Challenges and Innovative Changes in Research Ethics Reviews

Trust in science and technology as well as the utility and acceptability of their innovative outcomes is crucially dependent on the ethical qualities of the research. This is the reason why research projects are submitted to an ethical review. Although the existing ethics review infrastructure includes experienced members with expertise in traditional research, this is not the case for new technologies and transformative research that result in new human rights, such as digital rights. Thus, there is a clear need for ethics committees to evolve in order to cover this gap and to be able to support innovation while embedding new human rights. CHANGER aims to promote changes in research ethics reviews that strengthen the capacities of researchers to incorporate ethical judgements in the project design and implementation, and to support ethics committees to address new challenges posed by new technologies and new research practices. CHANGER will review current practices and ethics criteria, will identify and discuss new challenges emerging from new technologies and from new research practices, which are not sufficiently covered in the current review process, will provide innovative training to ethics review experts and researchers, and propose innovative approaches and tools to ethics review reform and new understandings to practice ethics by design, supported by guidelines and a policy roadmap. The CHANGER interdisciplinary consortium has extensive and long-standing experience-based expertise in research ethics reviews, integrity oversight and human rights and is capable of providing novel solutions to the needs in ethics reviews.