From 2016 to 2025, the EMBO Policy Programme held a series of interactive workshops known as the EMBO Fora on Responsible Research (previously called Research Integrity Workshops).
Organised in collaboration with a local EMBO Member at research institutes across EMBC Member States, the workshops contributed to EMBO’s mission of cultivating environments conducive to excellence in research.
The Fora provided insights, guidance and a space for discussion on responsible research culture to early-career researchers preparing to lead their first laboratories. The Fora primarily targeted early-career principal investigators and senior post-doctoral researchers faced with the new responsibilities of supervision.
“The workshop was very interactive and informative, particularly for young PIs. We also had the opportunity to discuss improvements with our management as to how research is conducted at our institute, such as providing written clear guidelines and policies regarding lab work and publications to help improve transparency and establish a common code of conduct.” – Ivana Ponjavić, doctoral candidate at Ruđer Bošković Institute in Zagreb, 2022.
The sessions were interactive and included discussions of research conduct scenarios. The EMBO Policy staff delivered the sessions with the involvement of other EMBO staff, local experts and of the host EMBO Member. The one-day programme was flexible and could be adapted to specific research environments. It covered a selection of the following topics:
- Research integrity and research misconduct
- Researchers’ responsibilities
- The supervisor’s responsibilities
- Transparency and integrity in publishing
- Responsible research assessment
- Conflicts of interest
- Policy issues in data management
- Open Science
EMBO Fora were hosted at 27 institutions in 23 countries, reaching over 1000 researchers. Their geographic spread extended from Madrid and Helsinki in the first year to Reykjavik, Ljubljana, Bratislava, Podgorica, and Brno, Paris, and Oslo by 2025.
Registration for the sessions was done locally through the local organizer. There were no registration fees.
The role of institutions in fostering responsible research
A defining feature of an EMBO Forum was the integration of a follow-up meeting between forum organisers and the leaders of the host institute.
Drawing on workshop participants’ anonymised feedback, comments and suggestions, these meetings extended the conversation beyond individual behaviour and highlighted the crucial role of institutions in shaping a culture of responsible research. Concretely, they allowed potential improvements to institutional policies and support structures to be carried out.
“The EMBO Forum was a pivotal experience that helped us refine our unit’s strategy and translate it into concrete, achievable actions. Inspired by the discussions led by the EMBO team, we structured and implemented our approach around three pillars: clearly communicating that best practice is at the heart of our values, putting in place procedures to improve data traceability, and offering new arrivals targeted training in data management and statistical analysis.” – Florence Besse, Director of the Institut de Biologie Valrose and Director of Research at the French National Centre for Scientific Research.
Examples of follow-up actions
Brno, 2025
At Masaryk University (MU), organisers secured support from the vice-rectorate for an action group to address issues raised during the forum.
“I appreciated the enthusiasm of the EMBO representatives for honestly discussing many issues with MU representatives during the closed meeting […] The discussion and feedback from EMBO helped us identify and understand the current limitations, as well as a lack of awareness of current practices and the needs of MU researchers.” – Michal Petr, Director of the Research Office at Masaryk University, 2025.
Leuven, 2023
The Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie (VIB) KU Leuven launched a survey on scientific integrity, leading to the development of a new Code of Conduct with dedicated sections on authorship and image manipulation. At the VIB-Center for Brain & Disease Research, leadership developed extra sessions to inform researchers on the use of human body materials and starting PhD researchers are now made aware of existing resources on scientific integrity and ethics. Additionally, principal investigators at the VIB started to regularly discuss best practices with their teams and monitor implementation through training sessions and lab meetings.
Vienna, 2022
At the Vienna BioCenter, content from the workshop was included in a revision of the ‘Good Scientific Practices’ module for PhD students.
Prague, 2022
The Institute of Molecular Genetics began including scientific integrity training as part of an annual graduate student course.
Porto, 2017
Following the forum, the Institute for Research and Innovation in Health (i3S) integrated the topics of research ethics, misconduct and responsible research data management into the training for PhD students and postdocs, and has also embedded research integrity into some of their career development courses.
“The workshop was excellent. People came out with a very clear view on what is proper research conduct and what it is not.” – Claudio Sunkel, director of the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology and vice-director of i3S, 2017.
Milan, 2017
The University of Milan purchased an online course on research integrity for all PhD students.
Paris, 2017
The Institut Curie implemented dedicated sessions for young principal investigators and mandatory sessions for new doctoral researchers.
EMBO Fora, 2016-2025
- University of Oslo, September 2025, Oslo, Norway Programme
- Institut Pasteur, 6 June 2025, Paris, France, Programme
- CEITEC MUNI, Masaryk University, 27 February 2025, Brno, Czech Republic. Programme
- Valrose Institute of Biology, Université Côte d’Azur, 30 January 2025, Nice, France. Programme
- University of Montenegro, Podgorica, Montenegro, 12 October 2023. Programme
- Center for Cancer Biology, Center for Brain & Disease Research, VIB-KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium, 28 September 2023. Programme
- Biomedical Research Center, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Bratislava, Slovakia, 29 June 2023. Programme
- Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel, 28 May 2023. Programme
- Institute of Microbiology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague, 24 November 2022 Programme
- Institute of Biotechnology, University of Vilnius, Lithuania, 10 November 2022 Programme
- Ruđer Bošković Institute, Zagreb, Croatia, 20 October 2022 Programme
- Vienna Biocenter, Austria, 22 September 2022 Download programme
- Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB), Barcelona, Spain, 26 November, 2019 Programme
- Izmir Biomedicine and Genome Centre (IBG), Turkey, 26 September 2019 Download programme
- Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, Warsaw, Poland, 23 May 2019 Download programme
- University of Debrecen, Hungary, 21 February 2019 Download programme
- École Polythechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland, 8 November 2018 Download programme
- Jozef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 18 October 2018 Download programme
- University of Patras, Greece, 17 May 2018 Download programme
- University of Iceland, Reykjavik, 26 April 2018 Download programme
- Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, November 2017 See programme
- University of Seville, Spain, 26 October 2017 Download programme
- Institut Curie, Paris, France, 13 June 2017 Download programme
- University of Milan, Italy, 23 February 2017 Download programme
- i3S, Porto, Portugal, 26 January 2017 Download programme
- Institute of Biotechnology, Helsinki, Finland, 23 November 2016 Download programme
- National Centre of Biotechnology, Madrid, Spain, 14 October 2016 Download programme