The Amsterdam Public Health research institute aims to deliver the highest research quality in accordance with Good Research Practices corresponding to the relevant laws, regulation and guidelines. Therefore, the Scientific Quality Committee support the quality of research for all APH researchers. For example, with the APH Research Quality visits, from which you can receive peer feedback on different quality aspects of your research project.

Scientific Quality Committee

The Scientific Quality Committee (SQC) consists of senior researchers from the eight research programs of APH and are appointed at either VU, VUmc or AMC. The main task of the SQC is to advise the Board of Directors of the Amsterdam Public Health research institute (APH) on their scientific quality policy, and to support the quality of research within APH.

Committee members
Carlo Schuengel (chair) Yuri Milaneschi
Joske Nauta Hans Knoop
Pauline Slottje Astrid de Wind
Mariska Bot Ruben Duijnhoven
Wouter van Ballegooijen

Secretaris SQC: Moira Goeman
Contact: aph.sqc@amsterdamumc.nl

APH Quality Handbook

The APH Quality Handbook provides for APH's commitment to promote continuous improvement in research quality and to encourage good scientific conduct throughout all phases of research. With the intention of setting a standard, structuring information and making information accessible for all researchers, the Research Lifecycle is used to navigate the researcher through the Handbook. The Research Lifecycle represents all activities typically involved in a research project, and may be scientific or administrative in nature, or both.

Research Quality visits

Promoting ongoing improvement in research quality is one of the primary goals of Amsterdam Public Health (APH) research institute. Opening up research practices in ongoing research projects to colleagues within the research institute foster a research culture of transparency, trust, mutual support, and continuous improvement. A tool developed by the APH Scientific Quality Committee (SQC), to foster the quality of APH research projects, is the Research Quality (RQ) visit.

The RQ visit is a peer-led procedure that can take place at any point during the research life cycle of an APH research project. The additional peer feedback provided with the RQ visit is of added value, since for most research projects peer feedback occurs only at the proposal and reporting phase. With these RQ visits, the APH SQC provides the possibility for peer feedback across all three phases of the research life cycle, complementing other systems in which research is embedded, relating to compliance, training, and supervision. The RQ visit will result in a report that summarizes the feedback given on the topics as discussed. This report can provide APH researchers with further insights of the concerning issue and contact with other APH researchers with relevant expertise.

Value of the RQ visit
The RQ visits can increase research quality along the research life cycle. The visits can detect barriers for practicing good quality research and provides expert-level recommendations. The visit can also inform APH researchers whether their research project is on the right track. The RQ visits also collect best practices that can be shared with other APH esearchers and lead to recommendations at a strategic level for research institutes and research boards. More detailed information about the RQ visit can be found in the document below.

Are you interested in receiving peer feedback on your research project? Sign-up for a Research Quality visit through this RQ visit registration form.

For questions, send an email to the project leader Moira Goeman via aph.sqc@amsterdamumc.nl

Embedding of APH research projects

In Amsterdam UMC and VU all research projects need to be embedded within a research institute. The Amsterdam Public Health research institute has started embedding its research projects from January 1, 2018 onwards.

Every project that will be carried out within APH needs to be registered to the Scientific Quality Committee by the main researcher of PI/project leader. A research project is a scientific study which should lead to a scientific publication. The scope of a research project may differ; for example a new project that uses existing cohorts or registrations that can be relatively short.

The request for embedding of a research project can be sent to APH Scientific Quality Committee and should consist of an completed filled in APH SQC Research Embedding form (see below). The submitted research project will be judged by the corresponding APH research program leaders on suitability and relevance to the preferred research program. Embedding of a research project should take a couple of weeks at most. Every embedded research project receives a unique SQC embedding number. All embedded research projects will be registered in a research project database.

For PhD candidates affiliated with Amsterdam UMC (both locations VUmc and AMC) or VU Amsterdam and working on a project that is embedded within the Amsterdam Public Health research institute, a discount of 25% applies to the course fee of the EpidM courses and/or the Master program in Epidemiology. The PhD candidate needs a SQC embedding number to receive the discount. For more information see the Education webpage.