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IRB Training

Institutional Review Board ∙ irb@umd.edu ∙ 301-405-4212 ∙ 1204 Marie Mount Hall ∙ Hours: 8:30 AM - 4:30 PM

Presentation Requests

IRB Staff are available to visit your group, class or department to present on the IRB process, human subjects research, or ethical principles in human subject research.

To schedule a presentation or seminar with your group, class, or department, please email the IRB and include your name, date and time requested, type of group, and topics you wish to discuss. We will work with you to create a presentation or facilitate a discussion that best meets the needs of your group.

Human Subject Research (CITI) Training

CITI (Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative) Training (CITI Program) is widely considered the standard in online human subject research training. Ongoing education and training in protection of human participants is a federal requirement. Enhanced oversight, new requirements, and recent guidance provided by the Office of Human Research Protections (OHRP) have required actions to strengthen human research protections programs.

The required training is titled Biomedical Research - Basic/Refresher or Social & Behavioral Research - Basic/Refresher. Both of these courses will provide you with the CITI Basic/Refresher course.

Who Should Complete CITI training? 

Principal Investigators, Faculty Advisors (for students serving as PIs), Co-PIs and research team members who will interact with human subjects and/or their identifiable data for the purposes of research must complete CITI Training before the Initial Application, Amendment Application, Continuing Review Application can be fully approved, or they must be temporarily removed from the research team until the training has been completed. 

During the administrative review of these transactions, the IRB Office will check to ensure that team members have up-to-date CITI training. 

To assist with having external investigators complete the CITI Training, please email the IRB Office.

How to Complete the Initial CITI Training

Create an account in CITI

  1. Go to www.citiprogram.org.
  2. Sign In/Register.
  3. At the top, right corner of the screen, hit the “Log In” button. This will give you three options: Log In, Log In Through My Institution, OR Register. 
  4. If you are affiliated with the University of Maryland you should choose the Log In Through My Institution option. This will allow you to register for CITI by using your University ID and password. To assist with having external investigators complete the CITI Training, please email the IRB Office at irb@umd.edu. 
  5. Choose the “University of Maryland, College Park” as your institution. 
  6. On the following screen, select “I don’t have a CITI Program account and I need to create one.” 
  7. Follow the prompts to set up your CITI account.
  8. If you are not affiliated with the University, please log in through your institution or choose Register.

Add a course

  1. At the bottom of the page after logging in, under Learner Tools for the University of Maryland College Park, click Add a Course.
  2. For Question 1, select one of the following Basic Courses depending on the scope of your research:
    1. Biomedical Research - Basic/Refresher – 15 Required Modules, 2 Supplemental Modules 
    2. Social and Behavioral Research  - Basic/Refresher  – 11 Required Modules 
  3. If you are only looking to take the course that is REQUIRED by the IRB, only make a selection for Questions 1 and 7 ONLY.
  4. Complete the training. If you cannot complete the training in one sitting, you can save and finish at a later time. You can stop and start as many times as you need.

PLEASE NOTE: The Responsible Conduct of Research Training is NOT the required training. It is recommended, but not required. If investigators complete this training instead of the required training, the IRB will unlock the project and request that you complete the correct training.

Find and view certificate

  1. Your CITI certificate is available on the CITI website through your account. Go to citiprogram.org. 
  2. On the Main Menu, click University of Maryland, College Park Courses. This should give you a list of your completed CITI courses. Under the heading titled “Completion Record,” there is an option to View/Print your certificate. Please be sure to save a copy of your certificate to your computer. You should be able to save this certificate as a PDF. 
  3. You can also access your completed CITI Courses by clicking on My Records. This tab lists all of your completed courses. The View/Print option under Completion Record allows you to print and/or save your CITI certificate as a PDF. 

Who is required to link their CITI certificate to a project?

  • Principal Investigators: Yes
  • Faculty Advisors (if a student is the PI): Yes
  • Co-Investigators listed on Part 1*: Yes, if they will interact with human subjects and/or their identifiable data for the purposes of research. If they will not, remove them as Co-Investigator from Part 1.
  • Department Liaison: No

*If Co-Investigators are external to UMD, it is sufficient to upload their CITI training as a Supporting Document.

How to Link CITI Training in IRBNet

Step 1: Add it to your IRBNet User Profile

  1. Log into IRBNet. 
  2. Click User Profile in the upper, right corner of the screen. 
  3. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Add New Training & Credentials Record under the Training and Credentials section. 
  4. Follow the prompts to attach the PDF version of your completed CITI Training.

NOTE: You do not need to “submit” your training to a Board in order to upload your Completion Report to your profile or to link your report to an IRBNet submission. Additionally, the training will continue to appear as “Not Submitted,” even after the training has been added to the User Profile and linked to a project. 

Step 2: Link it to a project

  1. Once your CITI Training is added to your User Profile, click the My Projects tab. 
  2. Click on the title of the project you would like to link the CITI training record to.
  3. Go to the Designer page. You should see the documents you have already uploaded to the project. Underneath these documents, click the blue Link/Unlink Training Records button. 
  4. On the next page, your CITI Training records should appear.  
    • If your training does not appear, it must first be added to your User Profile in the upper right corner of the IRBNet screen (see above).
    • If Co-Investigators and Faculty Advisors have at least “Write” access to the project (see Step 5) and have added their CITI training records to their User profiles (see Step 3), their CITI Training records should also appear. 
    • Anyone with access to the project can link CITI training to an individual project for themselves and others on the project. 
  5. You will need to click the box on the left of each training record for each investigator. Then click save. Your training records should appear as linked on your project. 

NOTE: You must link your training with EACH project of which you are a research team member. If the IRB Office receives your application without the CITI Completion Report of each research team member, the project will be unlocked so you may add them before we continue with the review process.

For more information on sharing a project and levels of access, see Step 5 of the How to Submit to the IRB page.

CITI Training Refresher Course

If you remain engaged in human subject research, the CITI Training Refresher Course must be completed every three (3) years.  You will receive reminders from the CITI Program at 60, 45, 30, and 15 days prior to expiration of your training.

Community Partner Training

CIRTification: Community Involvement in Research Training is a human research protections training program designed especially for community partners. If you will be involved in research and responsible for recruiting research participants, obtaining informed consent, or collecting data, this training is for you. 

Please note: This training does NOT replace the required CITI training for UMCP-affiliated investigators. This training is designed for non-academic personnel (for example, business associates, local government representatives, school system representatives) who may or may not be engaged in research requiring IRB approval in collaboration with UMCP-affiliated investigators.

If you are interested in using CIRTification for training community partners, please see the UMCP CIRTification Guidance Document.

HIPAA Training for Investigators

HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996) Training ensures that national health information privacy standards issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) are upheld. Research organizations and researchers may or may not be covered by the HIPAA Privacy Rule. Covered entities may use and disclose protected health information (PHI) for research with authorization or without individual authorization under limited circumstances.

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