Governance of Research Ethics Committees

Academic departments have a responsibility to provide full review and scrutiny for undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD research proposals and to provide initial review of academic staff research proposals. Ordinarily this will be conducted under the remit of a Departmental Research Ethics Committee. Academic departments have a responsibility to submit an annual report to the College Research Ethics Committee regarding decisions concerning student and staff research. Academic departments also have a responsibility to deliver information required by the College Research Ethics Committee in order to conduct any audit of research ethics scrutiny within the College.

College Research Ethics Committee is a sub-committee of the Research and Knowledge Transfer Committee. Its duties and decisions are reviewed annually by Academic Board.

Undergraduate, Postgraduate and PhD Research Ethics
Review and scrutiny of undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD research ethics is the responsibility of the department within which the student is housed. All student proposed research that concerns human participants or other species beings should be scrutinised by a Departmental Research Ethics Committee (or a Committee with that delegated function, i.e. a Learning and Teaching Committee or a Postgraduate Research Committee). Only in exceptional circumstances will the College Research Ethics Committee scrutinise student research proposals.

It is nevertheless the duty of the College Research Ethics Committee to oversee due process and appropriateness of decisions made at departmental level in order to ensure that they are in keeping with appropriate general and disciplinary specific ethical principles and formulations.