO members to find appropriate ethical questions and answers quickly.
