Good Research Practice

LKCMedicine is committed towards excellence in research and scholarship. This goal demands adherence to high ethical standards across all clinical and non-clinical research practices and endeavours. Honesty, transparency, and accountability are the foundations on which we conduct our research.

To maintain these high standards, we have developed the Good Research Practice (GRP) framework, which spells out what members of our research community, including faculty, postdocs, students, and staff – should do to demonstrate and fulfil our commitment to ensuring high standards of integrity and ethics.

To reinforce GRP, the Good Research Practice Office (GRPO) was incepted in 2018.  GRPO promotes a positive culture enabling better research integrity and ethical practices. GRPO works to protect the community and its reputation against research misconduct. Where required and necessary, GPRO works closely with NTU Research Integrity and Ethics Office (RIEO) in dealing with research misconduct allegations.  GRPO also promotes awareness, provide advice and support on legal, ethical, compliance and data management requirements.

Some specific examples of GRPO activities include:

Point-of-Contact for internal and external stakeholders

• Liaise with NTU stakeholders (NTU Research Integrity and Ethics Office, NTU Library,) and other external regulatory bodies to keep up to date on matters pertaining to human biomedical research, tissue banking, research data management practices and open science, as well as, to facilitate communication and engagement with the research community.
• Advise research community on the legal Human Biomedical Research Act (HBRA), ethical Institutional Review Board/ Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IRB/IACUC) and privacy Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) regulations to comply with and Research Data Management Practices to facilitate biomedical research in school.

Reinforcing Research Data Management Practices

• Assist in developing the Data Governance Framework and overarching research data handling SOPs
• Conduct regular research data audits to ensure compliance to the Data Management Plan, generate audit reports and follow up with corrective actions for non-compliances.
• Conduct Research Data Management and Data Governance Awareness workshops regularly.

Enhancing Research Integrity education, training and innovation

• Lead schoolwide educational programmes via Team-Based Learning Research Integrity workshops to inform on emerging challenges and to promote a culture of Good Research Practice. Themes include:
  • Research Integrity and Ethical Dilemmas
  • Data Reproducibility
  • Open Science
  • Predatory journals
  • Authorship
  • Research Data Management practices
• Engage in active research on research data audits, research integrity pedagogy, and other research-integrity-related issues. A few examples of our research projects and awards include:
  • Effectiveness of Data Audits as a tool to increase awareness and compliance of Data Management. MOE Tier1 Research Integrity grant 2018
  • Perceptions and reactions of NTU researchers to different forms of research integrity training methods. MOE Tier 1 Research Integrity grant 2019
  • To develop TBL content for Research Integrity to supplement e-learning for postgraduate students. NTU Edex (2019-2020)
  • Extending open science practices via adoption of open code.  MOE Tier1 Research Integrity grant 2021
  
  
  Supporting infrastructure

• Oversee the backup of primary research data from research core equipment onto the School Central Data Repository to ensure preservation of primary data
  
  

Incident report and investigations

• Assist in preliminary investigations and incident report writing of potential cases of research misconduct

Others

• Manage the Online Manuscript Submission System (MSS) in alignment with the NTU Research Integrity policy to ensure proper author affiliations, ethical approvals and funding acknowledgement