INTEGRIDADE NA INVESTIGAÇÃO

Informação recebida do Ministério da Ciência, Tecnologia e Ensino Superior

ESF World Conferences
ESF-ORI First World Conference on

RESEARCH INTEGRITY: FOSTERING RESPONSIBLE RESEARCH

A Portuguese European Union Presidency and European Commission Event Initiated and Organized by the European Science Foundation & the US Office of Research Integrity Conference Information

The European Science Foundation (ESF) and the US Department of Health and Human Services Office of Research Integrity (ORI) are organising a World Conference on Research Integrity in Lisbon, Portugal to take place on 16 to 19 September 2007 at the premises of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

The Research Integrity World Conference is supported by the European Commission and hosted by the Portuguese Ministry for Science, Technology and Higher Education (MCTES), through the Portuguese Foundation for Science (FCT) and the Gabinete de Relações Internacionais da Ciência e do Ensino Superior (GRICES) in collaboration with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (FCG), as part of the forthcoming EU Portuguese Presidency.

The ESF and ORI are working together as co-organisers for this event, in partnership with the International Council of Science (ICSU) and NATO and with additional financial support from the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), the UK Research Integrity Office and the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). The support from ICSU and NATO will be in the form of travel grants for some attendees from non-OECD countries and observer countries and from the NATO Partner Countries and Mediterranean Dialogue Countries respectively. There will also be some limited support available for younger researchers to attend.

There is a close link between the Conference and its Planning Committee with the parallel and linked activity of the OECD Global Science Forum on Research Misconduct. It is anticipated that many of the Global Science Forum participants will also take an active part in the Lisbon event and the draft report from this activity will be one of the inputs to the meeting.

Research Integrity has emerged in recent years as a critical topic in policy research and has gained significant political and public attention worldwide. To further world dialogue on this topic, the World Conference will focus attention on systemic and institutional issues, including organizational, governance and legal issues. A parallel activity by the OECD Global Science Forum (GSF) is studying governmental responses to the issue of research misconduct.

Research regulations and commonly accepted research practices vary significantly from country to country and among professional organisations. There is no common definition world-wide for research misconduct, conflict of interest or plagiarism. Even where there is general agreement on key elements of research behaviour, such as the need to restrict authorship to individuals who make substantive contributions to the research or to provide protection for research subjects, the policies that implement this agreement can vary widely from country to country and organization to organization. The research community worldwide has to address these problems in order to retain public confidence and to establish a clear best practice frameworks at an international level. It must do so at a time when there are increased pressures on governments, research institutions and research groups to deliver results against increasingly short timeframes, to which funding is coupled. The September 2007 Conference represents an initial effort to begin discussing and to establish a framework for continued discussion of research integrity on a global level.

The World Conference on Research Integrity is the first global forum convened to provide researchers, research administrators, research sponsors, journal editors, representatives from professional societies, policymakers, and others an opportunity to discuss strategies for harmonizing research misconduct policies and fostering responsible conduct in research.

The conference will take place in the presence of Professor José-Mariano Gago, Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education, Portugal, and Janez Potočnik, European Commissioner for Research.