Frequently Asked Questions
About C4R
Have any questions or want to get in touch? Please contact Carolina Garcia at carogar@seas.upenn.edu
C4R is an initiative funded by the NINDS, the NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, to create a free, open educational resource to help researchers of all kinds learn, practice, and promote scientific rigor. We’re an interdisciplinary team of scientists, engineers, social scientists, and curriculum developers working together to make science better.
Because issues like lack of reproducibility, retractions, misconduct, and unreliable data are affecting science more than ever.
We’re creating a free online curriculum to help researchers learn the principles and practice of scientific rigor; a collection of interactive, engaging, and practical educational resources to help researchers learn the principles and skills needed to do rigorous science.
Yes! We prepare our materials with an early graduate student audience in mind, but hope to be of use to anyone. If you want more insight into what's going on with any unit, make sure you check out the in-depth instructor guides we provide for each one.
And, don't just take our word for it. Some of our early testers said:
- I love it! The bird is cute.
- I'd use this for a future class.
- I think this should be in elementary schools! It’s important :)
We’re creating units based on topics including experimental design, formulating a good research question, randomization, causation vs correlation, keeping good lab notebooks, writing code properly so that others can replicate your study, confirmation bias, doing good statistical analysis, and many more. Click here for a full list of our unit topics.
Beyond the educational resource, we’re also growing and fostering a global community of people who want to address issues of scientific rigor. We’re creating a space where scientists will have access to great materials and support from their peers, a place where you can connect with people, ask any questions and learn the things everyone assumes you already know.
You don’t have to pay to access our content. Our online curriculum is 100% free, open, and accessible to individuals around the world who are interested in learning, teaching, or promoting scientific rigor.
If you’re interested in partnering with C4R, testing or adopting our materials, or propose other types of collaboration, please contact Carolina Garcia at carogar@seas.upenn.edu
To receive updates on our unit releases, events and more, please complete this short form.
The coordinating, production, and community team is based out of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and we create our curriculum content with professors, researchers, and subject matter experts from different universities across the United States. We call these teams CoLABs. A list of our CoLABs can be found here.
You can join our community by completing this short form. You will receive updates on our unit releases, events and more!
Courses and Curriculum
Both! We recommend the "book" version of each course for an entirely self-guided experience. With an instructor, we recommend the "meeting" version for a single meeting or high-level session on a topic, and the "class" version for a deep exploration of the topic. Alternatively, learners looking for a more visual experience can complete the "class" or "meeting" version on their own!
Not at this time. We are exploring what options exist to say that we are certifying people as "rigorous" scientists. As you might imagine, this is an ethically fraught problem that we want to get right.
We’re creating our materials with graduate students and early-career scientists in mind, and they’re also suitable for PI’s who are teaching and mentoring students, professors who wish to insert them in their syllabi and curricula, departments trying to enhance their rigor and transparency educational materials, and anyone else with an interest in doing rigorous research.
Enrollment and Support
There are not!
We strongly recommend using a laptop or personal computer to take our courses. Most of the instructional content will function on mobile, but some activities may be difficult to operate.