Proposed revisions to North Rhine-Westphalia's law on public research would increase transparency and encourage joint planning between higher education institutions, the state's government has said.
Under the law, universities that fail to comply with transparency regulations would have to pay back a percentage of their funding. All data from completed projects that received public funding would have to be made available, but ongoing work would be protected.
Stricter rules would also be in place for PhD education, following a spate of plagiarism scandals at German universities. The law would require universities to develop quality assurance methods and make them public. However, a plan to withdraw PhD awarding rights from faculties at which misconduct in PhD education had been found was shelved after strong protests from academics.
This article on Research Professional News is only available to Research Professional or Pivot-RP users.
Research Professional users can log in and view the article via this link
Pivot-RP users can log in and view the article via this link.