UAB’s Pillars of Scientific Integrity Include:
- UAB shall accept as employees only those individuals whose career activities clearly demonstrate the highest ethical standards. To this end, the relevant credentials of all potential employees are to be thoroughly examined by the appropriate department/unit heads or their representatives in order to verify the claimed accomplishments of the candidate. The responsible department/unit heads or their representatives shall seek further confirmation of the candidate's accomplishments during the normal procedures of personal interviews and letters from references. Proof of faculty credentials shall be maintained by the responsible dean or department head in accordance with appropriate records retention policies and schedules.
- Faculty members and any individuals who supervise colleagues, fellows, technicians, staff, or students are expected to provide them with appropriate guidance and counsel to maintain the highest professional and ethical standards.
- The UAB academic and research community is encouraged to promote individual awareness of the importance of maintaining high ethical standards in Research and scholarly activities and to discuss issues related to Research ethics in formal courses, in seminars, and by other informal means.
- Results of Research and scholarly activities should be supported by verifiable evidence. Faculty and staff should maintain sufficient records or other documentation of their studies for at least six years following the most recent use of such records or information contained in such records. It is the responsibility of senior investigators and scholars to develop among junior colleagues and trainees the necessary respect for careful recording and preservation of primary data.
- The UAB research and academic community is encouraged to engage in free discussion of results, to share data and techniques, and to avoid secrecy in the conduct of scholarly activities, provided such free discussion and sharing are consistent with the proper protection of intellectual property. It should be remembered that independent confirmation of results is important in direct proportion to the potential significance of the results in question and may be crucial to the establishment of new concepts.
- Faculty members are responsible for the quality of all Reports based on their own efforts or on the collaborative work of students, technicians, or colleagues, especially those which bear the faculty member's name. The same standards of scientific integrity apply to abstracts as to full-length publications. Abstracts or other Reports of preliminary findings should indicate clearly that the findings are preliminary. Any Report of Research results must include the name of at least one faculty member, employee, or trainee who assumes full professional and ethical responsibility for the contents of the Report. Each contributor to the Report must assume full responsibility for their own contributions to the Report. UAB supports the practice of explicitly describing the role(s) of each contributor in the conduct of the project and preparation of resulting Report(s).
- Any faculty member, employee, or trainee who has reason to suspect any other faculty member, employee, or trainee of Research Misconduct with regard to the conduct or reporting of Research has the responsibility of following up these suspicions in accordance with the procedures outlined below.
(META Source: UAB’s former policy on the Responsible Conduct of Research and Other Scholarly Activities dated January, 2013)