As of January 2010, the National Science Foundation (NSF) requires that applicant institutions have in place – at the time of proposal submission – a plan for providing “appropriate training and oversight in the responsible and ethical conduct of research to undergraduate students, graduate students and postdoctoral researchers.” [1]
Note: As of September 2018, the NIH Office of Extramural Research (OER) will no longer offer the Protecting Human Research Participants course.
In support of the NSF requirement, LMU has identified a program – offered through CITI (The Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative at the University of Miami) – to meet this RCR requisite, and specifics are described below. The CITI training is required for all researchers at LMU who wish to conduct research involving human participants to include PI's, research associates, research assistants, and anyone participating in the recruiting of human subjects, collecting or obtaining data or the analysis of data.
LMU Plan for Fulfilling the RCR Requirement
The CITI public access course in the Responsible Conduct of Research is available to the LMU research community free of charge. Discipline specific courses are available for Biomedical, Social & Behavioral Research, the Physical Sciences, Humanities, Engineers, and Administrators. LMU requires the Social & Behavioral Basic and Refresher Courses. If you plan to conduct research in the Biomedical area, you should take the Biomedical Research Basic and Refresher courses. These contain 16 modules each and take about three hours to complete. Please consult the IRB Office if you have a question as to what program courses you should take to obtain your certification.
The RCR topic areas include: Research Misconduct; Data Management; Conflict of Interest; Collaborative Science; Responsible Authorship; Mentoring; Peer Review; Lab Animals; and Human Subjects.
You can also find CITI training modules specifically on Human Subjects Research and Lab Animal Welfare. Each training module takes about 20 – 30 minutes to complete, with total training time of approximately three hours. Modules do not need to be completed all at once.
Upon completion of the RCR course, you will receive a certificate of completion.
Note to Faculty Researchers
It is a Principal Investigator’s responsibility to inform undergraduate students, graduate students or postdoctoral fellows paid from NSF funds of the mandatory RCR training.
How to Begin
(1) Go to CITI Course to register for CITI online training.
(2) Click on “New Users Register Here.”
(3) Under “Select your institution or organization” page select Loyola Marymount University
(4) Next, proceed to create your own username, password, and then select the Learner Group.
Once you have completed the preceding steps you are logged in and registered for the course. You may begin the appropriate course or log out and return at another time. If you chose to log out, when you return to the CITI homepage you will not need to register again. You will login with the username and password you have already created. Upon completion of the course, you will receive a certificate of completion. A copy of this certificate should accompany your protocol. Please note: Online training takes approximately three hours. It is LMU policy that any certification is valid for five years regardless of source.
Research with Minors
In addition to the above, if the study population includes children, completion of the CITI Research with Minors module is required.
Completion of the CITI training for IRB submissions is separate and different from RCR/RECR training for federally sponsored projects found here