Research Ethics and Integrity framework

The College of Science and Engineering's Research Ethics and Integrity framework states that each School must have:

1. A Research Ethics and Integrity procedure agreed at the level of the School
2. A designated point of contact in the School for Ethics (Ethics Officers) and Integrity (Integrity Officers), with whom issues can be raised
3. A mechanism for communicating the School’s Research Ethics and Integrity procedures to all members of staff

If you would like more information on matters of research ethics & integrity, please contact the relevant Ethics or Integrity Officer for your School/centre using the below link:

• Prof Eric Schirmer, Ethics Officer for Biological Sciences E.Schirmer@ed.ac.uk
• Dr Michael Cowley, Ethics Officer for Chemistry Michael.Cowley@ed.ac.uk 
• Prof Timm Krüger, Ethics Officer for Engineering Timm.Krueger@ed.ac.uk
• Dr Aiden Keane, Ethics Officer for GeoSciences aidan.keane@ed.ac.uk
• Dr Alexandra Birch-Mayne, Ethics Officer for Informatics A.Birch@ed.ac.uk
• Dr Pavel Safronov, Ethics Officer for Mathematics p.safronov@ed.ac.uk
• Prof Graeme Ackland, Ethics Officer for Physics & Astronomy gjackland@ed.ac.uk
• Mr Neil Chue Hong, Ethics Officer for EPCC n.chuehong@epcc.ed.ac.uk

The College sets out a common framework and delegates the implementation of procedures to the Schools, which ensures that those procedures reflect disciplinary needs. Each School takes responsibility for ethical review and approval of all research within the School, while the College Office is required to ensure that procedures exist in each School.

In this context the role of the College is to maintain a degree of oversight of and support for the Schools. This is achieved by working closely with the Schools and with REIRG to strengthen our polices and by producing a Research Ethics and Integrity Annual Report. This Report is subsequently forwarded via the College to the University Committee and shared with UK Research and Innovation. The College also supports training for those involved in ethics reviews and fosters a community of practice.

To whom does the Framework apply?

While the framework applies to any person who conducts research in the College, including research and teaching staff, undergraduate honours students, postgraduate students or visiting scholars and collaborators, in most Schools it is the responsibility of the Principal Investigator (PI) to instigate the Ethics review process and see it through to a favourable outcome. 

All research applications (funded and non-funded) must ensure that the proposed research complies with the Research Ethics and Integrity policies set out by the appropriate School. All research proposals should be screened for ethical implications. In most cases self-audit by the researcher, or by the research supervisor in the case of students, will be sufficient to confirm that there are no ethical implications arising from the research.

In some Schools it may be the case that at the point when approval for the research is awarded, the PI may divide the project into smaller sub-projects which can be advertised as UG final dissertations, MSc dissertations, PhDs or post-doc projects. In those cases, the College recognises that the approval obtained by the PI​ permeates those projects. 

In Schools where students might bring forward their own research proposals, most commonly Geosciences and Informatics, they should seek Ethics approval under the guidance of their supervisors. The responsibility to ensure that approval is secured still lies with the senior member of staff supervising the project.