Good Scientific Practice

Ensuring good scientific practice forms the basis for excellent and trustworthy science. h_da is committed to this and has therefore drawn up its own guidelines on the matter, which are binding on all members of the university.

The “Statutes of Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences on Ensuring Good Scientific Practice and Dealing with Scientific Misconduct” (July 2022, PDF)

The clarifying and supplementary amendment resolution (July 2023, PDF)

These statutes include, amongst other things, defined principles of good scientific practice, guidelines for the research process, and the handling of misconduct and possible consequences.

In concrete terms, this means, for example, that our researchers must always work correctly and in accordance with the current state of knowledge, critically examine the results obtained and compare them with differing scientific views, document all steps of the research process and process the empirical research data, and safeguard intellectual property when publishing by carefully citing other publications.

These statutes thus serve both to implement and to commit to the German Research Foundation’s (DFG) ‘Guidelines for Safeguarding Good Research Practice’ of August 2019 (last updated: September 2024).