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Ethical Codex

Part I

General Principles

1. Academic staff always maintain the highest standard of human moral and ethical principles and fully respect the principles of the Ethical Code.

2. Academic staff expect the same from their co-workers and students, and set a good example for students.

3. Academic staff never defend or shield unethical behaviour- even if it involved loyalty, good intentions, or following orders.

4. Academic staff consider education, science, the arts, research and development an integral contribution to human knowledge, culture, innovation, and general benefit and protect them from unfair questioning or misuse; they carefully maintain and disseminate the principles of reliable and trustworthy scientific, artistic works, research and development in public, among their co-workers and especially among students.

5. Academic staff develop and extend their skills and knowledge of their professional field as well as their general education.

6. Academic staff retain a healthy scepticism toward the results of their own work, their skills and conclusions; they maintain an objective, critical and fair attitude to the work of their co-workers and students, and are open to discussion and reasoning with others.

7. Academic staff defend the freedom of thought, research, freedom of expression, exchange of opinions and information. In their research and development and in educational work they avoid biased or irrational attitudes or ideology and reject anything that offends human dignity or endangers the proper operation and development of human society. 

 

Part II

Principles of education

1. Academic staff always treat students on the basis of objective, correct, demanding but responsive assessment of their skills, knowledge, diligence and other personal characteristics; in classification of study results they act impartially and objectively, and behave in a friendly and cooperative manner with students.

2. Academic staff communicate with students openly and correctly; they never underestimate, degrade or disregard them.

3. Academic staff act fairly with students, never require from students any work within the teacher´s responsibility and never appropriate students' work and achievements.

4. Academic staff willingly communicate their knowledge, skills and experience to students.

5. Academic staff influence students by the high quality of their education and training, and under all circumstances by their personal example. They carefully maintain the principles of teaching organization. 

6. Academic staff take every initiative in collective and individual teaching and education supporting the development of their independent and critical thinking, their professional growth, research and publication activity, helps to develop their external and international professional contacts.

7. Academic staff draw appropriate conclusions from occasional failures and unethical behaviour of students.

 

Part III

Principles of scientific, artistic work and research

1. Academic staff focus their research, artistic and other activities on the extension of human knowledge, development of artistic and cultural values, level of education, technical innovations, etc. They always take into consideration how their results may be beneficial to the society.  

2. Academic staff avoid endangering their co-workers, the society, the environment, material, cultural and ethical values.   

3. Academic staff attend to the objectivity, reliability and accuracy of their research while respecting the limits of the methods used.

4. In publication of their findings and results, they take into consideration the entirety of available information, considering probabilities, and strive for an unbiased interpretation.

5. Upon publication of their work results, they save the primary data and documentation for the usual period in the given field, unless other regulations or legal obligations prevent them from such saving.

6. Academic staff take into consideration the purposeful and effective use of the support rendered to them for the research and development.

7. They avoid duplication of research of other subjects, unless that is inevitable for the completion, verification or comparison of their results.

8. Academic staff convey their work results to the general public, professionals or artists in the field unless such work is confidential. They make a reasonable attempt to inform the general public of their  scientific findings, after verification and publication in specialist media.

9. As an author or co-author of scientific work, they present the results only in the event they achieved such results themselves or substantially contributed to them; they avoid plagiarism under all circumstances.

10. When publishing, academic staff recognize their colleagues' and predecessors' contribution; in quotations they always indicate a clear and accurate reference to sources

11. They quote major resources which might controvert their results and opinions. 

12. They avoid unnecessary fragmentation of their results in order to produce more publications.

13. Should they find errors in their publications, they make every possible effort to remove them, and do not hide or conceal them. 

14. Academic staff perform evaluations, reviews or other assessment delegated to them personally, independently and with due diligence.

15. They protect the intellectual property of evaluated authors' manuscripts, project designs, reports, objects of art, etc., and avoid using the data contained in the evaluated documents for a different purpose than that of writing the opinion, and shall not render them to any third persons.

16. They refrain from intentional extension of the evaluation period for the purpose of achieving their individual benefit or that of any third person.

17. They refuse to write an expert opinion in the event that the conclusions might be affected by their personal interests, or they notify the relevant individual or individuals of such conflict of interests; they refrain from any knowing conflict of interests.

18. They write expert opinions responsibly and only within their field of expertise without being influenced by external pressure.

19. Whenever possible, their evaluations, expert opinions and reviews are based on objective criteria, maintaining the criteria of the ordering person and requiring the same from other participants to the given procedure.

 

The Ethical Code was made in link to The European Charter for Researchers and to the Ethical Code of researchers of the Czech Academy of Sciences. It is harmonized  with this document in all issues relating to research and development.