Publication
Ethical review as the first challenge in a large international research consortium
Published on 9 April 2024
Ethical reviews are requested for an increasing number of research projects. In this text, we elaborate on the ethical review process in a large EU Horizon funded research project where one has to negotiate and navigate between different kinds of ethical evaluation processes and practices in different countries. When preparing the documents for the ethical review for the AspirE project, it turned out that requests for ethical research, the safe handling of data and personal information as well as the demand for open access data are somewhat contradictory.
Completing the ethical review process in a large research consortium is challenging. Each country and institution seems to have their own interpretation of the guidelines, and they have different practices in terms of the evaluation process. It takes much time, patience and skills to negotiate and prepare the documents, official agreements and templates that the consortium partners will use so that all parties are satisfied. Different institutions and their stake holders (e.g. ethical committees, IT departments, legal teams) also work at different paces. In addition to the formalities (including consent forms, practices related to the GDPR etc.), there is an ongoing need to reflect research ethics within the consortium and its research teams. When the AspirE project started, getting the approvals from ethical committees in several institutions took several months; yet, in our experience the process was very useful as it helped us to clarify not only our ethical research practices but also our research questions and the common aims of the project in concrete terms.
The full article was published in AntroBlogi, a Finnish independant blog that comments on society from an anthropological perspective. Written in Finnish, you can directly access the text HERE.
