The PI, trainee, and college are all participants in RCR training. The PI is responsible for informing the trainee of the RCR training requirements and assuring that the trainee participates. The trainee is responsible for initiating and completing the training within the required time frame. The college is responsible for assuring that appropriate RCR courses or programs are developed and instituted.  The OVPR, through the Research Integrity and Security Office (RISO), ensures compliance with the training requirements.

Our current RCR program focuses on the four groups specifically engaged in NIH-/NSF-/USDA’s NIFA-funded research or other scholarly creativity involving undergraduates, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and early career faculty holding NIH K-Awards. At this time, RCR training is mandatory only for those individuals as outlined below; however, all students, staff, and faculty, particularly graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, engaged in research are eligible and encouraged to participate in RCR training.

For the purposes of RCR education, members of these four groups are designated as trainees.

• Undergraduates: ALL undergraduate trainees funded by a grant from NSF, NIH, or NIFA must complete the online CITI training program on RCR within one month of their appointment. Instructions for logging on to the CITI site can be found here. Testing is employed to measure comprehension.
• Professional Degree students: ALL DDS, MD, and PharmD trainees funded by a grant from NSF, NIH, or NIFA must complete the online CITI training program on RCR within the one month of their appointment. Instructions for logging on to the CITI site can be found here. Testing is employed to measure comprehension.
• Graduate Students (MS, MA, AuD, DNP, MHA, MPH, MSN, EdD, DPT, and PhD): ALL graduate student trainees funded by NSF, NIH, or NIFA must complete the two-phase training program described below within the first two years of their appointment to a grant funded project and if applicable Phase 3 if their funded training extends for more than four years.
• Postdoctoral fellows and K-Award faculty: All trainees funded by NSF, NIH, or NIFA must complete the two-phase training program described below within the first year of their appointment and Phase 3 if their training extends more than four years.

RCR subject matter must meet federally mandated requirements (NOT-OD-22-055).  For consistency of RCR training across campus, the University of Iowa follows the training requirements stated in NOT-OD-22-055.  Training is defined to accommodate research disciplines across the campus and includes the topics listed below:

• Research misconduct and policies for handling misconduct.
• Data acquisition and analysis; laboratory tools (e.g., tools for analyzing data and creating or working with digital images); recordkeeping practices, including methods such as electronic laboratory notebooks.
• Secure and ethical data use; data confidentiality, management, sharing, and ownership.
• Conflicts of interest – personal professional, and financial – and conflict of commitment, in allocating time, effort, or other research resources.
• Policies regarding human and live vertebrate animal subjects in research and safe laboratory practices.
• Responsible authorship and publication.
• Mentor/mentee responsibilities and relationships.
• Peer review, including the responsibility for maintaining confidentiality and security.
• Collaborative research, including collaborations with industry and investigators and institutions in other countries.
• Safe research environments (e.g., those that promote inclusion and are free of sexual, racial, ethnic, disability, and other forms of discriminatory harassment).
• The scientist as a responsible member of society, contemporary ethical issues in biomedical research, and the environmental and societal impacts of scientific research.

Note: completion of Institutional Review Board (IRB) or IACUC/Animal Welfare specific training alone does not meet the federal RCR requirements.

Phase 1 Online CITI training: Within the first month after being appointed to participate as a trainee on a project funded by NSF, NIH, or NIFA, students must complete the online CITI training program on RCR. Instructions for logging on to the CITI site can be found here. Testing is employed to measure comprehension.

Phase 2 Face-to-Face Discipline specific courses: Trainees (except for undergraduates) are required to enroll in a discipline-specific RCR course after completion of the Phase 1 CITI training. Courses are offered by programs, departments, and colleges and are developed and annually audited with the approval of the Graduate College. There is a minimum requirement of eight face-to-face contact hours for these courses. Beginning in 2016-2017, all colleges are responsible for assuring that their own students have an in-person training option that meets the federal requirements and has been approved by the Graduate College. Trainees must complete the RCR course once enrolled. Acceptable completion grades are either S (satisfactory) or B- or better depending on the grading system used by the unit offering the course.  A list of approved Graduate College courses can be found here.

For short-term grant appointments of six months or less for Graduate Students completion of the online CITI training program on RCR within one month of their appointment is required. This exception for graduate students is limited to a very specific set of NIH and NSF grants (e.g. NIH T35 and R25, NSF RTG). Please consult the Research Integrity and Security Office for further information. Additionally, any postdoctoral appointee on a short-term grant appointment needs to follow up with the Research Integrity and Security Office to discuss their RCR training requirements.

Phase 3 Re-Certification: Additional RCR training is required every four years while funded by NSF, NIH, and NIFA (e.g., if you remain at the same trainee level longer than four years). You must take RCR training or at each new stage of training (e.g. moving from undergraduate to graduate student, undergraduate to MD training, PhD to postdoctoral fellow, or postdoctoral fellow to faculty). Re-Certification training is mandated by NIH, NSF and NIFA. For both situations, you must complete Phase 1 (CITI RCR course) and Phase 2 (enroll and complete a Graduate College-approved course) training.

Additional Programmatic RCR training: NIH T32 trainees may be required to complete specific T32 RCR training identified by their individual NIH training programs.

For undergraduates, failure to complete the CITI training in the designated time results in 1) suspension of research activities and 2) loss of compensation. For compensation to resume and to continue research activities requires that the undergraduate trainee successfully complete CITI RCR training.

For graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and K-Award faculty, failure to complete all required RCR phases within the designated period of time results in suspension of trainee grant funding and support, which includes stipend, tuition, fees, travel, supplies, etc. To have funding reinstated, the trainee must complete (or retake) CITI RCR online training and enroll in a Graduate College approved graduate or postdoctoral course RCR Course. Only after CITI RCR training has been successfully completed/retaken and registration for an approved RCR Course will funding be restored.

Upon satisfactory completion of the designated CITI modules and RCR coursework, the transcript of the trainee is updated to indicate that RCR training has been completed. Electronic records from CITI are available for review by the Research Integrity Officer in OVPR.  For graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, the student’s university transcript will reflect satisfactory completion of their discipline specific RCR course. For faculty, the employment record will identify satisfactory RCR completion.

The OVPR will be responsible for the overall RCR plan and for providing information to sponsoring agencies regarding compliance with RCR training.

The University of Iowa does not accept RCR training records from other institutions at this time. The one exception is CITI RCR course work with proof of completion (e.g., course certificate).

If a trainee leaves another institution and transfers to the University of Iowa at the same classification (e.g., leaves as a graduate student and transfers to the UI as a graduate student), they must complete the online CITI RCR training and an approved RCR course through the Graduate College. The CITI RCR training can be waived with proper documentation of completion at the previous institution and if it was completed within the past four years.

If a trainee enters the University of Iowa from another institution as part of a new phase of their career (e.g., completed graduate student training elsewhere and enters Iowa as a postdoctoral fellow), then the trainee will need to take new RCR training consistent with their change in position per the plan outlined above.

If a trainee transfers from the University of Iowa to another institution and has successfully completed RCR training, the University of Iowa upon request will provide documentation of RCR training for the new institution.

RCR content will be reviewed at appropriate intervals and modified 1) to include new material such as pertinent discipline-specific case studies and 2) to remove outdated or obsolete information. The faculty responsible for approved RCR courses will ensure that:

1. Concepts of scholarly integrity, responsible conduct of research, and research ethics acknowledged in the course description and objectives.
2. Completion of Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) online modules prior to completion of the approved graduate or postdoctoral coursework.
3. Core competency areas must be explicitly covered and outlined on all course syllabi and discussed in class regardless of discipline. 

Instruction must involve substantive contact hours between the trainees/fellows/scholars/participants and the participating faculty: a combination of didactic and small-group discussions (e.g., case studies, active learning); and participation of research training faculty members in instruction in responsible conduct of research are required. Acceptable programs must include a minimum of eight contact hours. Virtual and hybrid (in person and virtual) courses are allowed provided they are using a format (e.g. Zoom or Microsoft Teams) that allows for real-time interaction/discussion/participation.

The OVPR will conduct an annual audit of the RCR program and courses to evaluate the overall training process, monitor effectiveness, and create opportunities for content/process improvement. OVPR, through the Research Integrity Officer (RIO), will ensure compliance with the RCR Plan.