The National Institutes of Health (NIH) require that recipients of the following award types complete a research ethics training requirement:
- Institutional Research Training Grants
- Individual Fellowship Awards
- Career Development Awards
- Research Education Grants
- Dissertation Research Grants
- Certain other programs with a training requirement
Applicants to these programs must complete the University’s basic RCR Core Course in the RCR Core Training. This can be completed online through the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI).
Applicants must also seek opportunities for formal and informal training that is in-person, ongoing, relevant to their own disciplines and appropriate to their career stage. Applicants are required to provide detailed descriptions of these activities as part of their applications for funding and reports.
Guidance on Writing Training Descriptions
Use this suggested wording to describe the University of Minnesota RCR training on applications for training-related funding from NIH. Applicants must also include detailed descriptions of eight hours per year of in-person college-, department-, or discipline-specific responsible conduct of research instruction that they have participated in.
All members of the University of Minnesota community are expected to exemplify the highest standards of integrity and ethics. Per Board of Regents policy: Submitting and Accepting Sponsored Projects” Subd. 2(c) “…Principal Investigators (PI) must complete training required by Sponsor and the University”. Per Administrative Policy: Education in the Responsible Conduct of Sponsored Research and Grants Management “Faculty, staff, and students who serve in various capacities on research and scholarship projects are required to complete training that is appropriate for the role they will serve on the project and meets sponsor regulations. Sponsor regulations, University policies, and the supervisors of staff and students will determine the appropriate level of training”. The University of Minnesota requires all individuals supported by NIH training related funding to take Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) Core training.
The RCR Core training is an online course that includes the following:
- Introduction: principles, professional and fiscal responsibilities, dealing with misconduct, mentoring
- Planning: research with human participants, conflicts of interest, workplace safety
- Conducting: data collection, sharing and interpretation
- Reporting: plagiarism, authorship, peer review
- Responsibility to the public and society
Per NIH RCR training related requirements, in addition to the RCR Core, I have had or will participate in the following in-person training (prior to the end of the project year).