RCR Training Requirements
National Institutes of Health (NIH)
The NIH requires that all trainees, fellows, participants, and scholars receiving support through any NIH training, career development award (individual or institutional), research education grant, or dissertation research grant must receive RCR training, including face-to-face instruction. This requirement applies to all faculty – including new faculty, mid-career faculty and senior faculty – and staff receiving funding from these sources.
This policy applies to most D, F, K, and T series programs (currently applies to D43, D71, F05, F30, F31, F32, F33, F34, F37, F38, K01, K02, K05, K07, K08, K12, K18, K22, K23, K24, K25, K26, K30, K99/R00, KL1, KL2, R25, R36, T15, T32, T34, T35, T36, T37, T90/R90, TL1, TU2, and U2R). This policy also applies to any other NIH-funded programs supporting research training, career development, or research education that require instruction in RCR as stated in the relevant funding opportunity announcement (FOA).
NIH recognizes that instruction in RCR occurs formally and informally in educational settings and that informal instruction occurs throughout the research training experience.
For more information, see NIH’s website on Responsible Conduct of Research.
The NIH requires that all trainees, fellows, participants, and scholars receiving support through any NIH training, career development award (individual or institutional), research education grant, or dissertation research grant must receive RCR training, including face-to-face instruction. This requirement applies to all faculty – including new faculty, mid-career faculty and senior faculty – and staff receiving funding from these sources.
This policy applies to most D, F, K, and T series programs (currently applies to D43, D71, F05, F30, F31, F32, F33, F34, F37, F38, K01, K02, K05, K07, K08, K12, K18, K22, K23, K24, K25, K26, K30, K99/R00, KL1, KL2, R25, R36, T15, T32, T34, T35, T36, T37, T90/R90, TL1, TU2, and U2R). This policy also applies to any other NIH-funded programs supporting research training, career development, or research education that require instruction in RCR as stated in the relevant funding opportunity announcement (FOA).
NIH recognizes that instruction in RCR occurs formally and informally in educational settings and that informal instruction occurs throughout the research training experience.
- Instructional plans to meet the RCR requirements must be specified in the principal investigator's proposal application. Applications lacking such a plan will be returned without review.
- A plan that employs only online coursework for instruction in RCR will not be considered acceptable, except in special instances of short-term training programs, or unusual and well-justified circumstances.
- Instruction must be undertaken at least once during each career stage, and at a frequency of no less than once every four years.
- Conflict of interest – personal, professional, and financial
- Policies regarding human subjects, live vertebrate animal subjects in research, and safe laboratory practices
- Mentor/mentee responsibilities and relationships
- Collaborative research including collaborations with industry
- Peer review
- Data acquisition and laboratory tools: management, sharing and ownership
- Research misconduct and policies for handling misconduct
- Responsible authorship and publication
- The scientist as a responsible member of society, contemporary ethical issues in biomedical research, and the environmental and societal impacts of scientific research
For more information, see NIH’s website on Responsible Conduct of Research.