This is a list of short summaries of advisory opinions. The list also includes decisions. In these cases, LOWI has declared the petition inadmissible. It has therefore not examined the substance of the petition and has not issued an advisory opinion.
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The full text of the advisory opinion is only available in Dutch. If you want to read the full text in English, you can use the Dutch text for translation purposes.
- Advisory opinion 2024-01The complainant's lawyer violated the duty of confidentiality. In this case, the decision of the Research Integrity Committee to stop the handling of the complaint was not a proportionate response to this violation given its nature and limited seriousness.
- Advisory opinion 2023-20Complaint has not been dealt with diligently since it was not forwarded to the RIC. LOWI advises to create a mailbox specially intended for the RIC and to publish the e-mail address on the website of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).
- Advisory opinion 2023-19When a scientist violates the code of conduct this means that the issued complaint is well-founded. Also when non-compliance constitutes solely as a minor shortcoming. It is however desirable to clarify that well-foundedness does not necessarily imply research misconduct.
- Advisory opinion 2023-18Repeated lack of due care in referring to the scientific work of Petitioner. This counts more heavily against the Professor who is also Petitioner’s former promotor (2023-17) than it counts against the other scientists involved.
- Advisory opinion 2023-17Without sufficient justification a PhD-candidate was forbidden to criticize his promotor or his research. The PhD-candidate was therefore restrained in his academic freedom. LOWI holds this heavily against the promotor because of his position of power and lack of insight in this matter. Violation of research integrity.
- Decision 2023-16When a scientist is engaged in legal proceedings as a litigant, his actions within those proceedings do not fall within the scope of ‘scientific and scholarly research in the broadest sense’ as referred to in the code of conduct (NCRI 2018).
- Decision 2023-15See brief summary 2023-14
- Decision 2023-14In this case it is not a matter of research integrity that the publication does not mention alternative insights on what caused the outbreak of Sars-Cov-2. This is because the publication covers research on a different topic related to the virus than what caused its outbreak.
- Advisory opinion 2023-13Team science. Conflict results in the exclusion of one of the co-authors. LOWI sets forth in more generic wordings how a team can deal with such a situation and resolve the (impending) deadlock without violating norms of research integrity.
- Advisory opinion 2023-11Researcher insists on being a senior-author and does not accept a regular co-authorship. The other researchers in the team were correct in deciding to mention the researcher in the acknowledgments. The author contributions adequately reflect the contributions of the various authors.