Responsible Conduct of Research Training

Oakland University is committed to creating a culture of integrity in all its undertakings - including research. To that end, all externally-funded faculty, staff, trainees, and students will now be required to complete the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) training for the Responsible Conduct of Research every four years, or more often if a sponsor's guidelines require that. Funded faculty, staff, trainees, and students whose grant-funded project includes international work will also be required to complete the Research Security CITI module. This requirement begins with awards made on or after July 1, 2025.  Several federal funding agencies require training in the Responsible Conduct of Research (RCR). The specific training requirements are agency-dependent:

National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation (NSF) requires that all student researchers funded by NSF receive training in the RCR. This requirement applies to undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers who are supported by NSF to conduct research. View the relevant regulations, and policy.  In order to satisfy this training requirement, which took effect in January 2010, we remind you to have your student researchers take the required training when they begin their NSF-funded research. 

National Institutes of Health
Similar training is required for personnel funded on NIH grants that have a training component. For these grants, face-to-face educational sessions are required in addition to the on-line RCR modules from CITI. These NIH requirements were updated in November 2009.

U.S. Department of Agriculture
Recipients of USDA funding requires program directors, faculty, undergraduate students, graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and any staff participating in the research to undergo training and oversight in the RCR. Completion of the CITI Program training for RCR will satisfy the training requirement. The USDA requirements in the RCR training became effective February 2013.

CITI Training
Oakland University provides on-line RCR training from the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI).  Instructions for signing on to the required RCR modules are as follows:

• After accessing CITI training, either register as a new user or log in as usual, then click on “Submit”
• Scroll down the page to “Learner Tools for Oakland University”, then click on “Add a Course”
• Scroll down to Question 5 and select “RCR for NSF & NIH Researchers”
• USDA doesn't specify a fixed training format, so the  “RCR for NSF & NIH Researchers,” would also be acceptable for USDA sponsored research.

If you took the CITI RCR online course more than four years ago or are approaching your four-year renewal date, CITI will remind you to renew your training online. You can check the status of your training by logging into the CITI website and viewing “My Records”.

Please contact [email protected] if you have questions.