Policies and procedures 

Responsible Conduct of Research

Skidmore College is committed to maintaining high standards of ethical conduct in all aspects of its work, including research and education. Appropriate instruction in responsible conduct of research (RCR) is an essential component of the professional development of our researchers at all career levels.

Effective January 4, 2010, any institution that receives National Science Foundation (NSF) funding must certify in its grant proposals that “it has a plan to provide appropriate training and oversight in the responsible and ethical conduct of research to undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers who will be supported by NSF to conduct research.” The institutional official must certify that the institution has a plan for compliance with the responsible conduct of research training requirement and will track who has been trained. For more information, please visit http://www.nsf.gov/bfa/dias/policy/rcr.jsp.

Effective January 25, 2010, all new and renewal applications submitted to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) requires that all trainees, fellows, participants and scholars receiving support through any NIH training, career development award (individual or institutional), research education grant and dissertation research grant must receive instruction in responsible conduct of research. For an update on this NIH requirement for instruction in RCR, please visit http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-10-019.html.

In order to meet this obligation, Skidmore College has identified an online RCR training tutorial that shall serve as the college’s means of providing the requisite training. The college has entered into a partnership with the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI). This program meets the policy requirements and consists of 11 elective modules, each focused on a different aspect of RCR, The content of each module is developed by experts in the associated fields, and there is a short quiz before moving to the next module. The software also provides a grade book that shows the scores of each of the applicable quizzes as well as the modules left to be completed.  To satisfy the training requirement, the affected person must register to take the web-based educational program. The training tutorial is located at https://www.citiprogram.org/.

CITI Responsible Conduct of Research Modules:

• Introduction to Responsible Conduct of Research
• Authorship
• Collaborative Research
• Conflicts of Interest
• Data Management
• Mentoring
• Peer Review
• Plagiarism
• Research Involving Human Subjects
• Research Misconduct
• Using Animal Subjects in Research

In all cases where a federal grant to Skidmore College includes an RCR training provision, affected persons shall be required to successfully complete the CITI RCR training modules prior to any involvement in the research.  

The NSF has recently published a Questions and Answers document regarding this policy, which can be found at http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/rcr/faqs_mar10.pdf. 

Questions related to the training with respect to responsible conduct of research should be directed to Mary Hoehn, assistant director of sponsored research. She can be reached at 518-580-8052 or mhoehn@skidmore.edu.