Research activities

Scientific publication and communication

As of 2018, the Wallonia-Brussels Federation requires all researchers who benefit from public funding to publish their research publications in an open repository with an embargo period of 12 months for Human Sciences and 6 months for STEM and Health Sciences. ULiège has required this from all its employees since 2008 and all BeIPD fellows were trained and required to upload their publications into ORBI. They also uploaded presentations (posters, oral presentations) and past publications.

3772 publications were uploaded into Orbi of which 1797 were related to research performed by fellows after they started their fellowship at ULiège. 809 scientific publications, books and book chapters were counted, along with 800 communications presented at congress or symposia and 71 publications related to small audience conferences, reports or learning materials.

	Number of records
Scientific journals: article, short communication, book review, letter to editor, single issue	583
Books: books published as author or translator, collective works published as editor or as project supervisor	54
Parts of books: chapter, contribution to collective works, contribution to encyclopaedia or dictionary, preface, postface, glossary	152
Scientific congress and symposium: unpublished conference/abstract, paper published in a conference book, paper published in a journal, poster	801
Patent	1*
Other: speech, conference, reports, learning material, learning and teaching material	186
Total	1797

^{* This patent was published when the fellow was appointed to ULiège, but it is related to previous work and rights are not attributed to ULiège}

Most of the fellows deposited around 5 acommunications. Some of them however were more productive. In Belgium, only the list of publications printed from ORBI is considered for grants so that many researchers took care of giving visibility to their scientific activities.

^{Legend : Number of publications in scientific journals, books and book chapters per fellow (in blue, IPD; in red, OPD) from 1/1/2014 to 30/8/2019 - Extracted from ORBI.}

Unfortunately, when postdocs left the university, ULiège could no longer require them to archive publications in Orbi. However supervisors could eventually be asked to enter the fellows’ future publications. A follow-up survey in the next 2-3 years could be of added-value to document achievements related to funded projects. The ULiège Cofund alumni could also serve as an important network and opportunity for future collaborations.

Ethical issues

All fellows who benefited from EU funding were required to conduct an ethics self-assessment, including a check-list, to consider possible issues and disclose any potential consequences. In total 30% projects required an ethical assessment.

According to ULiège regulation on ethics the supervisors are responsible for the ethical assessment of a project, as they are well versed with the procedures to follow, the role of ethics committees within their faculty and the institutional regulations.

Outgoing postdocs may have been subject to additional rules and procedures, so that the host institution abroad was required to ensure that all existing and required rules were followed.

Fellows were encourage to participate in training on ethics. Assessors and supervisors could moreover suggest that fellows pass the FELASA certification for animal housing, handling and experiment training. 4 IPDs received the certificate.