Office of the Ombudsperson for Academic Ethics and Procedures
Founding year
2013
History
Particular concern about academic ethics in Lithuanian academia was addressed in 2009 by the national decision to establish an Office of Ombudsperson for Academic Ethics and Procedures (Office). The decision was taken during the approval of the revised Law on Higher Education and Research by the Parliament of Lithuania (Seimas). However, the Office began to function at full extent a few years later, in 2013, when the first ombudsperson was appointed by Seimas.
Initially, the Office has been assisted by the Advisory Board composed of delegates from diverse stakeholders, such as Research Council of Lithuania, Lithuanian University Rectors’ University, Lithuanian Association of Junior Researchers, Lithuanian Bar Association, and others. Later, the Office has started to set up different working groups that are invited to share expertise in particular cases (e.g. issue-specific guidelines development) and help to improve academic practices. In addition to this, the Office invites individual experts to find out the scale and type of academic malpractice.
The team of the Office is composed of employees contracted as public officers (e.g. advisors and senior specialists for public administration) and as regular employees (e.g. senior specialists for technical assistance). Public officers’ educational background is law.
ENRIO member since
Structure
The Office is an independent not-for-profit public body that is responsible to Seimas.
Main Tasks
The Office, part of a national higher education and research system, is co-involved in the higher education and research policy implementation. It contributes to the development of the higher education and research quality through diverse activities, such as handling the alleged violations of academic ethics and/or procedures, having roundtable discussions with academia and other stakeholders, developing recommendations, carrying out analytical overviews. In addition to this, the Office further envisages to strengthen prevention-related activities, e.g. to develop issue-specific guidelines and organise training for academia.
Investigation
The investigation of an alleged violation of academic ethics and/or procedures begins with the reception of a complaint and/or evidence. At the initial stage, a preliminary investigation encompasses an analysis of the information/evidence obtained and consideration of prospective actions. If the Office decides that there are no grounds for initiating an investigation (e.g. due to kind of malpractice), the case might be forwarded to a higher education and research institution for self-regulation purposes or to a related public body or refused to investigate. If the Office decides to proceed further with the investigation, details of an alleged violation are specified and the communication with affected stakeholders is initiated. Decision of the ombudsperson might be of different nature: s/he concludes to terminate the investigation because of the absence of supportive evidence, declare the complaint as unfounded or acknowledge the violation of academic ethics and/or procedures. After the decision is taken, the Office informs the parties involved as well as the Ministry of Education, Science and Sport and, where relevant, Research Council of Lithuania. In addition to this, the ombudsperson might provide recommendations to further certain improvements in higher education and research institutions. Afterwards the ombudsperson monitors the implementation of these recommendations and finds out difficulties that higher education and research institutions face while implementing them.
Any decision of the ombudsperson might be appealed following administrative proceedings within a month after publicizing the decision. The court might remain the Ombudsperson’s decision in force at partial or full extent as well as make it null.
Training
The practice of trainings started in 2019 and it is mostly based on the demand of higher education and research institutions. The Office annually delivers at least 10 training sessions. In addition to this, the Office annually organises the conference to academia.
Promoting Research Integrity
The promotion of research integrity as a part of academic ethics is one of the major Office’s activities. Anonymised decisions in Lithuanian are publicized on the Office website.
In addition to this, the Office develops diverse guidelines related to academic and research integrity.