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College Ethics Review Board

Applications

  • Click here to login to make or revise an application, or to review applications as a committee member

Background

As part of the requirements for research governance, the University of Aberdeen requires that approval from a research ethics committee is required for all research involving human participants or biological samples. The College of Life Sciences and Medicine Ethics Review Board has been established to ensure that all research carried out by staff and students in the College is reviewed by an appropriate ethics committee. For projects not covered by the remit of North of Scotland Research Ethics Committee, the Psychology Ethics Committee or an ethics review board in a different country, the Board provides the ethical review. The College Ethics Review Board operates primarily as a virtual committee with applications being submitted and reviewed electronically to allow a rapid response. Members of the committee meet several times a year to review decisions and procedures. For research carried out overseas, approval by a local research ethics committee is preferred.

Remit

The remit of the College committee is to provide a review of ethical aspects of any research proposal for projects on human volunteers or human tissue samples carried out by University staff and students within the college which are not covered by another committee e.g. the National Research Ethics Service or the Psychology Ethics Committee. This includes:

  • Studies in healthy volunteers
  • Studies using data or human tissue samples not obtained through NHS which are not completely anonymised
  • Studies carried out outside the UK where there are no appropriate local ethical review procedures
  • Studies involving biological samples being sent abroad for research purposes

CERB accepts projects for review where:

  1. The primary investigator is a member of staff within the College of Life Sciences and Medicine
  2. Where the project requires an ethical opinion according to the University Research Ethics Framework ResearchEthicsFrameworkJun08%20with%20appendices_1
  3. Where the project does not require ethical review by another ethics board such as that based in the NHS.

The screening questions below are designed to help researchers judge if their study should be submitted to CERB.

 

Applying to CERB – some general points.

Please read this carefully before making an application.

1. CERB uses a ‘virtual’ reviewing process. Applications that are submitted to CERB are sent out electronically to selected members of the board who feed comments back electronically to applicants. This means that most applications are not discussed at board meetings and the reviewing process can commence immediately after application.

2. Either students or supervisors may make the application, as long as they are registered to the University of Aberdeen. Nevertheless, if the student makes the application it will require approval by the supervisor before it is actually submitted. Principal investigators must be staff employed by the University of Aberdeen.

Important note: Until the supervisor has approved the application it will not be accepted into the reviewing system.

3. On making an application please look at the requirements carefully. Most projects require several documents to be uploaded including an experimental protocol, information sheet, consent form and evidence of peer review. New questionnaires or interview schedules should also be submitted.

4.Peer review. CERB considers that to be ethical, a study needs to be scientifically valid. Whilst CERB may have the scientific expertise to judge whether an application is good science, we don’t assume this to be the case and so also rely on evidence of scientific peer review to advise us. If your project has not already been peer-reviewed e.g. because it is unfunded, we ask that you obtain internal or external peer review. We are not asking for your peers to judge if a study is ethical – that is clearly our job. You should upload your peer review with your application so that it can be considered by the committee along with the rest of the application. Completion of a proforma is very useful though not necessary and you can find this here . You should upload your peer review (or evidence such as approval of a student based project by an appropriate process) with your application so that it can be considered by the committee along with the rest of the application. Peer review

5. Once an application has been made and reviews have been received by the Chairperson, she or he will send out a letter to the applicant which will either approve the application or contain requests for changes that will need to be made before approval can be given.

6. Please make changes to documents using a tracking or highlighting tool and compose a reply to the letter from the Chairperson addressing the points made by the reviewers. Again, this will need to be submitted or approved by the supervisor if it is a student project.

7. Depending upon the types of change requested by reviewers the Chairperson will use his or her discretion to decide whether to send the application back out for re-review or whether to accept the changes and approve the application. The applicant will be notified accordingly. 

Membership

  • Dr Justin Williams (Chair), Child Health
  • Dr Sohinee Bhattacharya, Obstetrics & Gynaecology
  • Professor Jen Cleland, Division of Medical and Dental Education
  • Dr Martin Collinson, Biomedical Sciences
  • Dr Mirela Delibegovic, Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences
  • Dr Flora Douglas, Public Health Nutrition Group
  • Professor Helen Galley, Anaesthesia & Intensive Care
  • Dr Nicola Gray, Primary Care
  • Dr Stuart Gray, Institute of Medical Sciences
  • Dr Charles Harrington, Mental Health
  • Dr Lynne Hocking, Musculoskeletal and Genetics
  • Dr Alex Johnstone , Rowett Research Institute
  • Dr Janet Kyle, Public Health Nutrition Group
  • Dr Tatiana Macfarlane, Aberdeen Dental School
  • Dr Debbi Marais, Public Health Nutrition Group
  • Dr David McLernon, Medical Statistics
  • Prof Andrew Meharg, Plant & Soil Science
  • Mr Jeremy Morse, Clinical Skills Centre
  • Dr Alasdair Mort, Centre for Rural Health
  • Dr Jennifer Perrin, Mental Health
  • Ms Alida Pokoradi, PhD Student
  • Dr Sean Semple, Environmental and Occupational Medicine
  • Dr Diane Skatun, Health Economics Research Unit
  • Ms Carrie Stewart, PhD Student
  • Dr Gordon Waiter, Radiology
  • Dr Margaret Watson, Centre of Academic Primary Care

  • Dr Sara Jane MacLennan, Academic Urology Unit

Lay Members

  • Mrs Jackie Brawley
  • Mr Lorne Colmar
  • Mrs Gill Devereux
  • Miss Margaret Main
  • Mr Adrian Martin

 

Screening Questions

1.. Does the proposed research involve patients recruited by virtue of their involvement with the NHS?

2. Does the proposed research involve any facilities (buildings, equipment, biological samples) belonging to the NHS?

If you have answered yes to one of the above questions, your research will need to be approved by n NHS ethics committee e.g. the North of Scotland Research Ethics Service

For info see:

For the NOSRES meeting dates and closing dates, please visit http://www.nhsgrampian.org and click on the 'North of Scotland Research Ethics Service'Link

For questions about NOSRES applications please contact NOSRES on:

  • Ethics Co-ordinator: Mrs Carol Irvine, Tel: 01224 558503
  • Scientific Officer & Manager: DrJulie Kelly, Tel: 01224 558480
  • Scientific Officer: Dr Rachel Venables, Tel: 01224 558480
  • email address: nosres@nhs.net Telephone number 01224 558474

3. Are participants taking part by virtue of their being employed or paid by NHS?

Please note that this research no longer falls under the remit of the Research and Ethics Service provided by the UK Health Departments. A new UK harmonised version of the Governance Arrangements for Research Ethics Committees has come into use from 1 September 2011. This replaces the October 2001 Governance Arrangements for Research Ethics Committees in Scotland - for the new governance arrangements please see:

http://www.dh.gov.uk/prod_consum_dh/groups/dh_digitalassets/documents/digitalasset/dh_126614.pdf

4.. Does my project require an ethical opinion according to the University Research Ethics Framework? See:

http://www.abdn.ac.uk/ppg/uploads/files/69/ResearchEthicsFrameworkJun08%20with%20appendices_1.doc

'Anonymous' imples that all identifying information such as name, address, DOB, postcode which could be used to identify an individual has been permanently removed from all versions of the data and no access to this information is possible for any member of the research team. If this information has been removed from most data files but a file remains which contains information to link ID number which can be accessed by one or more of the researchers, the data is NOT anonymous but 'Anonymised linked'

5. Will the proposed research be submitted to any other non-NHS research ethics board?

6. If the proposed research is being carried out outside the UK, will it be submitted to a local research ethics board?

When non-NHS projects are conducted away from Aberdeen and the University of Aberdeen is the sponsoring institution, projects should still be submitted to CERB, irrespective of whether local ethical review is also being conducted. If you have answered YES to questions 5 or 6, you may wish to contact justin.williams@abdn.ac.uk to discuss whether an application to the CLSM committee is required.

Dates of Board Meetings

  • Wednesday 20th February 2013

Contact Information

Mrs Flora Buthlay
(0)1224 438470
f.buthlay@abdn.ac.uk

Resources

The following Participant Information Sheet (PIS) and Consent form are provided for guidance only and there may be reasons why these forms are not applicable to your study. The same applies to the exemplar form for obtaining peer review.

Further guidance may be obtained from:

Presentations from CERB training day (PDFs)




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Email: clsm@abdn.ac.uk

  
     
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