Miembros: Juan Carlos Acosta, Lara Zorro Shahidian y Víctor M. Campa
email: etica.ibbtec@unican.es
El Comité de Ética y Buenas Prácticas (CEBPL) del IBBTEC nace con la intención de promover y establecer una cultura de buenas prácticas en el centro, velar por el cumplimiento las mismas. Entre las misiones del CEBPL está la de asesorar a los investigadores en la implementación de unas buenas prácticas científicas y la de resolver aquellas éticas o de otra indole dudas que pudieran en relación a ellas.
Como punto de partida, hemos realizado un breve resumen de aquellos aspectos que consideramos, si no más importantes, quizás sí menos conocidos o con mayor repercusión legal de los aquellos contenidos en el Código de Buenas Prácticas Científicas del CSIC y en el Código de Buenas Prácticas de Experimentación de la UC. Desde el comité animamos a todos los investigadores a que los lean detenidamente.
Review of CSIC and UC's good practices codes
Violation of research integrity
Research misconduct involves research practices that are fraudulent very serious such as: fabrication (invention of data and their inclusion as research results), falsification (manipulation of materials, equipment or data) and plagiarism (copy and appropriation of other people´s ideas, data or intellectual creations without giving them due credit).
In addition, to research misconduct there are several other unacceptable practices that involve violation of research integrity such as, but not limited to:
- Inadequate record and custody of data, materials and protocols.
- Abuse of leadership.
- Misappropriation or denial of authorship.
- Duplication or fragmentation of publications and reuse, partial or completely, of own texts previously published in new publications.
- Abuse of reviewers of the peer review system and their duty of confidentiality.
- Hindering of the research carried by third parties.
- Tolerance, concealment or facilitation of such practices by others.
Authors of scientific publications
Authors of scientific publications must meet the following criteria:
- Substantial participation in the conception or design of the work, or in conducting experiments and acquiring data, or in the analysis and interpretation of the results.
- Contribution to writing or critical revision of the manuscript.
- Approval of the final version.
- Personal accountability for the author's own contributions.
The affiliation of all authors must be stated, citing the institution and centers where the research has been done and order of authors must follow the accepted guidelines for the discipline of the published work (i.e. in mathematical publications it has been common practice to date for the authors to appear in alphabetical order). The contribution of each author must be declared whenever the journal allows.
Contributions that do not meet authorship criteria (i.e. “personal de apoyo") must be properly acknowledged.
Inclusion in the list of authors of a person that do not meet the criteria indicated above it is unacceptable and might be considered as a case of leadership abuse. Exclusion in the list of authors of a person that meet the criteria is a case of misappropriation.
Data management and custody
The experimental protocols, the original data and the material of any research conducted at the IBBTEC belongs to the institution (CSIC or UC) to which the principal investigator (PI) is affiliated to and must be properly preserved and custodied.
All data must be preserved for at least 10 years since the publication of the results, this includes original raw files, protocols and biological materials.
The research project´s PI is responsible for the preservation and custody of materials, data and originals of the protocols generated under her/his supervision in the assigned laboratory and the PI and the institution to which belong the research results (CSIC or UC) must provide the adequate means, physical or electronic (notebooks, hard drives, …), to store the data obtained. When researchers leave the IBBTEC they can get a copy of the data and aliquots of the material but in they cannot leave with the original notebooks.
Research with human subjects
Any research involving the participation of humans or the handling of their samples and/or info will comply with current national and EU regulations (i.e. LOU 3/2018) as well as with any additional institutional instruction.
In any case, the researcher responsible of the Research Project must request the approval by the CSIC or UC Ethics Committee and specific consent must be expressed by those participating in the research.
Research with animals
The use of animals in any research projects will be undertaken following regulations and institutional instructions in force. As a rule, the “three Rs principle" (Replacement, Reduction, and Refinement) will be established for all experimental protocols involving animals.
All researchers conducting animal experimentation protocols must have the appropriate training and be duly accredited and prior its initiation, any research involving animals must be authorized by the CSIC or UC´s Ethics Committee.
Health and enviromental protection
The staff (researchers, technicians and administration) at the IBBTEC have the right and the obligation to know and to comply with risk prevention, health monitoring and environmental protection regulations and institutional policies.
The PIs have the obligation of ensuring that all the researchers of their group receive the necessary information on general safety and on the prevention of occupational and specific risk that may affect them.
Any research conducted at the IBBTEC involving genetically modified organism, or biological or chemical agents posing a risk to humans, animals or plants and/or the environment require proper containment measures and prior approval by the CSIC or the UC ethics committee.
