Federal RCR Training Requirements
National Science Foundation (NSF) RECR Training Requirements
Effective January 4, 2010, NSF requires that the institution have a plan in the proposal regarding RCR training for all trainees, including the undergraduate students, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers who will be involved in the research. Beginning August 1, 2023, NSF has revised the RECR training requirement to include all faculty and senior personnel.
- NSF RCR Requirements: Frequently Asked Questions
- OIG Review of Institutions’ Implementation of NSF’s RCR Requirements
National Institutes of Health (NIH) RCR Training Requirements
While NIH initially released their original requirements for RCR training on December 22, 1989, they have made multiple updates and updated the regulations to the current standards on February 17, 2022.* NIH requires that all individuals (undergraduate students, graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, etc.) who receive funding or support from any NIH training, an individual career development award, an institutional career development award, a research education grant, and/or a dissertation research grant, must receive RCR training. This more stringent requirement applies to all new and renewal applications submitted on or after January 25, 2010 as well as all continuation (Type 5) applications on or after January 1, 2011.
While there are no specific curricular requirements for instruction in responsible conduct of research, the following topics have been incorporated into most acceptable plans for such instruction:
- Conflict of interest - personal, professional, and financial - and conflict of commitment, in allocating time, effort, or other research resources
- Policies regarding human subjects, live vertebrate animal subjects in research, and safe laboratory practices
- Mentor/mentee responsibilities and relationships
- Safe research environments (e.g., those that promote inclusion and are free of sexual, racial, ethnic, disability and other forms of discriminatory harassment)
- Collaborative research including collaborations with industry investigators and institutions in other countries
- Peer review, including the responsibility for maintaining confidentiality and security in peer review
- 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
- Research misconduct and policies for handling misconduct
- Responsible authorship and publication
- The scientist as a responsible member of society, contemporary ethical issues in biomedical research, and the environmental and societal impacts of scientific research
Training is not required for everyone but it is highly encouraged for all who deal with research being funded or supported by NIH.
* Note: Additional updates with respect to NCRR Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) applications were provided on April 19, 2011.