Consulting for research projects and publications

These are projects without funding. If you are interested in a cooperation project with funding from the IMSB, please go to “Cooperation offers”. Doctoral candidates should register as described under “Advice on doctoral projects”.
Please also read the information on the previous page “Statistical advice services”.

The Institute of Medical Statistics and Bioinformatics (IMSB) is committed to good scientific practice. Please note:

"Quick consultations" in the sense of an emergency room - especially telephone consultations - are not provided (exeption: the Omics Ambulance).
Well-founded advice is not possible without exact knowledge of the experimental design and the data structure.
The correct documentation and accuracy of the data supplied to us is an indispensable prerequisite for a valid analysis. Therefore, we do not process inadequately documented or erroneous data. For reasons of IT security, we do not accept zip files.

Procedure for project and publication consulting:

1. Registration

Please register using the online form “Advice on research projects and publications”.
If you are interested in a cooperation project with funding from the IMSB: please go to “Cooperation offers”. Doctoral candidates please register as described under “Advice on the doctoral thesis”.
Note: Please also note the privacy policy.
Our information obligations according to Art. 13 DSGVO can be found here.

Please submit the following documents by e-mail via imsb-kontakt [at] uni-koeln.de if applicable to your project:

Exposé or outline of the project
For research projects: study protocol, if already available
Blank tables or sketches of desired graphics for publications
For publications, a literature search should already have been carried out and an introduction should be available

2. Contact person

3. Consultation

The consultation includes biometric aspects of study planning and implementation, e.g.:

Planning (e.g. hypotheses, analysis models, selection of target criteria, time points for the determination of the target criteria, study design optimization)
Sample size calculation
Randomization
Data management (as far as biometrically relevant)
Suitable statistical software
Plausibility checks
Dealing with missing values
Statistical analysis methods
Graphical display options
Interpretation of the results
Statistical method section and review of study protocols and publications

Further information

On our Guidelines and Recommendations page you will find useful links with information on planning, conducting, analyzing and publishing studies. Please inform yourself about the documents relevant to you.

4. Data analysis and responsibility

The responsibility for the data (formal and content-related correctness of the data, data security, data protection) and the data analysis remains with the person responsible for the project. In particular, we expressly refer to the

In addition to our compilation of guidelines and recommendations, you can find guidelines for reporting different types of studies on the following website:
https://www.equator-network.org

5. Conclusion of the work

If services are provided as part of the consultation that lead to scientific publications, it is scientifically correct, collegial behavior to include the IMSB participants in the list of authors or in the acknowledgement of a publication according to the proportion of work.

If the Institute of Medical Statistics and Bioinformatics or institute employees are named in a publication, please submit the work to the IMSB before submission.

Affiliation: Institute of Medical Statistics and Computational Biology
Faculty of Medicine • University of Cologne • Cologne, Germany

UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE

Faculty of MedicineInstitute of Medical Statistics and Computational Biology