Ombudsperson for Academic Ethics and Procedures of the Republic of Lithuania
Curriculum Vitae Ombudsperson agendaOn the 14th of October, the Office organised an annual conference for the academic community “Ethics in Academic Environment 2020”. This event was held to mark the Global Ethics Day and attended by 70 participants from 30 institutions.
At the beginning of the conference, the participants saw a short performance “Winds of Change” staging common mistakes and behavioural patterns of academic ethics. Later, the reports on research ethics were presented.
The Office’s analyst Kristina Senkuvienė spoke about how doctoral students and researchers estimate their experience in the field of academic ethics, presenting the survey “Responsible Research Barometer 2020” conducted in Lithuania for the first time.
The Office’s senior analyst dr. Eglė Ozolinčiūtė presented a document resulting from inter-institutional cooperation – Guidelines for the Research Ethical Review. This document of a recommendatory nature aims to help Lithuanian research and higher education institutions to build up systems, the implementation of which would contribute to raising the quality of science, more efficient use of resources and promotion of open science in their institutions.
The Member of the Board of the Lithuanian Bioethics Committee dr. Eimantas Peičius spoke about other guidelines, namely for biomedical and human health sciences. He presented the context and importance of the guidelines prepared by the Board.
The cost of research and publication ethics breaches was hypothetically considered by the ombudswoman dr. Loreta Tauginienė. She presented a study on the monetary value of research and publication ethics breaches.
Later, the participants of the conference were invited to discuss which science, ethical or unethical, is an integral part of the quality of science? Is quality and ethics not the same? The participants were invited to consider the importance of ethics in research, the possibilities to implement the instrument being developed, and what more needs to be done to make Lithuanian science consistently advance in the direction of open science.