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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PRO-RES (PROmoting integrity in the use of RESearch results)

Teaser

Summary

PRO-RES is a European Commission-funded project that aims at:
PROmoting ethics and integrity in non-medical RESearch â€“ from ideas to outcomes

MAIN GOAL: With the aid of a full range of stakeholders, to devise and build a supported guidance framework for all non-medical sciences and humanities disciplines adopting social science methodologies. The framework will meet the highest standards of research ethics and scientific integrity and be comprehensive, covering the full range of issues and concerns â€“ such as dealing with innovative technologies and the novel research possibilities of big data, the challenges of social media research and balancing public interest concerns with cherished rights to privacy. It will be of practical help in guiding interested parties to ways of achieving reliable and trustworthy research. The targeted stakeholders include researchers, reviewers, regulators, research managers and policymakers and, not least, a representative range of research subjects/participants. It will not duplicate existing work â€“ merely guide stakeholders in the direction of established existing good practices.

WHY IS SUCH A PROJECT NECESSARY? Trying to behave ethically and with integrity when conducting research can prove to be complicated given the wide range of codes, guidelines and frameworks. Regulations are diverse and inconsistent, and review practices vary considerably â€“ between countries, institutions, disciplines and professions. As multinational and interdisciplinary research grow, it is vital that the confusion arising out of such disparate approaches should be reduced as far as possible.

THE FOCUS: Decision takers and policymakers should be seeking evidence to support their work from the range of expertise on offer. Although the concept of â€˜expertiseâ€™ has come under significant challenge it is clear that any errors, fraud or corrupt practices by researchers can lead to serious damage to the social, economic and cultural structure of society, as well as impacting the physical environment. But sound, reliable, transparent research, not driven by ideology or subservient to it and undeclared vested interests, produces robust evidence that can benefit social wellbeing and societal progress. It is in the interests of the scientific community to ensure the evidence produced is reliable and trustworthy and ethically generated. It is in the interests of those who make policy to be able to assure the decision takers (and the general public) that evidence has been generated in the best possible way.

Work performed

The project performed several actions, in order to build the necessary materials and consult a large number of stakeholders, in the aim to build the PRO-RES framework (The Accord).

The project initially gathered information on existing codes and guidelines, and mapped several relevant stakeholders, as an initiation attempt to create a pool of organisations and individuals that could be invited to project events. The stakeholder list is always updated and we are glad to note the interest of people to participate.
The core scientific work of the project, the framework, resides at http://prores-project.eu . The initial design of the framework (logical steps, which â€˜boxesâ€™, need to be present etc), were designed in this period. During the first reporting period, AcSS produced first the framework foundations (D3.1) and then the draft framework (D3.2). The framework is constantly being developed.

The project has also liaised with several national agencies, in order to see \'what works in practice\'. The efforts thus far were mostly concentrated on establishing contacts with the respective agencies and identifying the persons and method of engagement. The outlines for each case can be seen in the individual â€˜national test case studiesâ€™, D4.1-D4.4. These are in early draft/outline form since the framework needs to mature a bit more before the engagement.

The project has conducted several interviews with experts on nanotechnology, aiming at compiling a list of â€˜future topicsâ€™, as input to the discussion and framework. Thus far, the interviews have been mostly of researchers and mostly from the nanotechnology area but this is changing.
We have also investigate how cultures of high standards of integrity and ethics in research (and research results usage) can be promoted and maintained by governing bodies and how adherence to explicit standards of ethics and integrity in research can be supported, monitored and managed, and breaches minimised. We have reported on Rebuilding Trust of research institutions.

There has been several communication related tasks
a) Creation of supporting materials, like leaflet and posters (D7.3), completed
b) WP related preparatory work (D7.2) (planning etc)
c) PRO-RES website design and construction, which was the bulk of the work.
d) Partners communication of the PRO-RES project to various stakeholders.

Final results

Impact achieved thus far:
access to a dedicated framework for a wide range of researchers in non-medical fields globally (still in draft but elements can be glimpsed)
better links and networks across ethics specialists across Europe/globally via the virtual platform
access to support resources such as cases, checklists and a network of research ethics advisors
direct links to other, targeted sources of advice and guidance (e.g. on social media research)
access to institutional research ethics review not â€˜formallyâ€™ available to some researchers

Call identified impact status
1. Promote a more responsible and effective use of scientific information ---> We have engaged with ~1000 stakeholders and promoted the issue of ethics in research

the rest of the impact lines need to be visited at the end of the project