Debrecen is the second largest city of Hungary, functioning as an educational centre of Eastern Hungary. The number of students is around 30000 at the University of Debrecen. The University has accredited doctoral programs in six disciplines, and the number of doctoral schools is currently 24, covering 840 PhD students. With 14 faculties and more than 200 research groups the University of Debrecen has intense research and development activity, as demonstrated by the number of publications and citations. Research misconduct is common in most countries, therefore this topic requires special attention.

The University of Debrecen has long been discussing dilemmas of research ethics, and an important milestone of the process was when the Code of Ethics of the University of Debrecen was established as a foundation for professional and personal behaviour. The Code of Ethics has a section providing ethical rules for scientific research covering the topic of authorship, plagiarism, executive rules for research misconduct, etc. Research integrity and ethics are part of the curricula: basics of research ethics are taught at undergraduate level and there are lectures on research ethics under a compulsory credit course for PhD students.

Unfortunately, beyond these university courses the issue of research integrity and research ethics are hardly addressed by practical courses or workshops at the University of Debrecen; this is why the EMBO research integrity workshop was a special event. This research ethics workshop was organized for young, early-career supervisors planning to set up an independent research team.

The goal of the workshop was to increase awareness of research integrity topics and encourage responsible research practices in the European life science. The following topics were covered: codes of conduct for research integrity in Europe and in Hungary, research integrity procedures at the University of Debrecen, researchers’ responsibilities, research misconduct, research involving human subjects, publication issues, and conflicts of interest, supervisor’s responsibilities. The workshop was interactive, included analyses of scenarios.

The need for further workshops/educational platforms linked either to general or specific issues of research integrity to educate students and practicing researchers should be addressed.