Ethics

All members of the CEMFI community must adhere to our Code of Conduct . This document was approved by the Board of Trustees on 25 March 2019. It identifies the core ethical values of CEMFI and describes a set of rules of conduct aimed at achieving the highest ethical standards across all our activities.

CEMFI's Internal Compliance Unit develops initiatives to raise awareness about specific issues that may affect the climate for work and study in our institution. The unit is composed by a diverse set of members of CEMFI's community. You can raise comments to this unit at this email address icu@cemfi.es

In 2021, CEMFI endorsed the 40 principles of the European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers, as acknowledged by the European Commission's pan-European initiative EURAXESS.

As part of its strategy to align its human resource policies with the principles set out in the Charter and Code, CEMFI is applying to the European Commission for the "HR Excellence in Research" award, and by doing so joins a community of European institutions that are committed to continuously improve their human resource practices.

CEMFI has now completed the initial phase of the process, which required the endorsement of the Charter and Code principles and an in-depth assessment of the institution's current human resource practices, given by the Personnel Selection Rules and the Appointments Committee Rules and Procedures. To do so, CEMFI involved its entire research community in evaluating the degree of implementation of the Charter and Code principles and the alignment of the current recruitment policy with the principles of Open, Transparent and Merit-based Recruitment.

As a result of this consultation, the committee appointed to oversee and implement the process has elaborated an Action Plan, which includes specific actions and timelines to address the weaknesses identified in the process.

All research conducted at CEMFI should be performed in accordance with CEMFI's research ethics guidelines. The purpose of the ethical standards is to promote and facilitate the conduct of research in ways that respect the dignity and preserve the wellbeing of human research participants, and that maintain confidentiality of individual data. The research ethics guidelines apply to all CEMFI staff, including faculty, researchers, students, and administrative staff.

CEMFI's Research Ethics Committee is formed by three members, who are appointed by the Director for a period of three years. Its current members are: Pedro Rey-Biel (ESADE Business School), who acts as Chair, Jorge García Hombrados (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), and Libertad González (Universitat Pompeu Fabra). Members of the CEMFI community can find more information on how to requests evaluations of the Ethics Committee through the intranet.

The Committee is responsible for the following tasks:

• Formulate and periodically update CEMFI's research ethics guidelines, and make them available to CEMFI staff and the public at large.
• Monitor the application of CEMFI's research ethics guidelines.
• Design the requirements and procedures for the ethics approval of research conducted at CEMFI.
• Undertake the ethics evaluation of research that requires ethics approval, consulting external experts if needed.
• Report on the results of ethics approval processes to the Director and to third parties.