Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) FAQs

Responsible conduct of research (RCR) is defined as "the practice of scientific investigation with integrity." It involves the awareness and application of established professional norms and ethical principles in the performance of all activities related to scientific research.  Projects funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) have specific requirements regarding training in RCR.

^*For NIH, the RCR requirements apply to all NIH Institutional Research Training Grants, Individual Fellowship Awards, Career Development Awards (Institutional and Individual), Research Education Grants, and Dissertation Research Grants. The programs are listed as: D43, D71, F05, F30, F31, F32, F33, F34, F37, F38, K01, K02, K05, K07, K08, K12, K18, K22, K23, K24, K25, K26, K30, K99/R00, KL1, KL2, R25, R36, T15, T32, T34, T35, T36, T37, T90/R90, TL1, TU2, and U2R.

**For NSF and NIFA, while the method of delivery or minimum hours of instruction are not specified, the Principal Investigator should determine the number of appropriate courses to take to allow for broad understanding in the practice of research. The Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) Program provides online RCR training to the research community.

^*For NIH, the RCR requirements apply to all NIH Institutional Research Training Grants, Individual Fellowship Awards, Career Development Awards (Institutional and Individual), Research Education Grants, and Dissertation Research Grants. The programs are listed as: D43, D71, F05, F30, F31, F32, F33, F34, F37, F38, K01, K02, K05, K07, K08, K12, K18, K22, K23, K24, K25, K26, K30, K99/R00, KL1, KL2, R25, R36, T15, T32, T34, T35, T36, T37, T90/R90, TL1, TU2, and U2R.

**For NSF proposals submitted on or after July 31, 2023, the RCR training requirement expanded the training to include all faculty and senior personnel named on the proposal. For NSF proposal submitted prior to July 31, 2023, only students and postdoctoral scholars are required to complete the training.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) highly encourages that initial instruction during predoctoral training occurs as early as possible in graduate school.  The completion of training should be consistent with the responsible conduct of research plan included in the NIH proposal.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) does not specify when the training must be completed but a plan must be in place at the time of proposal submission.

The National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) requires the training be completed before participation or payment from the project.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) RCR training requirement became effective for all new and renewal applications submitted on or after January 25, 2010, and for all continuation (Type 5) applications with deadlines on or after January 1, 2011. 

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) training requirement became effective for new proposals submitted or due on or after January 4, 2010.  Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) NSF 23-1 expanded the requirement to include all faculty and other senior personnel named on proposals submitted on or after July 31, 2023.

National Institute of Food and Agriculture's (NIFA) implemented revised Research Terms and Conditions (RTCs) effective June 30, 2017. These RTCs include an updated Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) training requirement for NIFA grant recipients.

University of California, San Diego is committed to maintaining a research environment that promotes attention to the highest ethical standards for all sponsored and non-sponsored research. While RCR training is recommended for all members of the research community, only research projects with a specific Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) requirement, as outlined in the “Who needs to take the Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) training?” question, will be monitored to assure compliance with the funding agencies’ respective requirements.

1. The Office of Postdoctoral Scholar Affairs (OPSA) offers an ‘Ethical Challenges of Research” series. For postdoctoral scholars training completed outside of OPVSA, departments are responsible for tracking and retaining verification of training.
2. RCR training is integrated into the online Integrity Tutorial that all undergraduates must take prior to enrolling in their second quarter. Completion of this course is automatically tracked by Canvas; students who do not complete before the end of their first quarter will have a hold on their account prohibiting them from continuing into their second quarter. Departments are encouraged to include undergraduate students in additional training opportunities appropriate to their level of participation in research.
3. Departments are encouraged to develop their own RCR training plans in consultation with the Research Ethics Program to ensure their plans meet the format and content requirements of federal agencies. The Research Ethics Program can assist in setting goals, selecting topics to be covered, identifying useful approaches for teaching and learning, and assessing outcomes, as well as offering “Train the Trainer Workshops.”

Regardless of the funding source, if RCR training is required, the home department for an extramural training award is responsible for tracking the completion of the requirement. Documentation of the training should be maintained by the individual completing the training and the PI. Documentation may be subject to review by the funding agency and the UC San Diego Research Compliance and Integrity Office (RCI) upon request.

The Research Compliance and Integrity (RCI) Office facilitates research, innovation and education, responsibly for global excellence and is responsible for broad oversight, resources and education for the integrity and compliance issues relating to the conduct of research.  RCI will work with the various sponsored projects offices to identify the awards that require RCR training.  RCI will conduct monitoring based on the information included in the grant application/proposal.  The results of the monitoring will be provided to the applicable Principal Investigators and Department Chairs/Deans.  RCI will also provide training and education on the RCR training requirements.

1. conflict of interest – personal, professional, and financial and conflict of commitment, in allocating time, effort, or other research resources
2. policies regarding human subjects, live vertebrate animal subjects in research, and safe laboratory practices
3. mentor/mentee responsibilities and relationships
4. safe research environments (e.g., those that promote inclusion and are free of sexual, racial, ethnic, disability and other forms of discriminatory harassment)
5. collaborative research including collaborations with industry and investigators and institutions in other countries
6. peer review, including the responsibility for maintaining confidentiality and security in peer review
7. data acquisition and analysis; and laboratory tools (e.g., tools for analyzing data and creating or working with digital images); recordkeeping practices, including methods such as electronic laboratory notebooks  
8. secure and ethical data use; data confidentiality, management, sharing, and ownership
9. research misconduct and policies for handling misconduct
10. responsible authorship and publication
11. the scientist as a responsible member of society, contemporary ethical issues in biomedical research, and the environmental and societal impacts of scientific research

While courses related to professional ethics, ethical issues in clinical research, or research involving vertebrate animals may form a part of instruction in responsible conduct of research, they generally are not sufficient to cover all of the above topics.

National Institutes of Health (NIH) requires that all institutional training grants, individual fellowships, career development awards, research education grants, and dissertation research grants include a description of activities related to instruction on Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR with each application.

Training plans are not required to be included in proposals submitted to National Science Foundation (NSF) or National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) however; a training plan must be in place at the time of proposal submission and must be made available upon request.

Yes. At the time of proposal submission, the Authorized Organizational Representative of the proposing institution is responsible for certifying that its institution 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 to conduct research. The RCR training requirement does flow down to all sub-awardees, at any tier. The proposing institution must therefore ensure that these RCR requirements are appropriately addressed in the sub-award instrument.

The Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) requirement flows down to all sub-awardees, including international organizations. If there are undergraduates, graduates, and postdoctoral researchers supported on the award to conduct research, they must be trained in the responsible conduct of research.

The Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) training plan must be in place at the time of proposal submission for all funding agencies. National Institutes of Health (NIH) requires that the training plan be discussed in the proposal.

If you have undergone Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) training at another institution please confirm with your funding agency on whether you need to take a new course, a refresher course, or if your current training is still valid for the four year term limit.

Yes. Completion of Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) training was a term of your grant and should have been completed during the grant’s performance period. Completing the RCR training after your grant had ended means that the terms of the grant were not met and there may be other implications for not meeting the terms of the grant.

Principal Investigators of NIH institutional training grants are responsible for ensuring that T-32 supported trainees receive research ethics training. This includes notifying trainees of the Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) requirement, requiring completion of the RCR requirements as a condition of the training grant appointment, reporting on RCR activity in the Progress Report, and developing and offering program or department-based activities that supplement the RCR program.

The Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) Program is a website that offers research ethics, compliance, and professional development education on a number of subjects for various audiences, including researchers, students, faculty, IRB members, research administrators and Institutional Biosafety Committee and Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee members. CITI membership is free for all UCSD faculty, students and staff. There are several Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) courses available on CITI.

1. Physical Science Responsible Conduct of Research (ID: 59898)
2. Biomedical Responsible Conduct of Research (ID: 59894)
3. Humanities Responsible Conduct of Research (ID: 59899)
4. Responsible Conduct of Research for Administrators (ID: 59896)
5. Responsible Conduct of Research for Engineers (ID: 59895)
6. Social and Behavioral Responsible Conduct of Research (ID: 59897)

The Principal Investigator should determine which is the appropriate CITI Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR) course(s) to be completed. At minimum, completion of the CITI RCR training course(s) will meet the NSF and NIFA requirement. Online instruction, by itself, is considered insufficient to meet the NIH requirement outlined by updated guidance NOT-OD-22-055, and guidance of NOT-OD-10-019, which remains in place. 

1. Access the CITI program at https://about.citiprogram.org.
   
2. Click on the “Register” button.
3. You will need to click on “Select Your Organization Affiliation” button, then search and select, University of California, San Diego." Click on the “Create a CITI Program Account” button.
4. Enter in your personal information. All fields marked with an asterisk (*) are required. Click on the “Continue to Step 3” button.
5. Create a username and password, and choose a security question/answer. Click on the “Continue to Step 4” button.
6. CITI asks for your gender, ethnicity and race. Click on the “Continue to Step 5” button.
7. Select whether you want to receive Continuing Education credit (CEUs) for CITI Program course completion and whether CITI can contact you in the future to participate in research surveys. Click on the “Continue to Step 6” button.
8. Complete all fields that are marked with an asterisk (*) in Step 6 for your UC San Diego Profile. Click on the “Continue to Step 7” button.
9. Select the RCR course you would like to register for in Question 6.
10. Click on the “Finalize registration” link.
11. On the Main Menu screen, under the “UC San Diego” tab, click on the title of the course to enter the course.
12. Click on the “Complete the Integrity Assurance Statement before beginning the course” link and complete. Click on the “Submit” button.
13. Click on the title of the first module to begin. Complete all of the required modules.
14. After completing all modules, print off a completion form. Keep a copy of the form for your records.

1. Access the CITI program at https://www.citiprogram.org/.
2. Under “Institutional Courses”, select “View Courses” for University of California, San Diego. Under “Learner Tools for University of California, San Diego”, select “Add a Course”.
3. On the “Select Curriculum – UC San Diego screen, select the RCR course you would like to take.

You can leave and go back to the training by logging back in as often as necessary.  All training completed will be stored in the CITI system.

You can view, download, share, and print a copy of your completion certificate by logging into the CITI home page. At the “My Courses” screen, under the “Completed Courses” section, click on “View-Print-Share Record.” Under “Completion Certificate”, you can click on “View/Print” or “Copy Link” to obtain a copy of your course certificate.    

No, students who receive only scholarship or stipend support to enroll in an academic program through such NSF programs as S-STEM and Noyce are not required to receive RCR training. However, students must take RCR training if they receive NSF scholarship or stipend support to engage in research, or if conducting research is included in their academic program.

The question of whether training activities (or salaries for the time period spent taking the training) undertaken by undergraduate students, graduate students or postdoctoral researchers who are working on an NSF award can be charged as direct cost to an NSF award is dependent on the allocability to the sponsored research activity as follows:

If the training is specific to the NSF sponsored research activity, such as learning how to use a particular research instrument or a specific laboratory technique used in the sponsored research activity, or the presentation and reporting on data sets generated by the sponsored research to meet Research Standards, such training may be appropriate to direct charge to an NSF award.

If the training is more general in nature such as plagiarism, research misconduct, ethical standards, human research, vertebrate animals, etc., then it may be more appropriate to treat such costs as indirect and/or apportion them among the major functions of the awardee institution.

Consideration must be given to Cost Accounting Standard 502, Consistency in the Treatment of Costs, and the awardee’s accounting practices as outlined in the institution’s Disclosure Statement. Therefore, if the institution treats these costs as indirect costs under other major functions, or to other sponsors, it may be more consistent to treat these as indirect costs. For example, it generally would not be appropriate to identify such costs as direct costs on an NSF award and indirect costs on an Office of Naval Research award.

For any questions regarding your specific grant and any charges, please reach out to your UC San Diego Contracts Officer.

NSF Fellows conducting research at the UC San Diego who are directly supported from salary or stipends paid by NSF are required to take RCR training.

For NSF proposals submitted on or after July 31, 2023, the RCR training requirement expands the training to all faculty and senior personnel (i.e., principal investigators, co-investigators, and other academic appointees). Undergraduate students, graduate students, and postdoctoral scholars working on research projects directly supported from salary or stipends paid by NSF are still required to complete RCR training.

No. If you are not directly supported from salary or stipends paid by NSF, you are not subject to the RCR training requirement.

The UC San Diego Principal Investigator and only UC San Diego undergraduate students, graduate students, and postdoctoral scholars who are directly supported from salary or stipends paid by NSF would be required to take RCR training through UC San Diego.

Yes, NSF updated the “Responsible Conduct of Research Frequently Asked Questions” website on August 16, 2010.