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DCU participating in €2.8m project to build a Research Ethics and Integrity Framework

DCU participating in €2.8m project to build a Research Ethics and Integrity Framework

Dublin City University along with 13 scientific institutions throughout Europe will participate in a €2.8m project aimed at building a Research Ethics and Integrity Framework for all non-medical research. The project is being funded by The European Commission and will run for three years.

The PRO-RES project, coordinated by the European Science Foundation (ESF), France, aims to build the framework in cooperation with a full range of stakeholders, and will draw upon previous foundational work funded by the European Commission, and other national and international agencies. This framework aims to become for non-medical sciences what the Oviedo and Helsinki frameworks are for biomedical sciences.

DCU, which has contributed to scholarships on research ethics and integrity for several years and are participating in the project will be developing the part of the framework that addresses research ethics in disasters and conflict zones.

Associate Professor Dónal O’Mathúna, who led a previous EU-funded COST Action on Disaster Bioethics, will be leading DCU’s involvement in PRO-RES.

Dr O’Mathúna stated:

“This is an exciting opportunity to impact the development of a research ethics framework that both helps researchers address ethical issues and promotes research that is ethical and beneficial to society.”

The inclusion of key policy making groups from the beginning of the project is a major strategic aim of PRO-RES. The project partners are gearing up to identify and contact such groups in order to involve them in forming the framework. Policymakers, researchers and civil society will see that by influencing the direction of the PRO-RES project, they will contribute to a framework that practically assists with providing trustworthy evidence that will benefit society. Their aim is to provide effective policymaking that benefits society, communities, and individuals based on ethical, rigorous, and useable research.

Dr Jean-Claude Worms, Chief Executive of ESF and coordinator of PRO-RES said:

“The key issue for PRO-RES is to be as inclusive as possible when targeting the ‘non-medical’ sciences. The consortium partner composition is very diverse by design, ensuring that all relevant communities, to the extent possible, are represented.”

Decision-makers and policymakers seek evidence to support their work and sound, reliable and transparent research, divorced from political ideology and undeclared vested interests, produces robust evidence to benefit social wellbeing and societal progress.

Dr Ron Iphofen, initiator of the PRO-RES idea said:

“Those of us who have been working in this field for many years have been eagerly awaiting such an opportunity. This ‘Science With and For Society’ funding targets the very people we need to reach to ensure that pleas for integrity in science and research are more than mere tokens. Ethical values, principles and standards need to pervade the research process from start to finish – they need to be part of the ‘culture’ of research and science policy must recognise that need and the most effective way to support it.”

PRO-RES will seek to incorporate the best practice findings in currently funded research and liaise with concurrent project leaders. Many international organisations have continued to review and update their ethical codes over many years and PRO-RES will take account of those developments.

Dr Emmanouil Detsis, ESF, deputy coordinator of PRO-RES said:

“The PRO-RES framework will not seek to ‘reinvent the wheel’ since many excellent codes, guidelines and frameworks already exist. Our main tasks will be to gather all relevant work, consult with the right stakeholders, extract the common threads and synthesize it into a coherent and easy to understand whole,”