The University of Amsterdam endorses the principles of professional academic practice. Everyone involved in research and teaching is responsible for safeguarding academic integrity.
When it comes to teaching and research, UvA employees have wide freedom in terms of their choice of subjects and research methods, how they inform themselves, present themselves in public and publish their work. At the same time, they have a duty to justify the choices they make and to conduct research with integrity, which is to say in a reliable, honest, careful and responsible manner.
The University helps its employees to counter controversial research practices. We do so by promoting a culture in which researchers work together, discuss problems and solutions and admit to errors.
If there is a suspicion that academic integrity has been violated, students, staff and others can contact one of the UvA’s confidential advisers. They are easily accessible and act as the first point of contact for questions and concerns about academic integrity.
Complaints about violations of academic integrity are handled by the Academic Integrity Committee. This is done on the basis of the Academic Integrity Complaints Procedure. The faculties and research institutes have also drawn up their own specific guidelines on academic integrity.
The Academic Integrity Complaints Regulations describe what is meant by violating academic integrity and describes the UvA procedure for submitting a complaint.
Submitting a complaint must not be detrimental to the complainant unless the complainant has not acted in good faith. The same applies to witnesses, experts, confidential advisers and committee members.
Follow the links below for more specific guidelines per faculty and research institute.
Each UvA campus has one confidential adviser for academic integrity. The confidential advisers have expertise in their own field, but operate UvA-wide. Employees, students and others can choose for themselves which adviser they wish to approach.
The confidential advisers for academic integrity have three tasks:
University Quarter
Roeterseiland Campus
Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences
Programme group Brain and Cognition
Science Park
ACTA
dr. ir. J.H. (Jan Harm) Koolstra
vertrouwenspersoon.wetenschap@acta.nl
Amsterdam UMC
Prof. E.T. (Ed) van Bavel, e.vanbavel@amc.uva.nl 020-566 5203
The Academic Integrity Committee investigates complaints about possible violations of academic integrity and subsequently issues a recommendation to the Executive Board. The Committee’s anonymised recommendations are made available to everyone through the Committee’s annual reports.
The Committee reports annually on the recommendations it has issued. Please note: These annual reports are available in Dutch only.
The advisory report ‘Integrity policy and research culture’ contains recommendations for a UvA policy to guarantee academic integrity. Download a summary of the UvA advisory report (in Dutch).
The full advisory report is available to UvA employees on the staff website. Read the full report in Dutch (staff login required).
The UvA adheres to the principles of Netherlands Code of Conduct for Research Integrity (VSNU 2018). According to the code, researchers must respect the principles of scrupulousness, reliability, verifiability, impartiality and independence, and are expected to do everything possible to promote and ensure compliance with these principles in their academic environments. In the event of a suspected violation of academic integrity, the UvA will always make all research and research data available for inspection, under confidentiality conditions determined by the Executive Board.
The European Code of Conduct for Research Integrity is the European research community’s framework for self-regulation. The European Commission sees the Code as a reference document for research integrity in all EU-funded research projects.