In the new year, the Office of the Ombudsperson for Academic Ethics and Procedures (the Office) continues meetings with members of the academic community. In January 2021, three distance meetings with representatives of three Lithuanian university colleges took place. On January 21, we met with 87 representatives of the University of Applied Social Sciences and 133 representatives of the community of Kaunas University of Applied Sciences, and on 28 January, with 55 members of the Lithuanian Business University of Applied Sciences.
In the meeting with a community of the University of Applied Social Sciences, a chief specialist Kamilė Kapočiūtė presented the guidelines prepared by the Office on peculiarities of organisation and evaluation of group work “Guidelines for an objective and fair assessment of the group work”. Dr Eglė Ozolinčiūtė, the senior analyst of the Office, presented the document created as a result of inter-institutional cooperation “Guidelines for Ethical Review”, which would help Lithuanian research and higher education institutions to develop systems raising the quality of science. Dr Loreta Tauginienė, the Head of the Office, presented the survey conducted in Lithuania on financial losses of unfair behaviour “The monetary value of violations of research ethics and publication ethics upon revocation of a publication”. During the discussion after the presentations, the participants of the meeting were clarifying who was responsible for identifying and punishing persons who had publicized unfair publications and the possible ways for correcting the published errors and consequences of such errors. Participants were also interested in how to ensure scales and criteria for fair and objective evaluation of group work.
In the meeting with the community of Kaunas University of Applied Sciences, the Head of the Office Dr Loreta Tauginienė presented the Guidelines for the Ethical Review, and the chief specialist of the Office Kamilė Kapočiūtė “Guidelines for objective and fair evaluation of group works”. How to ensure the monitoring of academic ethics remotely was told by the chief specialist of the Office Dr Eglė Ozolinčiūtė, who presented the guidelines issued by the Office “Ensuring academic ethics in organising distance learning”. During the time for questions and answers, representatives of the academic community actively shared their teaching and examination experiences and talked about the ways of unfair behaviour of students. The participants of the meeting also discussed how to technically ensure the most honest possible study and reporting during the examinations.
In the meeting with the academic community of the Lithuanian Business University of Applied Sciences, Dr Eglė Ozolinčiūtė, the chief analyst of the Office, presented the guidelines “Ensuring academic ethics in organising distance learning”, the Head of the Office Dr Loreta Tauginienė presented the results of the national survey “Responsible Research Barometer 2020” conducted in Lithuania and presented Guidelines for the Ethical Review, which marks a new step in Lithuanian research practice identifying the emerging quality bar at the stage of research planning and the scientific movement towards open science (open data). The participants of the meeting were interested in the importance of the Guidelines for the Ethical Review not only for fundamental but also applied research, as well as were clarifying the nuances of preparation of scientific publications.
