CITI Training Requirements

Before any research may be approved by the IRB, key personnel conducting the research (whether FSU faculty, staff, students or non-FSU collaborators) are required to complete or be current on (have completed the required initial or refresher within the last 3 years) the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) Human Subjects Research (HSR) training course.

Key personnel are generally members of a study team who are engaged in research involving human subjects, such as study team members who will conduct interactions or interventions for a research purpose with any human subject, including obtaining subjects’ informed consent, or who will (with or without interaction or intervention) obtain individuals’ identifiable private information or identifiable biospecimens.

The OHSP uses HRP-311 - Worksheet - Engagement Determination in order to determine whether individuals are “engaged” in human research; refer to this worksheet as a reference.

Instructions to enroll in the correct CITI course:

The CITI website offers many kinds of training, which may or not be required at FSU. Please note however that the training specifically required by FSU for research involving human subjects is called “Human Subjects Research (HSR)” training, which contains the required modules for protecting human subjects. In order to enroll in the correct modules, please follow these instructions:

1. Register or log in to the CITI Program Website using your official FSU email address¹
2. Affiliate with “Florida State University” as your Institutional Affiliation and then select the option to “Add a Course.”
3. A list of questions will require you to choose courses for which you’d like to register; scroll down to question 7. The 7^th question asks if you are required to complete the HSR Training. Here you must select one of the “FSU Faculty, Staff, and Students” Social/Behavioral or Biomedical/Clinical course options in order to access the required training.
• All other questions are optional, supplemental training courses; affirmatively answering these other questions will add additional courses to your CITI account.

¹If you have already completed CITI HSR training but your CITI Profile email does not match one of the emails in your RAMP IRB submission (e.g., in your CITI profile you are affiliated with another institution, or you are not using your FSU preferred or business emails), then your CITI HSR training record will not be synced in RAMP IRB and you will not see your completed CITI HSR training under the RAMP IRB Training tab. You may update your CITI profile by making certain that you affiliate with FSU in your CITI profile or use your FSU preferred or business email in your CITI profile. However, if either of the email addresses listed for you in RAMP IRB are incorrect, please contact FSU ITS for assistance with updating your FSU emails.

IMPORTANT NOTES: 

• Submissions for IRB review are synced with CITI records to capture information about course completion, using your FSU “Business” or “Preferred” emails matched to CITI records. Any mismatch will fail this sync.
• Submissions that lack documentation of the required CITI HSR training for any key member of the study team will, before IRB approval is granted, be returned to you to have the CITI HSR training requirement completed and uploaded into your RAMP IRB submission.
• CITI training must be re-certified every three years. You are responsible for tracking your initial and required re-certification. You will NOT be notified by OHSP when your training is about to expire, so plan accordingly.
• Other CITI training will not satisfy the required CITI Human Subjects Research training requirement.

• Responsible Conduct of Research, Conflicts of Interest, Health Information Privacy & Security, Export Controls, and Good Clinical Practice training are NOT the same as HSR training. While these trainings may be valuable or required by other programs, those courses do not satisfy the HSR training requirement.

• Refer to your funding sponsor about other training requirements that may be required, and contact The FSU Office of Research Compliance Programs (ORCP) at FSU to ensure these required trainings are completed as appropriate. The ORCP may be contacted by phone at 850-644-8648 or email at research-compliance@fsu.edu

Institutional Affiliation: For researchers new to the University who have completed CITI training and who are transferring projects to FSU, current CITI HSR training certificates are required with initial project transfer. Once the project and PI have transferred to FSU, the institutional affiliation within the CITI account must be updated to FSU. The affiliation with "Florida State University" must be initiated and the above "Instructions to enroll in the correct CITI course" must be completed to access the correct modules. Evidence of having completed Human Subjects Protections training should be provided to the OHSP when an application is submitted for IRB review, and must be documented as a condition of IRB approval.

The OHSP can be contacted at humansubjects@fsu.edu or (850) 644-7900 for clarification and assistance with human subjects research training.