ENRIO meeting
Lisbon

ENRIO meeting Lisbon

The National Council of Ethics for the Life Sciences kindly invited ENRIO to hold their bi-annual Meeting on 02-03 October 2017 in the Portuguese capital Lisbon. The meeting took place at the Portuguese Parliament, which also showed the importance of Research Integrity for Portugal.

Prof. Soares (National Council of Ethics for the Life Sciences) welcomed the ENRIO members on the first day of the meeting. In his welcome speech he contextualized the need of awareness of Research Integrity. Prof. Quintanilha, President of the Parliament Commission for Education and Science, highlighted in his welcome speech the importance of Research Integrity in science.

Nicole Foeger (Chair of ENRIO) welcomed new participants from Poland and Slovakia. Laura Bandura-Morgan (National Science Centre) and Juaraj Koppel (Slovak Academy of Sciences) introduced themselves as well as their organizations.

Ana Carvalho (FCT) reported on the status of the ongoing activities in Portugal and introduced future plans.

Furthermore, the members heard an update on the EU-Project European Network of Research Ethics and Research Integrity (ENERI) from Nicole Foeger (Chair of ENRIO). The Austrian Agency for Research Integrity (OeAWI) is member of the ENRIO network and acts as project partner on behalf of ENRIO. The European Network of Research Ethics and Research Integrity establishes an operable platform of actors in the fields of research ethics and research integrity. More information can be found on the www.eneri.eu.

One main part of the ENERI project is to develop a core curriculum for persons who are involved in ethics review and investigations panels. Erika Löfström (University of Helsinki, project partner in ENERI) presented the actual status of those training courses.

Bert Seghers (VCWI) and Grace van Arkel (University of Maastricht) provided in their presentation information about the results of the mapping of the network, which is also part of the ENERI project. The questionnaire was sent to all ENRIO member organizations and mapped mainly facts i.e. regulations, structures, handling of cases, practices, codes and modes of implementation of regulations in the field of research integrity.

In her presentation “Public science communication as part of the responsible conduct of research “ Iina Kohonen (TENK) showed an example from Finland. The Finnish Advisory Board on Research Integrity and the Committee for Public Information in Finland are running a two-year project that concentrates on responsible science communication. The aim of the project is to promote ethical standards and research integrity in science communication to ensure that results are published and disseminated in a thought-provoking and ethically responsible way. In her presentation Iina Kohonen discussed some of the challenges and shared some of the good practices that they have discovered during this project.

On the second day of the meeting, internal working groups worked on the topics: Training, Investigation and Whistleblowing.