Our Mission

The Ethics CORE Digital Library is funded by The National Science Foundation with a mission to bring together information on best practices in research, ethics instruction and responding to ethical problems that arise in research and professional life.

What is Ethics CORE?

Ethics CORE will develop, gather, preserve and provide comprehensive access to resources related to professional and research ethics for many audiences. It will provide information and expertise for instructors who teach ethics, students with questions about research integrity, researchers and engineers who encounter ethical challenges in practice, administrators in universities and businesses who oversee ethics and compliance policies, scholars who conduct research on professional and research ethics, and others with questions or interests in these areas using a variety of tools including Online Presentations, Courses, Learning Modules, Animations, Teaching Materials, and more. These resources come from contributors in our scientific community, and are used by visitors from all over the world.

Ethics CORE investigators hail from diverse backgrounds, including business, law, civil engineering, education, electrical and computer engineering and library sciences. Other partners bring strengths across the range of disciplines supported by the National Science Foundation and beyond.

Join Us

Take a tour of our web site and see how you can use our infrastructure to further your own research and educational activities. Create your own account. It's free and will give you access to our online simulation tools and other features. Become a contributor by uploading your own presentations and simulation tools for others to share. Ask a question in our community forum, and let the community help you out.

Goals and Features

Online Forums: Ethics CORE will feature interlocking social networking communities, including those for journal editors, principal investigators, research integrity officers, ethics instructors, students, administrators, researchers and more. The forums will enable users to network with peers who face similar challenges and to solicit advice on best practices. The aim is to arm professionals and researchers with the support they need to make the right decisions every day.

Instructional Materials: Ethics CORE will enable contributors to share materials for teaching professional and research ethics, such as course syllabi, text cases with instructors’ guides, video cases with commentaries and assignments for students. The investigators are also developing new instructional materials based on research-driven pedagogy and innovative uses of technology.

Library: Ethics CORE will feature an online library that gathers information on ethics from academic journals, news articles, curricula and other sources in one place. In addition, the site will utilize sophisticated tools, including federated search technologies, digital preservation software, user ratings and metrics, natural language search and discovery functions and an online document delivery system to provide users with licensed materials available through the University of Illinois Library system. At the conclusion of the grant, the entire resource will become a part of the permanent collection of the University Library.

Encyclopedia: In collaboration with its partners, Ethics CORE will create a collection of peer-reviewed encyclopedia articles on central topics in professional and research ethics and ethics pedagogy. The articles will be revised periodically.

Best Practices: Ethics CORE will provide examples of best practices for researchers, administrators and instructors, such as sample informed consent forms for different kinds of research projects, model procedures for handling allegations of research misconduct, recommended policies for handling plagiarism and duplicate publication in journals, and examples of effective instructional methods.