Code of Conduct
Work in progress
General
CIBIT is committed to offering a safe, friendly, and accepting environment for everybody. It will not be tolerated any verbal or physical harassment or discrimination on the basis of race, gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, religion (or lack thereof), or culture. It will not be tolerated any intimidation, stalking, following, unwanted photography or video recording, sustained disruption of talks or other events, inappropriate physical contact, and unwelcome sexual attention. For specific regulations concerning these issues, please see the section below, General codes set at the University of Coimbra level.
Following the Art. 8 of the Code of good practices to prevent harassment, if you notice someone being harassed, or are harassed yourself, please report the situation to your immediate superior, or to the next superior if the harasser is the immediate superior, or directly to the Rector if there is no other direct superior immediately. For further notice on these values and standards and how to report in case their violation takes place, please see the section below on Important Contacts.
In the next paragraphs, you can find a set of values and codes we pursue at CIBIT and a specific code of conduct for behaviour in the lab.
Scientific integrity
Research (Mis)conduct
The lab is committed to ensuring research integrity. A hard line on research misconduct will take place in case of occurrence. Fabrication, falsification, or plagiarism of data or of any research output will not be tolerated.
Reproducible research
Reproducibility refers to someone being able to exactly reproduce your results if having access to your raw data. This is critical for science and for knowledge consolidation and its critical evaluation. If your results cannot be reproduced in these terms, it suggests that errors in the analysis occurred (by you or by the other(s)), and the results can’t be trusted.
For results to be reproducible, the analysis pipeline must be organized and well documented. To meet these goals, you should take extensive notes on each step of your analysis pipeline using for instance electronic notebooks such as Evernote. This means writing down how you did things every step of the way (and the order that you did things), from any pre-processing of the data, to running models, to statistical tests (note: if you use IBM SPSS, it is possible to save script files, to be able to reproduce the same analysis later). It’s also worth mentioning that you should take detailed notes on your experimental design as well. Additionally, your code should also be commented, and commented clearly - this is important both for others who use it as for your future self a few weeks ahead. Comment your code so that every step is understandable by an outsider. Finally, it is highly encouraged that you use some form of version control (e.g., Git in combination with GitHub) to keep track of what code changes you made and when you made them, as well as sharing code with others. The lab’s GitHub is https://github.com/CIBIT-ICNAS.
Reproducibility is related to replicability, which refers to whether your results can be obtained again with a different data set. That is, if someone ran your study again (with a different group of participants), they should find the same results. If someone ran a conceptually similar study, do they get the same results? Science grows and builds on replicable results. Our goal is to produce research that is both reproducible and replicable.
Experiment pre-analysis plans
You are encouraged to file a pre-analysis plan for any new study that you are beginning. This ensures that you are not tempted to enter questionable research practices such as HARKing (to define an Hypothesis After the Results are Known). You can either keep the plan to you and your team, and/or use tools and platforms to publish your pre-analysis plans (also know as Preregistrations) such AsPredicted.org, or the Open Science Framework. These platforms are particularly useful as they ensure a time stamp for your plans and hypotheses. Moreover, it is far too easy to forget what you planned to do at the start, before you saw any of the data, especially with fMRI studies. You can also plan your study to be sumitted as a Registered Report. In this case, Journals accepting this format will review your project in two different stages - before and after data aquisition. You can find more about this format and a list of participating Journals here.
Data Management Plans
You are equally encouraged to design a data management plan at the beginning of your study. This ensures you define as soon as possible the entire lifecycle of your research data, thus anticipating potential issues with data management, appropriate data standards, trustworthy repositories, and licensing, for a few examples. Effective data management can help optimize research outputs, increase the impact of research, and allow others to properly access and reuse your data. You can use online tools to guide you in this process, such as the DMP online, Argos, RDMO, DSW, as some examples.
Human participants
If you encounter any problems in the course of doing research that results in a negative outcome for the participant (e.g., if a participant becomes ill or upset, if there is an accident with the equipment, if there is a breach of confidentiality, etc), you should immediately seek your immediate superior. This notification should occur as soon as possible (ideally, within 24 hours). In some cases, we may need to report this information to the IRB (Ethics Commitee of the Faculty of Medicine) and/or funding agencies.
Authorship and referencing guidelines
You are free of selecting any reference style, as long as this choice is coherent throughout your work (e.g. a manuscript). For a list of possible reference styles, please check this link for a few examples.
Important institutional documents
General codes set at the University of Coimbra level [in portuguese only]
Important contacts
-
Rectory [link]
-
Social Services of the University of Coimbra, SASUC - HEALTH AND SAFETY SERVICES (SSGST) [link]
R. Larga, Faculty of Medicine, 2nd Floor (Polo I) - Entrance on the East side, next to Largo D. Dinis (roundabout)
Opening hours: 9.30 am – 1 pm and 2 pm – 5 pm (Monday to Friday)
| Phone contacts: 239 240 845 | 939 855 967 |
• Information, registration, appointment and other clinical acts: gabadmin[at]sas.uc.pt
• Clinical nature contacts (prescriptions, medical questions, nursing): saude[at]sas.uc.pt
• UCare - emotional support line: ucare[at]uc.pt