Research Ethics Requirement
Requirements
All Ph.D. students in the Graduate School must receive at least three hours of Research Ethics training in order to graduate. In addition, according to federal policy, students funded by, or working on projects funded by, federal research sponsors such as the NSF and the NIH must complete eight hours of in-person research ethics training.
Workshop Offerings
The Graduate School and the Notre Dame Office of Research collaborate to offer a one-day Research Ethics workshop for graduate students and post-docs. This is offered each January, usually on the Monday just prior to the start of Spring classes. This workshop fulfills both the Graduate School’s three-hour ethics training requirement for graduation (Ph.D. only) as well as the eight-hour Responsible Conduct of Research federal sponsor requirement.
Workshop sessions cover various aspects of responsibilities and ethics in the conduct of research, such as recognizing and approaching ethical problems, mentoring, conflicts of interest and commitment, avoiding plagiarism, intellectual property, research misconduct, human subject research, and animal research and lab safety.
For humanities and some qualitative social science students only, the Graduate School also offers a three hour research integrity workshop on the same day to fulfill only the internal graduation requirement.
The workshop date for 2019 as well as complete schedule and registration information will be provided later in the fall semester.
Workshop Alternatives
All doctoral students in any STEM field should plan on attending the eight hour January Research Ethics workshop in their first year. In addition, federal policy requires students to repeat the training after four years, or after advancing to a post-doc.
For those doctoral students who did not attend the workshop in their first year, you may still do so in subsequent years.
You may also petition to have prior research ethics training count towards your internal graduation requirement, or to have an alternative research ethics training count towards these requirements. Students wishing to attend an alternate event (one other than the Graduate School’s annual ethics workshop at the start of the spring semester) must first request an exemption PRIOR TO attending that alternate event from Associate Dean for Academic Affairs John Lubker.
If you have questions concerning the misconduct policy or need to report an incident of research misconduct, please contact Notre Dame Research Compliance at compliance@nd.edu or (574) 631-1389.